Weiss - Psalms and Hymns

Jakub Leopold Lejb Weiss was born in 1825 in Nitra, then part of Hungary. He received his musical education in Vienna under Salomon Sulzer, one of the most important composers of the early period of the Jewish Reform movement.

From 1860, Weiss served as chief cantor at the German Synagogue on Daniłowiczowska Street in Warsaw. With his appointment, a decision was made to recruit and train the finest possible singers for the choir. Within a short time, expenditures on musicians’ fees became the largest item in the community’s budget.

Jakub Leopold Weiss entered history as an exceptionally gifted singer and composer, appreciated both by members of the Jewish community and by non-Jewish circles. Ignacy Gantzwohl wrote in Weiss’s obituary:

“Many among us recall his magnificent singing, as well as his artistic leadership of choirs, with genuine pleasure—we listened to him with deep devotion, not only we, Israelites, but even those of other faiths; as a result, every Sabbath and every festival the synagogue on Daniłowiczowska Street could not accommodate the numerous admirers of his beautiful singing.”

In 1872, due to an unfortunate misunderstanding with the synagogue board, Jakub Leopold Weiss resigned from his position. He continued to conduct services in a synagogue arranged in the Viennese Hall of the Lubomirski Palace in Warsaw. From 1873 he served as cantor in Vilnius, but after three years he returned to Warsaw.

In 1879, having successfully passed the teaching examination at the Institute of Music, he became a certified singing teacher. He conducted services in a synagogue rented by himself on Nalewki Street. He also planned to establish a singing school for young people wishing to train as cantors and vocalists. These ideas, however, did not bring him financial stability—he spent the final years of his life in poverty, despite the fact that his music was frequently performed by various ensembles not only in Warsaw, but also gained popularity throughout Europe. He died on 21 August 1889. His compositions continued to be heard in synagogues and private homes until the outbreak of the Second World War.

The only works by Jakub Leopold Weiss that have survived to the present day are the Musikalischen Synagogen-Bibliothek: Ozar Schire Jeschurun, published in two volumes—the first in 1873 and the second in 1881. These works were most likely composed with the community he served as cantor in mind and are predominantly intended for performance by a four-part choir. Only Psalm 137, “By the Rivers of Babylon,” exists in two versions—for choir and for solo voice. This composition alone is also preceded by an instrumental prelude, and its four stanzas are separated by a striking recitative in which the accompaniment part also fulfills an illustrative function.

The musical style—melody, harmony, and phrasing—can without doubt be associated with the style of Stanisław Moniuszko. A clue to the reasons for this exceptional treatment of the psalm may be found in 19th-century Warsaw, at 5 Daniłowiczowska Street, where many musicians and composers of the period gathered in the artistic salon of Henryk Toeplitz, including Jakub Weiss and Stanisław Moniuszko. The years 1860–1872, when Weiss served at the synagogue on the same street, coincide with the premieres of all Moniuszko’s most important operas at the Grand Theatre in Warsaw, located to this day just a few hundred meters from Daniłowiczowska Street. It is possible that this acquaintance, as well as shared emotions connected with the loss of one’s homeland, inspired Weiss to create this exceptional setting of Psalm 137—the course of the recitative clearly indicates that Polish was the original language for which the composition was conceived.

The remaining psalms and hymns refer to the choral compositional style common in the 18th and 19th centuries, although they reveal clear influences of German Romanticism, Polish church song, and even Orthodox church music, as in Psalm 66 for male choir.

The extensive preface provides valuable insight into how Jakub Weiss thought about his works. Above all, he intended them for performance both in the synagogue and in the home, wishing them to become part of the everyday life of Israelites and those beyond the Jewish community. As he wrote:

“Strict fidelity of the music to the text also aims to lead to an understanding of the text by those who do not understand it, and thus to enable its interpretation through sound.”

In this way, Weiss became a proponent of the ideas of the Haskalah—the Jewish Enlightenment. He emphasized the significance and value of ancient prayer texts while setting them in a contemporary musical language that was comprehensible to the various nations and cultures coexisting within the same territory.

Undoubtedly, the psalms and hymns of Jakub Weiss were most often performed by small ensembles, accompanied by piano, organ, or harmonium. The synagogues in which the composer himself served were not large spaces, and thus his ensemble of singers likely numbered only a dozen or so performers. Particularly interesting is the inclusion of multiple languages in the edition—some compositions were prepared in Polish, German, or Hebrew and provided with translations in those languages as well as in Russian.

This is also how we chose to present Weiss’s music, recording it for the first time in history—in various language versions, in a chamber setting, with accompaniment by a small organ instrument and with the participation of the characteristic voice of a synagogue cantor. This does not, however, imply that this is the only way to perform his music. As Weiss himself wrote:

“If most of the published works were to receive a richly colored orchestration, they would be capable of restoring Jewish sacred liturgy to the splendor of bygone times, when a broad congregation participated in the sound, when there was no autocracy, but democracy in the world of music.”

We hope to fulfill this dream of the composer in the future.

Within his musical tradition, there was undoubtedly room for solo instrumental playing during synagogue liturgy. Hence the inclusion on the album of four preludes by Joseph Sulzer (1850–1925), the youngest son of Jakub Weiss’s teacher, Salomon Sulzer. These are among the few surviving examples of instrumental works from the circle of the Viennese master and are stylistically closest to the works or improvisations that must once have resounded in the synagogues where Weiss led the liturgy.

Today, after several decades, we can once again listen to the psalms and hymns of Jakub Weiss, and the message of their preface may once again carry into the world ideals that also seem close to us:

“Go forth, therefore, my humble works, which were revealed to my own soul through holy Inspiration in inspired hours. Go forth and meet with a gracious reception from my consecrated companions! Provide that which uplifts and ennobles the soul through the power of that which is invisible and eternal.”