Shabbat is almost here
And today we will listen to an enchanting piece of old klezmer, recorded in 1919, by Max Leibowitz and Jacob Silber.
Hello, how are you? I hope well. The last edition of MBS, about Samy Elmaghribi, has been quite successful, I must say. And after Shabbat, I received a very nice feedback, with some thrilling insights and a link to the recording of the Kol Nidrey, by Elmaghribi. I hadn’t been able to find it but Yaniv Masel, who speaks Hebrew, was so kind to send it to me. If you want to listen to it, it is here.
And who is Yaniv Masel? He is a musician himself, he plays oud and he has been with us, on the edition dedicated to his band Radio Baghdad Trio and to the brothers Saleh and Daoud Al-Kuwaity. It is here. I am really thankful to Yaniv for this! 🙏
And today, we will dedicate the MBS to some old klezmer. Very old. I’m sure you won’t be surprised 😉.
Then, please, spread the word.And note that these weekly emails are also posted in the website www.musicbeforeshabbat.com
 |
Share this with a friend, right from here |
About Max Leibowitz
I don’t usually use wikipedia as a source for biographies, but in this case it is a serious and documented biography, done by Dan Carkner, who I just friended on Facebook and with whom I share a lot of friends on Facebook, related to Jewish music, and it’s the best biography I’ve found. You can read the full biography here. I will make a summary:
- Max Leibowitz was a violinist. He was born c.1884 in Iași, Romania.
- He emigrated to the USA in 1905, with his wife.
- In the 1910 census he did list his occupation as musician.
- In June 1916 he was first recruited to record a test pressing for the Victor Recording Company. He then followed it with a disc released on Columbia Records. About this recording, Dan Carkner explains that the cymbalom player is named “Silver”, and he is thought to be Jacob Silber.
- Leibowitz composed several Yiddish songs.
- He died in the Bronx in 1942.
🧐 Do you remember which other artist, who has already been featured in Music Before Shabbat, was also born in Iași? Dov Seltzer, about whom we learn in the edition dedicated to “Yossel Der Klezmer” sung by Theodore Bikel. Find it here.
👇 This is the Great Synagogue of Iași, by Gelu Viscu in Google Maps. It is still used for the religious services.
“The ancient capital of Moldavia, Iasi (also known as Jassy, in English) had a Jewish community already in the 16th century. For most of the 19th and the 20th century, the Jewish community of Iasi was the second largest in Romania; moreover, the percentage of the Jewish population of Iasi was the highest of any major city in Romania. At its peak around 1900, roughly half of the city’s population was Jewish. At the time there were over one hundred synagogues and prayer houses in Iasi. The Great Synagogue of Iasi is the oldest surviving Jewish prayer house in Romania. It was founded in 1670.”
About Jacob Silber
There is very little information about the cymbalonist in this recording. But Jeffrey Wollock has a very interesting work where he explains more about the identification of Jacob Silber in different recordings, as a percussionist and as a cymbalonist. It is Historic Records as Historical Records: Hersh Gross and His Boiberiker Kapelye (1927-1932) and it is available here.
Wollock explains that Jacob Silber was a percusionist. He was born in 1882 in Lemberg, that was Austria at that time and now it is Lviv, Ukraine. He emigrated to New York in 1903. He was also a cymbalonist and, later, xylophonist. He died in 1952.
The Golden Rose synagogue in Lviv was built in 1582 and it was demolished by explosives by the Nazis in 1943. In the picture 👇, you can see the remains. If you want to learn more, check this website of LvivCenter. The picture is from Google Maps, by the user Павел Гусев.
About the piece
This picture is from the website of the Recorded Sound Archive from the Florida Atlantic University 👉
The website of Paul Gifford’s Collection of Old-Time Fiddling, Dulcimer Playing, and Songs from Michigan and the Great Takes Region has a very interesting information about the piece we will listen to today:
“Max Leibowitz, violin, accompanied by Jacob Silber, tsimbl, recorded at New York, New York, about September 1919. Emerson 1343X, matrix 4473-2. He plays a medley of two tunes, the first of which is a common Romanian Gypsy song, Ce mai foc şi ce mai jale; in Jewish tradition, it is a volakhl. Leibowitz was a professional musician in Newark. Silber (1882-1952), a native of Lemberg, in Galicia (now Lviv, Ukraine), immigrated to America in 1903 and mainly worked as a drummer in Jewish wedding bands (thanks to Pete Rushefsky and Jeffrey Wollock for this information).”
I join Paul in thanking Mr. Rushefsky and Mr. Wollock for the information. The piece that is on that website is the second half of the recording that you will find here below. Be sure to visit the website, especially if you are interested in learning more about the very interesting history of the arrival of the dulcimer family of instruments in the USA.
It’s time to enjoy the music:
Click the picture to listen to Orientalish Melodien by Max Leibowitz and Jacob Silber: