Friday, June 20, 2003

Cantorial music When I was straightening out my record collection yesterday, I came across a stash of cantorial LPs by some of the great cantors of the early twentieth century. Cantorial music is Jewish liturgical music, and cantors are the people who sing it in a synagogue. Many of these cantors had top-notch, operatic voices. Opera star Richard Tucker was a cantor. Some cantors were excellent improvisers-in cantorial music improvisation is often practiced. Hearing these records took me back to when I was a school kid trying to fall asleep and listening to my father play cantorial records before he had to go to bed. They used to keep me awake at night, they were so full of sadness and pain, melodies sung by men with ‘tears in their voices.” Maybe they had a disturbing effect on me because they reminded me of my father’s difficult life-- being persecuted in Poland and owning a small grocery store in the States, where he worked seven day, ninety hour weeks. He didn’t complain, but I hurt for him, asking myself, “How can he stand it?” Back in the late 1980s there was a revival of cantorial music. I picked some up out of curiosity, wondering how I’d react to them, but never got around to listening to them. After I heard them yesterday, I loved them. They weren’t painful to me now, but poignant and lyrical. And when I thought of my father, he seemed like a paragon of virtue. 10:11:39 AM