Re: [Cz-L] Hava Nagila

Who wrote Havah Nagilah?
This simple question seems to have a complicated answer. The most common
answer -- at least among experts on alt.music.jewish -- is Moshe Nathanson.

But Barry Cohon has weighed in with a strong counterargument for Abraham
Zevi Idelsohn.

Since Idelsohn and Yudelson could well have been the same name in the Old
Country, my vote is for Idelsohn, at least until I'm able to research the
matter for myself.

Meanwhile, here is Cohon's history of Havah Nagilah:



The man largely responsible for the song's existence in its present form is
Abraham Zevi Idelsohn, and he was the father of Jewish Musicology.

As a young cantor, he left his native Latvia, worked in Germany and South
Africa, then went to Jerusalem early in this century to pursue his dream of
collecting the oral traditions of his people and making them available to
the world of music.

In the course of his research he visited a group of Sadigura Hasidim there,
in 1915, and wrote down some of their Nigunim. This was one of them. It was
a wordless "bim-bom" melody, a mystic chant.

Then came World War I. Idelsohn became a bandmaster in the Turkish Army.

Three years later he was back in Jerusalem again, leading a chorus in a
victory concert. The Turks were out, the British were in, there was a
Balfour Declaration, and the yishuv (Jewish community) was celebrating. He
needed a good crowd-pleasing number to end his concert, and he didn't have
one. But he had a file. So he browsed, and as luck would have it his hand
fell on this Sadigura Nigun.

He arranged it in four parts, put some simple Hebrew lyrics to it, and
performed it. The rest, as you know, is history, as this became the
best-known Jewish song in the world.

Idelsohn documented this part of the transmigration of this melody in Volume
9 of his "Thesaurus of Hebrew Oriental Melodies" page XXIV. I know a little
more about it, because he was my first teacher of music. In recent years,
long after his death, the Government of Israel finally awarded his family
some royalties. Also after his death, Moshe Nathanson claimed authorship,
since he was a boy in one of Idelsohn's Hebrew classes at the time I think.
But to my knowledge, Israel never accepted his claim.

Interestingly enough, recordings of Havah Nagilah made in Europe in the 20's
go at a relatively slow pace. The Hora rhythm was added later, came from a
Rumanian folkdance brought to the yishuv by the Halutzim.

Hardy
----- Original Message -----
From: "E. & G. Weissmann" <EGWeissmann_at_gmx.net>
To: "Czernowitz Genealogy and History digest"
<czernowitz-l_at_list.cornell.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2008 1:46 PM
Subject: [Cz-L] Hava Nagila


> Dear Hardy,
> Is it a joke? You are one of the best-informed and best informing
> persons on the list. But this is the first time we heard about this
> matter.
> Who composed it and when, if not a joke?
> Gabriele
>
> --
> Eduard & Gabriele Weissmann
> Kaiserdamm 18
> D- 14057 Berlin
>
> Tel./Fax: +49.30.321 15 38
> E-Mail: EGWeissmann_at_gmx.net

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Received on 2008-12-10 12:53:33