This past week I was finally writing a Wikipedia biography for violinist Jacob “Jascha” Gegna (1879–1944), and in the process I came across a few old newspaper articles that gave more context to his well-known 1921 recording אַ תפלה פון מענדעל בייליס=A Tfileh fun Mendel Beilis. I had heard this piece many times over the years, but these articles clarified the context of the title and its significance to Gegna. It turns out that this was his own composition inspired, he said, by his own attendance at Beilis’ trial in Kiev in 1913. It became his signature piece in New York between 1914 when he arrived, and 1921 when he recorded it for Columbia Records. The recording can be streamed here on the Mayrent Collection, or here in Florida Atlantic University’s Recorded Sound Archive.
Mendel Beilis’ trial
Menachem Mendel Beilis (1874–1934) was a Russian Jewish man at the centre of an infamous antisemitic blood libel case in Kiev which took place from 1911–13. The YIVO Encyclopedia gives an excellent summary of it. Although Beilis was eventually acquitted of the accusation that he had ritually killed a 12-year-old boy, he spent several years in prison awaiting trial and was vilified by antisemitic right-wing Russian nationalists and opportunists.
Jacob Gegna, on the other hand, was a classically-trained violinist from a klezmer family who had until shortly before 1913 lived and worked in Poltava as a violin instructor and orchestral musician. He was living in Kiev at the time of the Beilis trial, or at least during its final weeks. He later claimed to have attended it himself and to have been moved by Beilis’ pleas for justice, or as some papers put it, his “prayers.” After he composed an instrumental violin piece in Beilis’ honour, mention of his personal connection to the trial accompanied notices about his earliest performances of the piece in New York:
דעם װעלט-בעריהמטען שפּיעלער יעקב געגנא. מר. געגנא איז אַ קיעװער. ער האָט בײגעװאָהנט בײליס׳עס פּראָצעס און ער האָט פערפֿאַסט אַ ״תפֿילה לבײליס״. ער װעט דאָס שפּיעלען בײ דיעזען קאָנצערט.
“[…] the world-famous player Jacob Gegna. Mr. Gegna is from Kiev. He witnessed Beilis’ trial and he composed a ‘Tfileh L’Beylis.’ He will play it in this concert.”
The claim continued to appear occasionally when he toured or performed. This short curiosity piece from Charles D. Isaacson’s “Weekly Music Chats” in a February 1920 issue of the Atlanta Journal sums it up:
If it’s hard to read in the folded scan, here is what the paragraph says:
When the Beylis trial was progressing in Russia, Jacob Gegna, the violinist, attended some of the last sessions. He heard the prayer made by the accused man to the judges just before the jury retired. Inspired by the scene, Gegna went home and wrote down his “Beylis’s Prayer,” one of the saddest violin sobs ever sounded.
The assertion that he was at the trial, in articles about his performance of the piece, continued to appear as late as 1923 as in this Yidishes Tageblatt article.
I’m assuming, but not certain, that he was actually in the room at the trial and didn’t just read about it in the Kiev newspaper. But he was far from the only person to create art based on the Beilis trial, as numerous novels, plays, songs and films have been made in the century since. Songs and compositions dedicated to disasters, pogroms and antisemitic trials were also common in that era; a quick search of published scores in the Library of Congress brings up Dreyfus march, two step by Russotto (1900), Kishineff Massacre by Shapiro (1904), The Sufferers, descriptive melody by Adler and Centner (1906), Hot rachmunes, der pogrom in Russland: In Remembrance of the Heroes, Self Defenders in Russia by Frug and Spector (1906), Der Pogrom by Lipschutz and Krone (1908), The victim, or Mendel bailes by Perlmutter and Wohl (1913), and many more.
The composition in New York performance
After arriving in New York in the summer of 1914 with his brother Max, a cellist, Jacob started to establish himself as a violinist and violin teacher. I don’t know if he composed the piece back in Kiev, as the newspaper claimed, but by that autumn it had become one of his signature pieces on the New York stage, and mentioned in a few dozen newspaper articles or advertisements between then and the early 1920s. He débuted it in the fall of 1914, including at a Sholem Aleichem evening where it reportedly made a big impression (per this and several other Forverts articles in early 1915).
Here is a typical example of an advertisement using the piece as part of the promotion:
Although the newspaper mentions of this piece were generally repetitive, the exact title of the piece varied. At times it was “Beilis’es Gebet” (בײליס׳עס געבעט) in the November 1914 Forverts ad pictured above, “Tfilah L’Beilis” (תפילה לבײליס) in the Forverts, December 1914 and in the February 1915 Varhayt ad picured below, “Mendel Beilis’es Gebet” (מענדעל בײליס׳עס געבעט, Mendel Beilis’ plea) in the Forverts in January 1915, “Mendel Beilis” in the Yidishes Togblat in May 1915, or “Elegy (The Prayer of Beilis)” (in The Violin World, June 1915). An advertisement in the Forverts in April 1915 mentions it alongside another piece (or type of piece) he had recorded back in Europe: “his own awe-inspiring compositions ‘Tfileh L’Mendel Beilis,’ Chtsos, and classical numbers” (אײגענע פּרעכטיגע קאָמפּאָזיציע ״תפלה למענדעל בײליס״, חצות און קלאַסישע נומערען). Take a look at the Wiktionary entries for Tfileh and Gebet for the basics on their connotations.
Here is another ad from 1915 which mentions the piece in the fine print under Gegna’s name.
A piece in the Morgen Zhurnal in November 1915 (pictured below) gives a bit more context to how Gegna, his brother and this composition were seen at the time:
The musical family in New York was enlarged with a young Jewish artist, a cellist. Max Gegna, a brother of the well-known violinist Jacob Gegna, who last year made his début on the East Side at the Sholem Aleichem reception in Cooper Union, and soon became a favourite of the Jewish public.
Jacob Gegna studied in Kiev and in Petrograd and in one year became director in the Imperial Society of Music [Keyzerlikher Muzik Gezelshaft]. Unlike most Jewish artists, Jacob Gegna was also interested in the situation of his unhappy brothers and in his first composition embodies the Jewish groans [ferkerpert der idisher krekhts]. Many will recall his “Mendel Beilis’ Tfileh.”
-translated by me from the above article.
I think they’re right that Gegna was fairly socially engaged, not only with regards to the Jews of Russia but labour and social solidarity too. His views in the 1910s and 1920s can be guessed at from the charities and benefits he donated his time to. I found mentions of him playing benefits for Jewish sanitoriums, for the Jewish Press Committee of the Socialist Labor Party of Daniel DeLeon, for war sufferers and for displaced or stateless Russian Jews.
His composition received less and less mention in the press after 1915, perhaps because its novelty had worn out. I don’t think he played it in his Aeolian Hall show of March 1918, which was considered by many to be his arrival on the (non-Jewish) New York scene. At a glance, none of the reviews mention it.
But another round of mentions appears when Gegna toured the Eastern U.S. with one of his students, the child prodigy Sammy Kramar, in 1920. By all accounts, this six-and-a-half year old impressed audiences with his technique. The Mendel Beilis piece became a part of each performance, alongside duets with Gegna and classical repertoire.
A 1920 article from Musical America calls it “an elegie, ‘The Prayer of Beilis’, composed by [Kramar’s] teacher.” In Musical Courier that same year says “The child then presented an ‘Elegie,’ by Gegna, in an inspiring manner, that proved the composition a worthy addition to musical literature.”
I can’t say for sure, because there is so much content out there, but I think the 1920 Kramar tour was the last round of mentions of this piece in performance, with a few exceptions. I’m curious if the success of the piece on that tour inspired Gegna to record it himself, or if it had already been his intention.
Their relationship continued into 1921, as Gegna helped Kramar (then 8) submit a piece “Hebrew Air and Dance” for copyright in January (see it here in my Google Drive; I paid to have it scanned by the LOC).
The 1921 recording
In 1921 we arrive at the main reason most of us in the klezmer world know this piece and Gegna’s name: his recording of A Tfileh fun Mendel Beilis.
Actually, to rewind a bit to November 1920, per Spottswood, Gegna went into the studios at Victor Records and made a test recording of a Taxim (an archaic kind of klezmer violin composition for listening), accompanied by composer Lazar Weiner on piano. The recording was not released, but Gegna was invited into the Columbia Records studio in New York a few months later and recorded his Mendel Beilis piece, as well as a Taxim. (He recorded the same basic piece a decade earlier in Poltava as “Fantasy on Jewish Melody”, you can listen to it on YouTube or on the Chekhov’s Band CD). The Discography of American Historical Recordings has a listing for A Tfileh fun Mendel Beilis, although it does not specify who the piano accompanist was. As I said above, the recording can be streamed here on the Mayrent Collection, or here in Florida Atlantic University’s Recorded Sound Archive.
I’m not a violinist, but I feel confident in making some general statements about this piece.
Like Gegna himself, it sits partly in the world of the klezmer or East European Jewish style of violin playing, and partly in the popular or classical style. I would characterize it as a sentimental or meditative violin piece which does use klezmer techniques and musical elements, but in a very restrained way. I think many “Jewish” pieces recorded for a broader market in his time fit this description.
One need only listen to the other side of the disc, Taxim, to hear some of those klezmer musical elements: the quick runs of notes, the heavy use of the “krekhts” ornament and slides, etc., and the fact that it is followed by a lively klezmer dance. On A Tfileh fun Mendel Beilis, he uses a lot more vibrato than a village klezmer might, and appoggiaturas rather than krekhts. But I think some of the other elements sound very ‘klezmer,’ both modally and as a general matter of style. At time the melody sounds more generically sentimental to my ears, that is to say not specifically Jewish, but at other times (as in the “C section”) it sounds more like a nign.
Thanks to those who talked over this piece with me on Facebook while I was thinking of writing this piece, including Eléonore Biezunski and Christina Crowder. As far as I can tell, while the Taxim has been recorded a number of times by klezmer revivalists (most famously by The Klezmorim on their 1973 album Streets of Gold), the Mendel Beilis piece has received significantly less attention. The only re-recording of it I could find was on a 2001 album by the Klezmers Techter, a German group, but I couldn’t find anywhere to stream it.
