![]() ![]() Zelermyer is part of a generation of incredibly gifted young cantors whose vocal production and mastery of the incredibly complex techniques required to sing classical khazones, I would argue is impressively, amazingly close to those of any of the great masters of the Golden Age of Cantorial Music, such as Moshe Koussevitzky (1899–1965), with whom Hershtik sang as a young man, the fabled Yossele Rosenblatt (1882–1933), and (for my money, the greatest of them all) Zavel Kwartin (1874–1952). Let’s return to Zelermyer and his choir leader Azoulay, here accompanied not by Leonard Cohen and the Shaar Hashomayim choir but the McGill Chamber Orchestra, performing the two powerful paragraphs linking Unetaneh Tokef to the Kedusha (“man is dust and to dust he shall return,” the classical paytanim could go dark but beautiful too). And, forgive my snobbishness, but this piece-like the entire rich oeuvre of khazones-is surely more musically interesting, demanding, and moving than “Hava Nagila.” The old and tired dichotomy between the “ galuti” (diasporic) minor-key prayers from shuls in Poland, Lithuania, and Hungary and the proud major-key ballads about soldiers and young girls in the Yishuv, or dance music for the hora, was shown up for what it was: silly ideology. This began to change when the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra accompanied Hershtik and a group of young, mostly Israeli-born hazzanim in this shofar-centered prayer whose words are all about shivat tziyon, the return to Zion. Like Yiddish language and culture, cantorial music had grated on the ears of the vast majority of Israelis both religious and secular since the heady days of the Second Aliyah. This concert was a landmark event, a cultural coup staged in the very heart of secular Israel’s inner sanctum, its “Palace of Culture,” the Heichal Hatarbut in Tel Aviv. Here then is Hazzan Hershtik’s rendition of the great Yossele Rosenblatt’s “Teka be-Shofar.” ![]() But Cohen has given us a second gift this fall: He has reminded us that khazones, the classical Ashkenazi cantorial art, is undergoing an exciting revival with young cantors such as Shaar Hashomayim’s Zelermyer leading the way.īefore I introduce Zelermyer’s five stellar young colleagues (none of them over 40), it is only fair to begin with the progenitor of this renaissance and Zelermyer’s mentor, Hazzan Naftali Hershtik, who trained a full two generations of cantors at the Tel Aviv Cantorial Institute. It deserves-and no doubt will receive-its own exegesis. The song is a uniquely Cohenesque form of Midrash and Psalm, a troubling twist on the Akedah, which, as Cohen knows, will be read next week, on the second day of Rosh Hashanah. ![]() The song features the aged Cohen, who in so many earlier works was the wicked son, the naughty boy, and the dirty young and, later, old man, in a dialectical duel with God, in which it is the Holy One, not he, who represents the dark side, one that culminates with Cohen’s submission-and ending with a chant of “ Hineni,” Abraham’s “Here I am.” In You Want It Darker, Cohen returns to the Yiddishkeit of his youth, indeed to the shul of his early years, Montreal’s Shaar Hashomayim, where his spoken word lyrics are accompanied by its vocally brilliant cantor, Gideon Zelermyer, and his all-male choir (led by the gifted Roï Azoulay). As he sings in his now-classic “Hallelujah” (1984): “Even though it all went wrong/I’ll stand before the Lord of song/with nothing on my tongue but hallelujah.” What he asks for, repeatedly, is to be accepted into the framework as himself, with all his imperfections. He is a sinner, not a heretic (which is not to say that he is a conventional believer). His reputation for darkness and a voluptuary life notwithstanding, Cohen has always lived in a theistic, deeply Jewish universe. It is a breathtaking reminder of his spiritual depth and artistic power. ![]() Just 10 days before Rosh Hashanah, on his 82 nd birthday, Leonard Cohen released the title track from his latest and, sadly, his very possibly last album, You Want It Darker. ![]()
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