Legendary Voices: The Education of the Great Cantors 11/8/23, 5:18 PM

Legendary Voices: The Education of the

Great Cantors
Cantor Samuel Vigoda Opens a Window Onto a Nearly Lost
Era

by Jeremiah Lockwood

I RECALL SITTING AROUND THE TABLE with my grandfather, singing

together either one-on-one or with my cousins. He was a great cantor of the old
school, and singing was the central family activity. At times, my grandfather would
sing a phrase and ask me to come up with a response; I remember the thrill and
anxiety of being put on the spot in this context. If I sang a line that made sense to
him, he would praise me, and if I moved off mode or didn’t sound good to his ears
for whatever reason, he would correct me. Alternating high praise and harsh
criticism were a standard part of the learning experience with him. It was a
nervewracking yet incredible way to learn, and central to the creation in me of a
love and understanding of cantorial music.

Last Spring I participated in a seminar on archival research being given by the

Center for Jewish History in Manhattan. Built into the seminar were periods of
time in which participants could conduct their own research. The archive in that
building is shared by five organizations with wonderful collections of Jewish
historic materials. It includes the priceless YIVO archive of Yiddish materials
gathered in Eastern Europe before the Second World War. The reading room at
CJH is an amazing place in which to get lost in dreams from out of the past.

While working in the archive, I discovered a wonderful book called Legendary

Voices, written by Cantor Samuel Vigoda. Cantor Vigoda (1893-1990) published his
memoirs in 1981as an old man looking back on a forgotten past. Through his

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storytelling, I was granted a charming and intoxicating view of the world that
created the modern legacy of chazzanus, the cantorial traditions of Eastern Europe
that were carried to America. Most intriguing to me were Vigoda’s stories about the
relationships between masters and disciples and the culture of apprenticeship that
was central to the creation of modern chazzanus.

VIGODA WAS ONE OF THE MASTERS of the “Golden Age” of early 20th-century
cantorial music in America. Along with Yossele Rosenblatt and Moshe Kousevitsy,
he was one of the cantors chosen for RCA Victor’s iconic cantorial music triple-LP,
The Art of the Cantor. Vigoda’s memoirs consist mostly of stories about the great
generation of cantors in Eastern Europe in the early to mid-19th century. He recalls
the fame and glory or musical work that by and large was not documented by the
revolutionary new technology of sound recording.

Reading Vigoda’s book felt a bit like running into an old relative who I hadn’t seen
in many years. Legendary Voices has a breezy, at times absurd tone, run through with
bilingual puns in outrageous poor taste, juxtaposed with quotes ranging from
Voltaire to the Talmud.

The book is framed as an encounter with an old chorister named Yossel Bass at a
cantors’ convention in a resort in New Jersey. As his name would imply, Yossel was
a bass singer and an old hand at leading choirs. He had sung with all the greats of
cantorial music, and was already an old man in the 1940s when his encounter with
Vigoda is depicted. Bass was a repository of tales and of wisdom from another era
and had enough stories to keep a room full of cantors hypnotized for hours on end.
In the reverie of the aftermath of a heavy meal, he presided over an epic gossip
session about the old generation of European cantors — a generation that had
been dead for decades.

Early in the book, Vigoda states that although it is believed that cantorial music is
an ancient art form, as far as can be verified through documentation, the style of

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chazzanus that is familiar to us from early 20th-century recordings had its origins
only in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. In this period, Eastern European Jews,
responding to the Reform synagogue music coming out of Germany, developed the
cantorial recitative, a style of composition that builds coherent musical pieces out
of a pastiche of modal material taken from the old synagogue modes, or nusakh. In
contrast to the high Reform synagogue music, which leaned stylistically towards
European classical music for its source of ideas, the Eastern European cantors
sought to preserve the historic Jewish music traditions in a new and highly
virtuosic artistic presentation. They called their cantorial music chazzonus gefil,
feeling-full prayer leading, or sogakhts, improvisation. The latter term points to the
importance of spontaneous creativity and receptivity to inspiration while singing
the prayers. Yossel Bass recalled the titans of this creative outpouring, cantors
whose voices were still remembered and whose compositions were still sung
generations after their deaths.

BASS BEGINS HIS RECITATION with the story of the rivalry between Yeruchom
HaKatan (Yeruchom the small) and Nissi Belzer (Nissi from Belz), the two greatest
cantors out of Berdichev, Ukraine in the early 19th century. Yeruchom, the elder of
the two, was originally Nissi’s teacher, with the younger cantor serving as a
meshorer, choir member.

The great cantors present a very different image than their contemporaries, the
saint-like khasidic rabbis who sit firmly ensconced in hagiography and legend.
Unlike these rabbinic figures of mythic piety, the great cantors are inseparable from
their human weaknesses. Yeruchom and Nissi are presented as having been
incredible artists while at the same time being defined by their absurd mischief,
petty jealousies and various other misfortunes of the artistic ego. Vigoda’s own
attempt at constructing a hagiography of the great cantors is frustrated by the
tension between the holiness of prayer that they embodied and the limitations and
frailties inherent in their creative process. The identity of the cantor as a holy man,
a spokesman for the community, is often in disharmony with the frustrations to

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which the cantor is susceptible. The liminal quality of the occupation of cantor,
which sits in a grey area between the holy, Torah-upholding Jew and the less
respectable role of a semi-obscure artist, often led to the suspicion that cantors
were not pious and God-fearing Jews.

Yeruchom HaKatan, the most celebrated cantor in Berdichev, was famous for his
incredible tenor voice. He could bring an entire congregation to tears of penitence
and prayer. The young Nissi Belzer, while a gifted musician, was not a naturally
talented singer and could not possibly live up to the vocal standard set by his
teacher. After searching in vain for a career path, Nissi decided to try his hand at
composing cantorial music (not exactly a well-worn path to fame and riches). He
wrote an elaborate choral arrangement of a prayer for the High Holy Days and
presented it to Yeruchom — who took a look and decided it was so worthless that
he tore it to shreds. Mortified and gravely insulted, Nissi decided then and there
that he would become the greatest chazzan in Berdichev, if only to spite his old
teacher.

But how could he possibly hope to achieve greatness as a cantor and become a rival
to the great Yeruchom without a naturally beautiful voice? His solution was to
create a new manner of presentation of chazzonus that heavily featured the choir.
He set about cultivating the young talented singers in the community into a
professional choir. To supplement his meager income as cantor at Berdichev’s New
Synagogue, he took his choir on frequent tours of Jewish towns in the Pale of
Settlement. While on tour he was always on the lookout for new talent for his
choir. Talented boys as young as 6 would be drafted into Nissi’s choir. Nissi would
pay their parents exorbitant fees for four-year contracts to induce them to entrust
him with their talented children. The meshorerim would live in his household and
begin their education, singing with the older boys of the choir under Nissi’s
conducting and instruction.

In the words of Vigoda, Nissi was responsible for the creation of “primitive,

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homegrown conservatories, in which countless disciples received their

indoctrination, [so] that there was developed a definite renaissance.” It is hard to
tell from Vigoda’s tone whether this assertion is made in all seriousness or if he is
indulging in verbal hijinks (akin to his puns and his out-of-context quotations from
Plutarch). Does the fact that Vigoda’s history is being recounted in the lobby of a
Jersey hotel decrease the veracity of his claims about cantorial history? Or is
Vigoda in earnest when he states that the first cantorial academy was attended by
pre-adolescent yeshiva bokhers in a small Ukrainian city amid an atmosphere of
anarchic pranks, artistic jealousy, and, most importantly, a familial atmosphere of
conviviality and shared talents?

It is telling that Nissi’s concept for creating a viable style that could compete with
that of his teacher involved him in recreating the family dynamic in which he had
acquired his own knowledge of cantorial music. After having been rejected
decidedly by his own artistic “father,” Nissi ended up “birthing” many sons who
would champion the musical tradition of chazzanus. His program for cantorial
education seems to have been modeled after father-to-son tradesman skills
transmission. The paternalistic relationship of master and protégé held firm even
when the young meshorer was not the biological offspring of a cantorial family. In
“Nissi’s kheyder” (Nissi’s elementary school), as Vigoda dubbed it, the young choir
members were more than likely not the sons of cantors themselves. In order to
attain the practical knowledge and spirit of the music tradition, they needed to
become live-in disciples. The practice of communal living apprenticeship spawned
a generation of great cantors, including some, like Mordechai Herschmann, who is
well know to us today through his recordings and compositions.

BOTH YERUCHOM HAKATAN AND NISSI BELZER GOT THEIR START in the
choir of an even older Cantor, Betzalel Shulzinger, also know as Tzalel Odessaer
(Tzalel from Odessa). The familial music-making ethos was central to the act of
cantorial education in Tzalel’s choir: He would compose new cantorial recitatives
while sitting around the table with his meshorerim. He would sing a phrase, and

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then the choirboys would devise a chordal accompaniment or a melodic response.

Tzalel would continue with his composition, inspired by the input from his choir
members. The confluence of collaboration and pedagogy that this kind of group
music-making experience allowed must have powerfully shaped the skills and the
artistic imagination of the young cantorial novices.

This “table music” culture of cantorial music was very much alive in my family
when I was growing up. Reading about the choir-cantor interactions in the old
world suddenly threw a light on my childhood memories of singing with my
grandfather around the dining room table. This kind of apprenticeship model,
whether in the family or in a professional environment, represents an essential
means of replicating both the skills and the psychological understanding needed
for the preservation of traditional art forms. The atmosphere of pedagogy and
emotional need for approval creates a heavily structured and controlled
atmosphere. At the same time the structure of the language of the art form and the
conviviality of the familial setting made me feel free to create and to play within the
confines of the idiom. The intergenerational dynamic of this “education” planted
an essential seed that has blossomed in me ever since.

Jeremiah Lockwood’s newest album, Songs of Zebulon, from Blue Thread Music
and Books, is a creative reworking (with Frank London) of the cantorial music of
Zebulon Kwartin. Lockwood is the leader of The Sway Machinery, a blues/world
beat/cantorial music ensemble. His own storied musical education included
singing in the choir of his grandfather, Cantor Jacob Konigsberg, and over a decade
of playing in the subways of New York City with Piedmont Blues legend Carolina
Slim. You can see Lockwood playing blues guitar and more all over the Internet.

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