CD
THE ECHO OF THE TEMPLE

Adam Porębski

Shire Bet Haknesset – Synagogue Songs Based on Melodies by Abraham Lichtenstein (2021)

Aleksandra Chmielewska

Late Night Prayer (2023)

Anna Maria Huszcza

Hissorari (2023)

Dariusz Przybylski

Kaddish – passacaglia (2020)

Marcin Tadeusz Łukaszewski

The Ark (2023)

Ignacy Zalewski

Who were you, Mr. Grosfeld? – postlude (2022)

One of the most fascinating aspects of a musician’s work is discovering the context in which music is created.

 

I first became aware of this while writing my bachelor’s thesis on the influence of the French Revolution on organ music. It was then that I saw how historical processes transform art. The second time came when, in my master’s thesis, I analyzed the expectations of audiences attending organ concerts. This developed into a long-standing interest in the behavior of music audiences, ultimately culminating in a doctorate in economics.

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I remember very clearly when it happened for the third time. Shortly after completing my studies, a friend who sang in a Jewish music vocal trio asked me to accompany them on three pieces on the organ during a concert at St. Anne’s Church on Krakowskie Przedmieście in Warsaw. While performing the final piece, Song of Galilee by Julius Chajes, I realized that the combination of their voices and repertoire with the organ sounded particularly compelling. This was how my interest in Jewish music began.

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At that time, my knowledge of this culture was very limited. No one had addressed the subject at school, at home, or even in the public sphere. After creating a concert program, we agreed that it would be worthwhile to send it to places in Poland that bore some trace of Jewish presence—perhaps synagogues once stood there, or buildings or cemeteries still remained. One evening I began searching online. I stopped only after several hours. It turned out that Jewish traces were everywhere.

From a fascination with musical scores, I moved on to learning about instruments and musicians. While reading the works of Professor Marian Fuks, I came across references to organs in synagogues. These were not so much descriptions as elements of narratives filled with admiration for the music that accompanied the liturgy. A turning point for me was finding photographs on an internet forum of the organs from the now non-existent New Synagogue in my hometown of Szczecin. In the archive of their builder—the renowned German firm Walcker—I found more extensive data about them, as well as photographs and descriptions of other organs built in synagogues a hundred years ago. The pieces of the puzzle began to fit together. At the same time, I began working at the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, where for two years I was able to explore both the past and the present of many nations.

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In this way, I began my artistic activity in the field of Jewish organ music. At the same time—thanks to my employment at the Academy of Art in Szczecin—I started work on my doctorate in the arts. An in-depth exploration of the history of this music proved to be not only deeply valuable to me, but also extraordinarily inspiring.

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In common perception, the organ is regarded as an instrument belonging to Western culture and Christian civilization. Meanwhile, many performers and listeners of organ music are unaware that until the Middle Ages Catholic liturgy did not permit instrumental music—it belonged to the “pagan” and “Jewish” spheres [1]. Only from the mid-15th century did organs become widespread in churches. Jews themselves, however, began to perceive them as ḥukkat ha-goi (Hebrew: a non-Jewish custom), associated with Christian culture.

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In Jewish culture, organs have a history spanning many centuries. The Hebrew Bible mentions the ugav four times—in Genesis 4:21, twice in the Book of Job (21:12; 30:31), and in Psalm 150:4. Undoubtedly, the term denotes a musical instrument; however, due to the lack of unequivocal historical evidence, it has been interpreted in various ways, including as a flute, bagpipes, or a lute [2]. According to the Jerusalem Talmud (Sukkah 55c), it may even have referred to ancient hydraulic organs.

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Another possible ancient predecessor of the organ may be the instrument magrepha mentioned in the Mishnah (Hebrew: to scoop, gather, ladle). The Babylonian Talmud (Arakhin 10b–11a) describes it as a bellows-driven pipe organ with ten reed pipes of different sizes and keys mounted on the wind chest. This instrument was said to have been located in the Temple in Jerusalem. After its destruction by the Romans in 70 CE, instrumental music was banned in synagogue services as a sign of mourning for this event.

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Nevertheless, organs continued to be discussed in rabbinic thought and appeared in Jewish iconography and Judaic texts. From the 13th century onward, many biblical manuscripts included drawings depicting King David playing the organ, referring to him as an “organist” [3]. In the 15th century, organs became widespread in monastic and cathedral churches. However, it took several more centuries for Jewish musicians—overcoming prejudice and numerous religious and communal obstacles—to introduce organs permanently into synagogues.

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The most significant chapter in the history of organs in synagogues begins with the Haskalah, the “Jewish Enlightenment,” and the works of Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786), one of the most important Jewish philosophers and the grandfather of the composer Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. This movement, which emerged in Germany and initially aimed at renewing Judaism and restoring forgotten Jewish traditions, became the foundation of secular Jewish thought and Jewish assimilation. It later developed into an emancipation movement striving for legal and socio-cultural equality of Jews with other citizens [4].

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These changes also affected Jewish religious life. Reformers did not view their actions as a revolution. On the contrary, they believed that their efforts would bring to light the “true” Judaism, which would become a fully recognized religion and shed the stigma of a closed, mysterious sect. Reforms particularly affected the aesthetic aspects of synagogue liturgy: it was shortened (primarily through the removal of biblical cantillation) and permitted the use of the German language (sermons modeled on Christian preaching). The musical aspect of the liturgy also changed radically. In an effort to make it more accessible to congregants educated musically within Western culture, congregational chorale singing in German and Hebrew was introduced and—most importantly—organs began to be installed in synagogues.

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The first synagogue in which organs appeared was the prayer house attached to a school for children from poor Jewish families in Seesen (Westphalia). Its founder, Israel Jacobson, in accordance with Mendelssohn’s ideas, sought to raise the social standing of Jews through education. The consecration of this prayer house on 17 July 1810 is the first documented event during which an organ was heard in a synagogue located on German territory—“something previously unheard of” [5].

Another important event for Jewish organ culture was the Second Rabbinical Conference, held from 15 to 28 July 1845 in Frankfurt am Main. During the conference, a discussion took place on whether the presence of organs and organ music in synagogues was justified, and an attempt was made to determine whether organists should be exclusively Jewish [6]. The conclusions stated that organs should be prohibited—according to tradition, they were treated as a foreign element. However, they could be used to build and emphasize the devotional character of the liturgy. Particularly noteworthy was the recommendation that in organ music one should “avoid imitating what is barbaric, unless the barbaric element is an integral part of the given performance.” The participants also defined a new order of synagogue liturgy that took organ music into account. Only a quarter of a century later was a consensus reached that musicians of both Jewish and non-Jewish origin could play the organ during synagogue liturgy on Sabbaths and festivals.

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In subsequent years, organs were installed in many synagogues. The most significant of these was the instrument in the New Synagogue on Oranienburger Straße in Berlin, built after lengthy rabbinic and philosophical debates. The ideas of Reform Judaism radiated strongly from Germany to other European countries. New synagogues were also erected in Polish lands, where organ music became a defining feature—foremost among them the Great Synagogue on Tłomackie Street in Warsaw. These ideas also reached the United States of America, the Middle East, and the West Indies [7]. The continuous development of Jewish organ music in Germany was ultimately interrupted by Kristallnacht on 9 November 1938. In the rest of Europe, synagogues, musicians, their works, and their instruments were wiped from the surface of the earth with the liquidation of Jewish districts and ghettos and the brutal extermination of the Jewish population during the Holocaust.

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Between 2018 and 2023, I performed dozens of solo and vocal-instrumental concerts with various musicians and carried out many artistic projects. The most important of these was the initiation of the annual Jewish Music Days in Szczecin, during which we presented music that had not been performed in Poland since the war. We organized concerts during which organ music was heard in a synagogue in Warsaw for the first time in the postwar period. I performed concerts at the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw with particular emotion. In subsequent years, I focused on the works of selected cantors and composers: Louis Lewandowski (2019), Arno Nadel (2020), Abraham Lichtenstein (2021), Jakub Weiss (2022), and Gershon Efros (2023). I also collaborated with the Jewish Community of Berlin as an organist at the Pestalozzistraße Synagogue—the only synagogue in our part of Europe where cantors and a choir still sing with organ accompaniment every Sabbath and on festivals. The privilege of performing this music in the circumstances for which it was created changed my perception of more things than I could have anticipated. At the same time, I managed to become acquainted with and perform the vast majority of the surviving synagogue organ repertoire. Most likely, far more of it once existed, but it was either destroyed or is still awaiting discovery. I am increasingly inclined toward the latter possibility.

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A separate idea was the creation of new works inspired by the tradition to which I have devoted recent years of study. To achieve this, it was necessary to step into the shoes of the former composers of Jewish liturgical music, who sought to combine synagogue prayer melodies with the musical language of their time, Jewish scales with Western harmony, and free, improvised passages with a pulse and meter that were clear to all. I invited six outstanding Polish composers of my generation to attempt to recreate this process.

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Each approached the subject differently. Adam Porębski arranged songs by Abraham Lichtenstein, a 19th-century cantor from Szczecin—first in a version for cantor, choir, and organ, and later for organ solo. In this way, the music of the city’s most famous cantor returned to my hometown. Aleksandra Chmielewska and Dariusz Przybylski created impressive works based on two Kaddish melodies notated by Louis Lewandowski. I chose these melodies because they had made the strongest impression on me already during the first of hundreds of performances in synagogue liturgies in Berlin. Anna Huszcza herself selected a melody by Louis Lewandowski from among three monumental volumes, writing a tribute to the organ tradition. Marcin Łukaszewski combined two of the most famous Jewish melodies in the world—Kol Nidre and Hava Nagila—creating a bridge between the sacred and the profane. In a deeply personal work, Ignacy Zalewski shifted the focus from melody to timbre, moving in the direction that Jewish organ music had begun to explore shortly before the dramatic interruption of its history.

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I spent a long time considering the title of the project and the album. At first, I was not convinced by Echoes of the Temple. However, I came to believe that it was the right term when, during nighttime recording sessions, we listened dozens of times to the reverberation of the organ rolling through the vast interior of the Collegiate Church in Stargard. The vision of organs located in the Temple in Jerusalem has been immensely inspiring for dozens of generations. Even today, the instrument is associated primarily with sacred spaces. In the works on the album, the echo of ancient traditions, ideas, and aspirations resounds. At the same time, through the very form of the recordings, we can repeatedly listen—quite literally—to the echo of the temple.

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There are several reflections that each of us may take away after listening to this album and reading the story that accompanies it.

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Jewish organ music demonstrates that it is possible to skillfully combine tradition with modernity. Between blocking everything that is new and rejecting everything that is old, there exists a golden mean.

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There are many fascinating topics in many areas of life waiting to be discovered. We can learn a great deal from them. People who do not know history are condemned to go around in circles.

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As I mentioned at the beginning, every music has its context. Understanding it is not only about historically informed interpretation. In this way, we can discover the image of the people who created the music and the times in which they lived. Perhaps one day—maybe after listening to this album—someone will wish to tell our story in the same way.

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References

[1] Peter Williams, The Organ in Western Culture, Cambridge University Press, New York 1993.
[2] Entry: Biblical Instruments, in: The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, www.grovemusic.com.
[3] Joachim Braun, The Iconography of the Organ: Change in Jewish Thought and Musical Life, “Music in Art: International Journal for Music Iconography,” no. 28, 2003.
[4] David Sorkin, Religious Reforms and Secular Trends in German-Jewish Life: An Agenda for Research, “Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook,” no. 48, 1995.
[5] Caesar Seligmann, Geschichte der jüdischen Reformbewegung von Mendelssohn bis zur Gegenwart, Julius Kaufmann, Frankfurt am Main 1922.
[6] Protokolle und Aktenstücke der zweiten Rabbinerversammlung, E. Ullmann, Frankfurt am Main 1845.
[7] Abraham Zvi Idelsohn, Jewish Music in Its Historical Development, Dover, New York 1992.