Volume 16, Number 2 - Cantors Assembly

However, my initial assumption that it would be possible to identify
the origin of the melody, and to assign it to one of the types of the
contemporary repertory, proved over-optimistic. Specialists in the field
have so far been unable to locate formal contemporary models with
which our melody can be associated.29 While awaiting further research
we must content ourselves with a presentation of the principal features
that emerge from an analysis of the melodic structure of our tune,
It seems then that we may most reasonably discard a contrafactum
hypothesis, and posit that the melody was composed especially for the
text of zfiv mis’-SellG by an anonymous Jewish composer, perhaps in the
second half of the fifteenth century, or at the latest, at the beginning of the
sixteenth. The notion that a preexisting melody from the popular
repertoire of the period was fitted to the words of the piyyut may be
rejected on the grounds of our inability to identify an existing model in
contemporary chant, as well as on the basis of several conclusions
suggested by analysis of the tune, such as the extended ambitus of an
octave and fourth, which is rare in the popular monodic repertory of the
Geistliche Lieder and similar chants of the period; a significant
interrelationship between the text and the tune; and the use of variation
technique in the melody of the different strophes, especially in IV, as we
shall see below.
We have already pointed out (section 11,l) the similarity between the
poetic and musical structures which may be observed in the parallels
between the cadential formula of the refrain and that of the ends of the
strophes. This, and other aspects of the melodic analysis, may be made
clear with the help of a paradigmatic transcription of the melody of the
five strophes (see Transcription II).
29. My heartfelt thanks are due to Prof. Ludwig Finscher of Heidelberg and Dr.
Karl-Gunther Hartmann of Kassel to whom I appealed in this matter. The beginning of
the melody seems to Finscher “like a French chanson melody from the Janequin
generation or slightly later; such melodies were frequently borrowed for Protestant
church songs. The continuation, however, looks strange, and I cannot fit it inro any
repertoire known to me” (letter dated 17.12.1984). On Finscher's advice I applied to
Dr. Hartmann, from whose reply, dated 29.1.85, I quote the following extracts: “...Die
Form des Stuckes gibt Ratsel auf... Aus der Zeit un 1520 ist mir nichts vergleichbares
bekannt... I hre Melodie fangt an wieein Tanzlied. besonders die Kadenz von A lstrophe I.
See Transcription Ill weckt diese Assoziation... lesl erhartet sich mir der Verdacht, dass
auch die Form des Ganzen aus der gleichen Spare stammen konnte... Einige Merkmale...
lassen an Spatformen der Estampie denken... lch werde das Stucke weiter im Auge
behalten und bitte um Kachsicht fur meine noch sehr vagen Vermutungen.”
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