Well, then, these are the first realizations of actual music we tried to put together with Professor Régeny. What you just heard is the first performance of Professor Régeny's interpretation to the score of the first piece in Moshe Najara's "Tzlilei Ha'Sefirot". The result is a bit too speculative to my taste, but I fully believe in artistic freedom...
Maybe it's a good time to tell you a bit about Moshe Najara - who is, when I think about it now, the only musician I know in the rich history of the Shabbethaian movement.
In any case, Najara comes from one of the most well-respected families in late 17th century Gaza - what we call in Yiddish "Yi-huus". Two of his ancestors are figures that are always floating around his work:
His great grand-father Yisrael Najara was a famous liturgical poet - some of his poems are still being sung today. Moshe, our protagonist, always felt like his great grandfather Yisrael was mistreated by his fellow Kabbalists in Safed. Especially offensive was the great Kabbalist Rabbi Hayyim Vital's accusations of Yisrael Najara for different sins, all based on mystical revelations rather than actual evidence. Vital essentially forbade reading Yisrael Najara's poems. This insult has been passed from generation to generation into Moshe's blood.
Which brings us to Moshe Najara's father - Ya'akov Najara, who lived in Gaza in the 17th century. He was a central figure around the circle of Nathan of Gaza - Shabbetai Ẓevi's prophet. When Shabbetai Ẓevi reached Gaza in 1665, he stayed with Najara, and even appointed him as the "High Priest" of Gaza - although Najara was not of a priestly family - what we call a "Kohen". This is part of the inversion that Shabbetai Ẓevi exercised - what was forbidden is now allowed and what was allowed is now forbidden. Let me repeat this idea - it is in the center of Shabbtai Tzvi and Nathan of Gaza's thought, and we will keep coming back to this concept - now that the messiah appeared, everything that was forbidden is now allowed and everything that was allowed is now forbidden.
Well, I first encountered Moshe Najara's name when working on a famous book by Ya'akov Saporta called "Tzitzat Novel Zevi" and I was quite amazed. This is an anti-Shabbethaian work - Saporta was one of the violent antagonists of the Shabbethaian movement. You can imagine how astonished I was to find a side comment in a manuscript I worked on in Hamburg. This comment mentioned a ban on a book with Najara's name and something described as "sounds of the sefiras" - "Tzlilei Ha'Sefirot". Several years later, I was invited to look through a book collection in an estate of an important member of the Dönme community in Turkey and suddenly saw a manuscript with the title "Tzlilei Ha'Sefirot" with Moshe Najara's name. They were kind enough to let me look through it, and I was immediately struck by the unusual three-dimensional music notation. I've never seen anything like this before. This is something really special - very abstract three-dimensional curves. Even with my basic musical knowledge, I could look at these curves and imagine sounds. I really wondered where this innovative representation of sounds comes from.
Luckily, Najara's text describes the source of inspiration for his sound diagrams - Johannes Keppler's famous musical-astronomical book "Harmonices Mundi". Now, I know what you're thinking: how did a copy of Keppler's book get into the hands of Moshe Najara in Gaza in the late 17th century? Well, unfortunately we don't have a clear answer for that, but the common belief is that Salomon Schweigger, a German priest who came to Istanbul in 1576 and was the first to notate Turkish music in western notation, brought with him several copies of Kepler's book, and they were circulating around the Ottoman empire. We know that several copies were circulating around Greater Syria in the 17th century.
Now that I think of it, maybe I should say a few words about what "Sefirot" are. I am not used to talking to a musical audience, so it didn't occur to me to explain that. Well, Sefirot means literally counts, or emanations. There are 10 such emanations in the Kabbalah. The Infinite reveals itself through and continuously creates both the physical realm and the chain of higher metaphysical realms. The ancient "Sefer Yetzira" enumerates 32 mysterious paths of wisdom - the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet and I quote: "Ten sefirot of nothingness, ten and not nine, ten and not eleven".
***
No chapter in the history of the Jewish people during the last several hundred years has been as shrouded in mystery as that of the Shabbethaian movement.
This mystery is part of a culture of secrecy - of the "Torah of the secret" - the so-called "Kabbalah" that should have been passed from mouth to ear for centuries without being written down. There was this common belief that these secrets of creation can be dangerous when they fall to the wrong hands. Those who know it are obligated to hide it.
In our modern eyes, this is how we can understand the Messiah craze of the 17th century - the combination of the ongoing suffering of the Jews as a persecuted minority - especially with the blood libels, and the meeting with neoplatonic philosophy and new science. To this mix we add the metaphysical spark of the Lurianic Kabbalah after the time of "Ha'Ari". Now the secret is in the open.
And when the secret is everyone's, we get this anarchist reversal of everything that is the basis of the theology of Shabbtai Tzvi and Nathan of Gaza. I have the feeling that for Moshe Najara, the same culture of secrecy surrounds Johannes Keppler's thoughts about the harmonies of the spheres. In a really interesting sentence in his "Tzlilei Ha'Sefirot", Moshe Najara mentions that Keppler entered the Pardes. I hope you know the old Talmudic story about four that entered the Pardes - Ben Azzai, Ben Zoma, Ben Avuya and Rabbi Akiva. One looked and died; one looked and went mad; one looked and apostatized; and one entered in peace and departed in peace. Najara thinks that the celestial harmonies he imagines and tries to put in his scores are another peek at the Pardes - and he hoped to depart in peace.
You know, one of the strong reactions to the Shabbtai Tzvi story was that the rabbinic establishment said that it's forbidden to learn Kabbalah before age 40. Which is interesting because I'm 38... Or am I?
***
Well, here we go.
Well, there we are. You might have noticed by now that Najara was focused on one interval - what we call in modern terminology three-quarter tones.
Well, Professor Régeny and I were hypothesizing and found several possible explanations to the origin of this mystical interval.
Well, the first hint is in the way Najara discusses this interval himself - he mentions it as "Gimel Al Dalet" meaning the letter Gimmel - the third letter in the Hebrew alphabet, over the letter Dalet which is the fourth letter.
Well, above this definition that Najara gives of "Gimel Al Dalet" - he quotes from Genesis Chapter 49 "Gad Gedud Yegudenu Ve'Hu Yagud Akev" which translated to "Gad, a troop shall troop upon him; but he shall troop upon their heel".
Well, this symbolism, or mysticism, of the three-quarter tones - the "Gimel Al Dalet" - is another proof of the Lurianic influence in the circles around Nathan of Gaza. We can see here an example of the ancient kabbalistic idea that the world was created from letters and that different combinations of letters have different mystical meanings.
***
Beyond our mystical interval, it is important to note that all of this music we've been hearing here, comes from an act of imagining, of reconstructing what European polyphony might sound like. As far as we can tell, Moshe Najara never heard any renaissance music but only heard other people's accounts of it. This is how we should understand his mystical scores - a dream of someone who never heard European renaissance music, but wanted to reverse all its rules - the consonance becomes a dissonance, synchronization becomes entropy and the maqams become geometrical tone rows based on the mystical interval. Instead of traditional phrase structure we get this an endless chain of arabesque-like melodies.
Well, of course another source which probably inspired Najara to think about this interval is Keppler's application of celestial proportions to harmonic intervals. It is interesting that this three-quarter tones interval was seen this way by Najara, as we think that Keppler would have called it a 11 to 10 relation - which would correspond to the ratio between two orbits, and is a ratio that represents acoustically this three quarter tones interval.
Well, Najara mentions in his book that he developed some of his music while playing a Zurna - so one should imagine his melodies with this special nasal sound. Interestingly, he mentions in his book that he used to play his Zurna on Tish'a Be'Av - but would only play a few notes and not a full melody. He justified it by saying that if the Messiah indeed came, it is allowed to play music on Tish'a Be'Av, and if he didn't, then he didn't play a full melody, so didn't commit a sin.
***
When we came to make these realizations of the musical scores that Najara left, we had to make a lot of decisions ourselves. It's a pity that I can't show you these remarkable scores. They are built of very special three dimensional shapes that are placed one next to the other - they represent the polyphony - what happens simultaneously in the music. He used three dimensions because he wanted to represent pitch, intensity and time for each of his melodies. One thing that is quite exceptional about these shapes is that the closer you look at them, you see more angles in their outline. So it's quite impossible to perceive their contour.
In any case, when we tried to translate them to melodies, we began with basic tetrachords of Ottoman music. That's how we came to the basic motif of aaaah aaah aaaah aaaaah.
We also took another major source of inspiration for him - the Pi'yut of his great grandfather Israel Najara. For example, we could identify parts that are almost quotes from the Pi'yut "Yafah Dim'a'tech", which goes something like that (and pardon my singing abilities here):
***
I apologize for discussing such issues as I am a complete musical amateur. However, I have been thinking about sounds in the context of "Tzlilei Ha'Sefirot", and I tried to understand the difference between abstract sound and the sound of speaking. Of course, there are some acoustic differences but they seem negligible. Well, the obvious difference is in the type of signification of the two types of sound. You know, during my research, I tried some of this kabbalistic techniques myself. And I had this experience with repetition of words and letters transformation, where gradually text and words lose their linguistic significance and you perceive them more like musical signifiers - which I understand as objects that signify nothing. This is how I understand Moshe Najara's spiritual project - he materializes one of the elements of redemption - that the words will separate from their meaning.
You know that the Nachmanides said that when the Messiah will come all the letters in the scripture will be rearranged - as the real divine meaning of the bible will only be revealed then. It's probably why a few centuries later Rabbi Nachman hints that the Messiah is a creator of new music, or at least of new Nigunim.
***
One crucial aspect of Moshe Najara's music that we didn't discuss is the seclusion in which it was created. By the time he started to compose music, the news about Shabbetai Ẓevi's conversion to Islam arrived at Najara's community in Gaza. Najara was one of the last followers of Shabbetai Ẓevi left in Gaza, and there he was practically secluded from both the Jewish community and from the Muslim Ottoman institutions. Therefore we should understand his music as music of foreignness. One can understand his yearning to the mystical messianic ideas - that everything can be different. That the boundaries between permissible and forbidden have been breached. And so did the boundaries between day and night, between man and woman and between noise and tone. Some researchers today claim that Shabbetai Ẓevi was the first Jewish feminist - the first liberator of women from their suppression in the traditional Jewish world. The more I experience Moshe Najara's ideas and music, the more I see him as a liberator as well. Maybe one of the first pioneers in the long process of emancipation of all sounds.
***
Well, an interesting element in Najara's book is his detailed description of the ecstatic practice he developed. His meditative practice is completely tied with his general mystical ideas from which his music is built. He is obviously very influenced by the techniques developed by Avraham Abulafia that were practiced in secrecy in the circles of Kabbalah around the end of the 17th century. Najara takes the idea of using "rolling" of letters and words to get into a meditative trance state. He takes his mystical interval - 3 over 4, Gimmel over Dalet, and then 6 over 8, Vav over Ch'et. He uses the two letters in all possible vowels - A-E-I-O-U. In the book, he claims that after reciting all the 25 possible combinations while focusing on the voice and air that comes out of one's throat, the practitioner can overcome their rational categorization tendencies. One supposedly reaches a state of equilibrium where the divisions between noise and tone and between male and female lose all significance. I must admit, that as part of my research, I tried once to engage with such a routine, and I can report to you that it is complete nonsense.
Ga-Da
Ga-De
Ga-Di
Ga-Do
Ga-Du
Ge-Da
Ge-De
Ge-Di
Ge-Do
Ge-Du
Gi-Da
Gi-De
Gi-Di
Gi-Do
Gi-Du
Go-Da
Go-De
Go-Di
Go-Do
Go-Du
Gu-Da
Gu-De
Gu-Di
Gu-Do
Gu-Du
Va-Ch'a
Ga-De
Ga-Di
Ga-Do
Ga-Du
Ge-Da
Ge-De
Ge-Di
Ge-Do
Ge-Du
Gi-Da
Gi-De
Gi-Di
Gi-Do
Gi-Du
Go-Da
Go-De
Go-Di
Go-Do
Go-Du
Gu-Da
Gu-De
Gu-Di
Gu-Do
Gu-Du