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  • A Song of Dawn: The Jerusalem Sephardi Baqqashot at the Har Tzyion Synagogue
  • Mark Kligman (bio)
A Song of Dawn: The Jerusalem Sephardi Baqqashot at the Har Tzyion Synagogue. Recordings and notes by Essica Marks. Jerusalem: Jewish Music Research Centre, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2007. Anthology of Music Traditions in Israel, Vol. 20, Edwin Seroussi, editor. Six CD recordings and a 102-page bilingual booklet.

The singing of baqqashot (liturgical poems of requests) is a practice hundreds of years old for Sephardi/Mizrahi Jews, those living along the Mediterranean. The baqqashot ritual takes place early in the morning on the Saturday of the Sabbath. Congregants arrive at 3:00 or 4:00 a.m. and sing for several hours before sunrise; at sunrise they begin the morning prayers. Singing in the dark of night for hours until sunrise is a meditative and preparatory experience for the Sabbath prayers.

The recording A Song of Dawn: The Jerusalem Sephardi Baqqashot at the Har Tzyion Synagogue, by Essica Marks, contains 6 CDs of the baqqashot ritual at a synagogue in Israel. A Song of Dawn is unique as a real-time recording of an entire event in context in 2003. Previous available recordings were made in a studio, not in context, and with only one to three singers. The presentation of the tracks on A Song of Dawn replicates the correct singing order of these texts in the actual ritual. The singing of baqqashot at Har Tzyion Synagogue is regularly performed in its complete form; they are one of few carriers of this tradition. [End Page 146] Har Tzyion Synagogue is located next to the Old City of Jerusalem. The synagogue was established in the time after the 1967 war; prior to the war the area was governed by Jordan. Although the ritual is usually performed on the eve of the Sabbath, to facilitate participation by members of various ages, Har Tzyion moved the regular baqqashot ritual to Thursday evening.

The origins of baqqashot singing are not clear. Baqqashot texts have been found in prayer books since the fifteenth century among Jewish communities in Spain. Nocturnal sessions and singing of religious texts were part of Jewish musical practices in general. Some poems of the baqqashot are of unknown origin and date, others are from the Golden Age of Spain (eleventh to twelfth century), from well-known Jewish poets like Shlomo Ibn Gabriol and Abraham Ibn Ezra. Another prominent poet is Israel Najara (c. 1555–1625) who lived in Damascus. Still others were part of the Syrian community in Aleppo, men such as Mordecai Abadi (d. 1883), the codifier of standard baqqashot arrangement, and Rahael Antebi Tabush (1873–1919) the author of over 400 piyyutim (religious poems), a few of which are used in the baqqashot service. Additional texts used in the ritual are drawn from the book of Psalms.

The booklet accompanying these CDs richly annotates the tradition with text in both English and Hebrew in two different sections (there are 49 pages in the English section and 53 in the Hebrew). A description of each track comments on the author of each poetic text, if known, and the organization of the musical piece. The maqam (or mode) is given and the modulations that often occur when moving from the end of one baqqasha (singular) to the start of another are described and analyzed. There is a separate section with a brief biography of each poet (10–14 English; 10–14 Hebrew) and a description of the maqamat (14–15 English; 15–16 Hebrew).

The musical structure of the baqqashot varies; some songs are composed strophically and some melodies are through-composed. Solo embellishments and improvisation take place during certain passages. No singular musical organization pattern exists. Some examples, such as Or ‘elyon (Supreme Light) in maqam Bayyat CD 2 (track 8), have a responsorial section with a call and response between the soloist and the choir, others have various soloists or group singing. In some parts of the baqqashot ritual soloists alternate with community members. The timbres of the performances are mixed with the gruff voices of older members juxtaposed by the relative clarity and sweetness of younger voices.

The...

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