Michele Bolaffi, Jewish liturgical songs for solo, choir and instruments; 1826, Synagogue of Leghorn.
Among the treasures of the Birnbaum
Collection, conserved at the Hebrew Union College Library in Cincinnati, Ohio,
U.S.A., there is a priceless manuscript, duly classified and minutely described
by Israel Adler in the R.I.S.M. book devoted to the manuscripts of written Jewish
music, featuring fourteen compositions for one or two solo voices, choir and
bass throughout (the first, however, with full orchestra) titled: "Versetti
posti in musica dal Professore Michele Bolaffi, dedicati al Signor A. Crocolo,
1826".
This collection
is actually a highly interesting unicum, since the songs it features are intended
for the regular liturgy of the Shabbat, that according to the Hebrew
rule at the time of the diaspora forbids the use of instruments, as well as
of polyphony, during the span of time between Friday evening and Saturday, before
the return of the Messiah and the consequent reconstruction of the Temple of
Jerusalem. Two of these "Versetti" certainly original compositions
by Michele Bolaffi, considering their style, clearly characteristic of his time
are still sung today in a number of Sephardic-rite Italian synagogues, although
reduced to a simple monophonic melody, and without the slightest trace of their
author's name. So this should allow us to imagine a short period of time in
which, around the first quarter of the nineteenth century and undoubtedly inspired
by the great cultural and social innovations of the period, in a synagogue of
Leghorn it was felt to be time to refresh the solemnity of the rite by the joyfulness
of instruments as in Biblical days, perhaps interpreting metaphorically the
notion of "Messianic era", when the Sabbath, meant not just as a time of repose
but especially as an interruption in linear time, could be conceived as a "place"
in which the Messiah was already present, or perhaps simply longing for a swift
coming of the Messiah, seen as a time of universal peace and understanding of
the brotherhood of men, beyond separations and differences.
It is a sad fact that Jewish history has been an uninterrupted series of persecutions
and sorrows, and maybe the oblivion in which this group of musical compositions
and their author had fallen conceals a secret tale of denied hopes and disappointments.
Nonetheless, the conservation of these melodies seems to signify the survival
of the idea of continuing a wonderful dream, never abandoned, eternally present,
written in the universal language of music: the dream of a world where differences
can live under the same sky, in perfect harmony.
Synagogal music in Italy and the work of Michele Bolaffi.
Sh'lomo me Adumim, in other
words the Jewish famous violinist and composer Salomone de' Rossi, appears
to have been the first musician to introduce polyphony, and maybe even the use
of instruments, in the Jewish liturgy, thus largely contributing to the renewal
that occurred in the early seventeenth century in the communities of Venice,
Mantua, Ferrara, Padua and Casale Monferrato. The Ferrara synagogue, in 1605,
was the first to follow the innovations suggested by Salomone and backed in
Venice by Rabbi Leone da Modena, who was determined to modernize the ritual,
up to then traditionally bound to the idea that "joyfulness and songs were
forbidden in the Synagogue since the destruction of the Temple" (Teudath
Sh'lomo, Sh'lomo Lifschitz, Offenbach, 1718, about the responsa in
the Venetian controversy, published several times by Leone da Modena and then
again discussed a century later in Germany, when the use of instruments before
sundown on Friday night was introduced). The one remaining example is precisely
the one published in Venice in October 1622: Ha shirim Asher LiSh'lomo:
the "Songs of Solomon", by Salomone de' Rossi, printed in mobile characters
with the Hebrew text from right to left and the music from left to right, in
separate parts. Yet in these compositions there was no sign of traditional Jewish
melodic or harmonic features, precisely because they were in fact intended as
a "modernization".
The essay was short-lived: already by 1715 in the synagogue of Ferrara the music
of a benediction was altered, and the one who was responsible for it, Nehemia
Cohen, excommunicated. So those fourteen Versetti by Bolaffi are precisely
the only other indication of renewal of synagogal liturgical music in Italy;
however in these, unlike Salomone de' Rossi's endeavours two centuries earlier,
the melodies were inspired by traditional Jewish manners, with the clear intention
of displaying their features, while also updating their form in the style of
his time: that of a musical Italy that listened to Rossini and Paganini, but
was beginning to examine with curiosity and respect the works of Beethoven and
the great German classics.
As regards the Jewish/Leghorn musical tradition, from which the author of this
precious manuscript drew his inspiration and to which he offered his compositions,
it is worthwhile mentioning the figure of Federico Consolo, a Jewish violinist
born in Ancona in 1841 and who died in Bolaffi's Florence in 1906, the author
of the Libro dei Canti d'Israele, Antichi Canti Litugici del Rito degli Ebrei
Spagnoli: Consolo had actually devoted himself to the study of the synagogal
songs of the Jews of Leghorn, one of the leading Hebrew communities in Italy,
formed after the Jews had been cast out of Spain in 1492.
Yet actually, as evidenced by Abraham Zvi Idelson (Jewish Music in Its Historical
Development, New York, 1929), the musics recorded therein are exclusively
homophonic and exclusively vocal, usually in an antiphonal form with soloists
and choir, and not just of Sephardic origin, but largely derived from the tradition
of northern Italy, featuring, in fact, Levantine as well as Ashkenazic influences,
or simply deriving from seventeenth and eighteenth-century Italian songs. So
Bolaffi may well have wanted to blend the most cultured Italian and Jewish musical
traditions, following the example of the experience of Central European synagogues,
that unlike the Italian ones had adopted the novelty of polyphonic song with
instrumental accompaniment, elaborating that great tradition of which the kletzmer
is the legitimate descendant, since worldliness and the divine service, in the
Jewish life culture, are interwoven and blended without ever being separated.
Michele Bolaffi, some biographical data.
We know next to nothing about Michele
Bolaffi (1769-...): among the rare, terse data on his life, we have that in
the Dizionario Universale dei Musicisti by Carlo Schmidl, published in
Milan in 1938 by the publisher Sonzogno, where we can read, in the appendix
to the first and second volume: "He was born in Leghorn (not in Florence).
In 1822 he went to Venice as tutor in the household of the lawyer Aless. Vivanti;
he was chapel master at the Court of Louis XVIII (1816-1818), then at that of
Tuscany at Leghorn (1835). Composed also 6 Salmi Penitenziali for two voices
with throughout bass."
Furthermore, at the website Marco Bazzotti has devoted to the so-called minor
nineteenth-century guitarists, he is presented as a "composer of the
first half of the nineteenth century", the author of a Romanza for
voice, piano and guitar published in Florence at Lorenzi's in 1860. A more in-depth
research performed at the national data base of the Biblioteche dei Poli
SBN adds to that Six nouveaux nocturnes italiens à deux voix avec accomp.t
de piano ou harpe : oeuvre 2.me, published in Paris at Carli's, in c. 1815;
Il Mese armonico for song, guitar and piano, Lorenzi 18.., and perhaps
the same above-mentioned Romance: La Pace, cantata a voce sola opera 4. Poesia
e musica di Michele Bolaffi fiorentino..., not datable and with no indication
of publication, and last Il Pastore e la pastorella delle alpi: Farsa Per
Musica su libretto di G.D. Campagna, printed in Venice by Rizzi.
To complete this brief catalogue, a Letter from Michele Bolaffi on the
work of Maria di Rudenz (Leghorn, Tipografia Meucci, 1838), as well as
the mysterious Teodia, o sia, Inno filosofico a Dio: odi semilibere, traduzione
da antico testo orientale, Leghorn, Angeloni, 1836, the latter conserved
at the Biblioteca Comunale Labronica of Leghorn. That is all that appears
to remain of an author inexorably missing in the encyclopedias, biographical
dictionaries and even in the major writings devoted to Hebrew music. Last of
all, thanks to David and Itzach Crocolo's gift of the manuscript to the synagogue
of Leghorn in memory of their father, a singer and friend of Michele Bolaffi,
we now can discover the original version and the name of the author of some
of the most beloved liturgical songs, passed down orally and conserved in the
Sephardic-rite Italian synagogal tradition.
The "Versetti posti
in musica..." by Michele Bolaffi were entirely executed in chamber music
form and as a world Première in the synagogue of Ancona, Friday, 10 July 2000,
at 4 P.M., before the beginning of the Shabbath, with the baryton Alberto Jona,
Andrea Coen at the organ and Claudio Ronco at the cello, on the occasion of
the fifth edition of the Festival di musica Kletzmer.
Andrea Coen |
Alberto
Jona
|
Claudio
Ronco
|
for info click the image