In a previous post, I mentioned that the YIVO archive has a few collections of scores which would be of interest to klezmer musicians. These include RG 1360 Records of the Al Glaser Recording Orchestra, RG 1280 Papers of Dave Tarras, and RG 1330 Joseph and Lara Cherniavsky Papers. I’m sure there are others which I haven’t looked at yet.
Both the Tarras and Glaser collections contain an eclectic mix of what an old New York klezmer played, including Yiddish theatre pieces, medleys of Hungarian, Greek and Russian music, klezmer shers and bulgars, old published Romanian music, and so on. There was too much to photograph everything, but feel free to take a look in my google drive for whatever caught my interest in the Glaser boxes.
One of the folders, which contained a small spiral-bound notebook, was labeled as Glaser’s original compositions. It contains 16 pieces, many of which are horas and sirbas titled after places in Bucovina, where Glaser was born. Others have generic Jewish titles, and one is named after Decca Records, where he recorded in 1939.
The same pieces, and a few others, appear again in other folders, consistently numbered and rewritten or transposed for other instruments. One of the notebooks says “MY OWN” before another set of these numbered tunes; the only indication in the documents themselves of Glaser’s claim to having composed them.
These are the pieces:
- Hora Bucovina
- Sirba la Claca
- Hora din Săveni
- Sirba Suceava
- Sirba Decca
- Hora Gura Sucevi
- Hora Rădăuților
- Hora Daciel
- Sirba Sereth
- Najer Sher
- A Gite Heim
- Eishes Chail
- Czortkover Zemerl
- Russian Sher
- Chaim Shaie
- Skrip Klesmerl
- As men Ken mit aruber
- Серце [sertse] Tango
I asked my only acquaintance who plays Bucovina music professionally what he thought of these pieces, and whether they were really Glaser’s originals. After all, the old New York klezmer world is full of musicians claiming existing melodies as their own creations. Christian Milici, multi-instrumentalist resident in Suceava, didn’t recognize them but thought that many of them seemed like old-style pieces from that region. He conceded that they could be “Bucovina-style” compositions.
Here are the other versions of these tunes that I could find in Glaser’s collection, often out of order or mixed in with other music.
I admit I haven’t looked at them closely to see if they match any of Glaser’s known recordings, or known melodies from other contexts. My friend the accordionist Christina Crowder thought she recognized one from a military brass band collection. Anyhow, true originality is not something I’m worried about. It’s also interesting to think of his ‘set’ of tunes that he performed over the years and rewrote for different instruments.
For now I’m putting them up here as potentially being Glaser’s original klezmer and Bucovina-style compositions. Looking forward to playing them sometime.