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ethnological and psychological terms, might be called “theother.” That interest had been triggered in his imaginationduring his earlier military tour of duty in the region, whenhe first encountered those musical phenomena that wouldhave been largely foreign even to regular synagogueworshippers in such cosmopolitan settings as St. Petersburgor Odessa. But now his more formal academic engagementwith the subject crystallized the germ cell of his subsequentand persistent—albeit historically naïve and romanticallyreductionist—belief that all such “old synagogue song” andsupposedly fossilized cantillations (viz., from a variety ofgeographical traditions) constituted the purest continuumof Jewish musical authenticity.In 1915 the Society’s accumulated publication of variousitems drawn from eastern European Yiddish as well asHassidic folk material—which Saminsky deemed generically“inferior” to older, exclusively sacred song and, in manycases, qualitatively banal and inauthentic—ignited his nowlegendary polemic in the press with Joel Engel about whatconstitutes historical authenticity in Jewish music. As oneof the Society’s leaders and chief protagonists, Engel notonly endorsed those publications, but relied heavily on suchsecular folk substance in his own instrumental as well asvocal compositions and arrangements.As wellsprings of raw source material for cultivation inart music, however, the two musical realms that Saminskyand Engel addressed—like any separate, distinct, or evenunconnected genres—need not be mutually exclusiveeven within a single work. Oddly enough, Saminsky andEngel, both accomplished composers who could certainlyimagine the creative potential in such dualities and evenin adversarial aesthetics, wrestled in their polemic witheach other over issues that pertain more to abstract thanto applied theory.* * *For a time in 1917–18 Saminsky served as director of theState Conservatory in Tbilisi (Tiflis). But in the wake ofthe October Bolshevik Revolution, he soon determined toabandon Russia, with America his ultimate destination.He went first to Constantinople in 1919, where he wasbefriended by a number of influential members of thelocal B’nai Brith lodge, some of whom were also prominentZionists who assisted him in acquiring a permit to enter Syriaand Palestine under a pretext of “repatriation.” Many yearslater he described with unfaded enthusiasm his impressionsof the land, the optimism and determination of the settlersand pioneers, the historic sites that kindled in him a newlevel of kinship with his people and its ancient history, thegeneral euphoria that pervaded the Zionist enterprise inPalestine, and his elation upon seeing Jerusalem for thefirst time. “Standing at the gate of Jerusalem,” he recalledin his unpublished memoirs, “I, too, was overcome by thatdarkened ecstasy of the wayfarer who has reached thethreshold of his beloved old home at last.” But despitehis exhilarating experiences there, he was not inspiredto remain permanently in Palestine. After a few months,during which time he delivered a concert-lecture (read inHebrew from a translation prepared for him) in Jerusalemand then Tel Aviv, he was able to obtain a visa for France.After about five months in Paris he spent a little over a yearin London, where he lectured on Russian, Oriental, andJewish music (in Oxford and Liverpool as well), conducted aballet season at the Duke of York Theatre, and attemptedto organize a chapter of the Gesellschaft. At the end of1920 Saminsky immigrated to the United States. During hisfirst few years in New York he became active both in newmusic circles and among the small but dedicated coterieof Jewish intellectuals, composers, and other musiciansinterested in promoting new Judaic works as well asengaging in historical and analytical deliberations aboutJewish music. Within a short time he became recognizedas an important personality on both scenes, and in 1923he cofounded the League of Composers. And with theexception of the American tour of the Zimro Ensemble in8.559439 28
1919–20 (from Russia en route to Palestine, although thegroup did not proceed past New York), he was probably thefirst to introduce New York audiences to the music of theGesellschaft composers.It was his thirty-four-year tenure as music director ofNew York’s Temple Emanu-El, beginning in 1924, thatprovided Saminsky with his most potent platform andhis most productive base. Emanu-El was one of the firstcongregations in America established initially as “Reform,”well before the official formulation and founding of anactual Reform movement in the United States. By the20th century, by virtue of a variety of factors—includingthe historically elite social and economic status of its layleadership and much of its membership, and the cathedrallikeaura of its present sanctuary (built 1926–30)—TempleEmanu-El acquired a popular perception in many quartersas the “flagship” congregation of the American Reformmovement, at least in the eastern half of the country. UnderSaminsky’s musical stewardship it became one of the firstAmerican synagogues to embrace goals of Western musicalsophistication in tandem with a respectable measure ofmodernized and stylized Judaic aesthetics.Saminsky had no tolerance for the strange, artificial musicscene he encountered at Emanu-El, which for the most parthad characterized the music of American Reform worshipfrom the mid-19th century up to that time. Virtuallydetached from any manifestations of Jewish musicaltradition—western as well as eastern European, Sephardi,or Near Eastern—and isolated even from contemporaneousmodernization and historically based musical reformsin Germany, the collective American Reform repertoirereflected a misguided effort to forge a new, patently“American” brand of “temple” music that was to be morecompatible with New World sensibilities and free of allconnection to European Jewry—including its liberal wings.But Saminsky was just as repelled by the inroads of Yiddishfolk, cheap theatrical, and other entertainment-orientedpopular song, as well as pseudo-Hassidic flavors, intoorthodox services in America, a practice that had begunin Europe. It was that state of affairs that gave him theimpetus to begin composing for the liturgy, initially forhis own choir and then—as his example soon made wavesacross the country even as it met with its share of resistanceto change—for publication and ultimately to the benefitof American Reform congregations nationally. In hisprogramming and selection of repertoire and in his ownmusic Saminsky thus brought his commitment to exaltedaesthetic standards and artistic taste to bear upon themusical character of the classical American Reform service,exposing it to long-embedded values in serious Jewishliturgical art.As Temple Emanu-El’s music director, Saminsky ushered inan era of impressive musical accomplishments, liturgicalcreativity, and higher standards—both for that synagogueand for American nonorthodox synagogue music ingeneral. He used his position to great effect to alter andelevate the course of music in American Reform worship,to enrich the Jewish musical life of New York apart fromsynagogue services, and to encourage young Americancomposers such as David Diamond and Frederick Jacobito contribute their gifts to music for the Hebrew liturgy.Beginning in the first decade of Saminsky’s direction,Emanu-El sponsored performances of new Judaic works bycomposers such as Joseph Achron, whom he commissionedto write a full Sabbath eve service in 1932 (probably the firstsuch commission to a classical composer in America), andErnest Bloch, as well as biblical cantatas by Mussorgsky andHonegger, among others. In 1929 he and the synagogue’sChoir Committee established a program whose purpose was“purification and performance of new choral synagogueservices by representative composers of the United States—and then possibly also eminent Hebrew [Jewish] composerson the European continent,” in order to bring forth a“revival of Hebrew synagogue music in America”—bywhich was meant, in the main, new compositions.Later, Saminsky established and coordinated citywideJewish music festivals. The annual Three Choir Festival,29 8.559439
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Page 6 and 7: DARIUS MILHAUD (1892-1974),one of t
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