Lazare Saminsky - Hebrew Fairy Tale (1919)

Lazare Saminsky began his studies in Moscow, but was expelled in 1905 for participating in student protests and banished from the city. After the foundation of the Society for Jewish Folk Music in St. Petersburg, he rose to become its spokesperson.

Saminsky Joined the Jewish Ethnographic Expedition in 1913. He was entrusted with collecting the folk songs and liturgical singing of the Caucasian Jews. In the remote mountain villages of this region, Saminsky discovered ancient tunes whose style was unusually pure. From this time onward, these melodies became a living source of Jewish music for him. Later research has shown that the canticles of such isolated Jewish groups demonstrate striking similarities which can only derive from their common, possible two-thousand-year old history.

In the following six years, Saminsky divided his time between the Caucasus and St. Petersburg, until he travelled to Palestine via Constantinople in 1919. Nearly all Jewish people have a special and deep relationship with Erez Israel, even if they have never been there. For a composer engaged on a quest for his Jewish roots, the Promised Land possessed a rare attraction. Many composers of the New Jewish School went there in the first tho decades of the twentieth century, and for some of them it became their new home.

Saminsky stayed in Palestine for three months.
In Jerusalem he composed Conte Hebraique [Hebrew Fairy Tale], a piece for piano which exhibits considerable maturity, as did the compositions that followed later the same year (Danse rituelle du sabbath, Deuxieme conte, and Etude). Although they are very different, nevertheless, these pieces do have something in common wherein one not only recognizes Saminsky's personal style but also that of the Jewish School. The music is very emotional (often impulsive and ecstatic) and decorative (with obvious pleasure in musical embellishment). In place of major and minor, there is recourse to Jewish modi, which partly resemble church tonalities. Also striking is the fondness for dark, subdued colour, yet this is no expression of grief. The main motif of Conte Hebraique is certainly taken from a folksong.

Jascha Nemtsov, Piano

Category:

Music

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• Lazare
• Saminsky
• Hebrew
• Fairy
• Tale
• weprik
• achron
• krein
• lourie

[Skarigon]

Quite a beautiful piece, by the way, do you have any idea what the opus of this piece is/ how to get a copy of the sheet music for it?

Thank you very much for uploading this piece!