‘Soundscapes’ from Venice ghetto at annual Shirainu Jewish Music Concert
What do Italian Renaissance music, the 500th anniversary of the Spanish Inquisition, and the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare have in common musically?
To Ensemble Lucidarium, a musical group founded in 1991, those events conjure up an image of the Jewish quarter of Venice where Jews fleeing Spain mingled with Italian and German Jews. It is also the home of The Bard’s most infamous Jewish character.
The group, based in Milan and Geneva, has a repertoire steeped in the music of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. On the evening of Nov. 9, the ensemble will perform “Sounds from Shylock’s Venice” at the annual Shirainu Jewish Music Concert in memory of Norman Shiffman at the Highland Park Conservative Temple-Congregation Anshe Emeth (HPCT-CAE). The following morning Cantor Enrico Fink, a singer with the group, will present a program on “Invisible Music: The Jewish Presence in Italy and Italian Synagogue Song.”
The concert, infused with Jewish tunes and songs Jews and non-Jews sang and danced to centuries ago, will take listeners to the sounds of life in Venice’s Jewish ghetto.
“We basically try to imagine what Shylock’s soundscape might have been,” said the group’s director, Avery Gosfield, in a phone interview from Italy.
Gosfield said the program takes “loose inspiration” from the half-Jewish character Leopold Bloom in James Joyce’s “Ulysses.” “Except instead of [Shylock] wandering around Dublin, we have him wandering around Venice and in and out of the ghetto,” she said.
Gosfield grew up in the Philadelphia suburb of Fort Washington. She studied music at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio, continued her studies in Amsterdam, and moved to Italy in 1997. In 2011 Gosfield was invited to work with Alan Bern, the American-born artistic director of Yiddish Summer Weimar in Germany.
“That catapulted me into the klezmer world,” she said. “It changed my life. It was like I was catapulted home.”
While attending KlezKanada she met David Goldfarb, a member of the N.J. klezmer band Tsu Fil Duvids and of HPCT-CAE. Goldfarb was instrumental in bringing Ensemble Lucidarium to the temple for the 2019 Shirainu concert, is now in its seventh year.
Gosfield called the program “a shadow repertoire” which exposes audiences to the voices of those who lived in the shadows. Although there were many Jewish musicians in the Middle Ages, there was no written Jewish music; most was transmitted orally, from generation to generation.
“They didn’t write down the lyrics because very few people knew how to read music so the tunes were passed down,” she said.
Knowing it would be impossible to find the actual music, she said the group looked at hundreds of psalms they knew were sung and made a “best guess” about how they may have sounded in that long-ago era.
The performance will encompass the diversity of the ghetto’s Jews, including pieces in Italian, Hebrew, and since it was “the golden age” of Yiddish in Italy, some in that language, as well. “Part of our repertoire will also have a piece in Catalan that was written in Hebrew letters,” said Gosfield. Catalan is a Western Romance language from Spain.
Gosfield described the repertoire as multi-layered, and said the group works “with some traditional chazzanut from the Venice area.”
The program also contains some dance music, some of which pokes good-natured fun of Jews and others.
“These were what every Venetian was singing and dancing to because Jews were really normal Venetians,” said Gosfield. “Although the ghetto was closed at sundown, during the day — except around Easter time — Jews would go out and interact with Venetians.” (Because Jews were blamed for the death of Jesus, they laid low during Easter week.)
Jews also had a profound effect on the culture around them as they mingled with other inhabitants.
“Venice was incredibly multi-cultural and Jews were just one minority among Greeks, Muslims, and others,” said Gosfield. “With all these different elements we try to evoke the era for our audience.”
Lucidarium itself “is like a garage band,” said Gosfield, who plays recorder, pipe, and tabor and is working on a doctorate at the Orpheus Institute in Belgium on Venetian music.
“I do the research and program notes and decide the pieces, but there’s a lot of reconstruction,” she said. “When we rehearse the musicians have a very active role.”
If you go
Who: Ensemble Lucidarium
What: Shirainu Jewish Music Concert: “Sounds from Shylock’s Venice”
Where: Highland Park Conservative Temple-Congregation Anshe Emeth
When: Saturday, Nov. 9, 8 p.m.
Cost: $30, $15 students, free under age 13; $25, $10 students before Nov. 6
Tickets: 732-545-6482 or hpct-cae.org
If you go
Who: Cantor Enrico Fink
What: Lecture, “Invisible Music: The Jewish Presence in Italy and Italian Synagogue Song”
When: Sunday, Nov. 10, 10:30 a.m.
Where: Highland Park Conservative Temple-Congregation Anshe Emeth
Cost: Free, suggested donation $10
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