The Hope
August 23, 2021 10:38 AM Subscribe
Hatikvah: Conceptions, Receptions and Reflections "Untangling these stories behind the story of Hatikvah is the core of this essay. For Hatikvah both is and is not what you think. It does not derive from Smetana nor from a Sephardic prayer. And an early Zionist pioneer did not compose it spontaneously. Nor did it become the national anthem of the State of Israel until very recently."
Love this stuff, thanks!
Whenever one tries to trace songs through the "folk tradition", things always are messier than you'd expect: the paths of popular music, folk music, and art music intertwine in curious ways and people love to make songs seem older, newer, folkier, artier, etc. which complicates things tremendously. One of my favorite examples of this is "Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye", which went from a vaudeville piece making fun of the Irish to an antiwar anthem in the space of fifty years.
I definitely fell into the trap of assuming that there was a closer connection between Smetana's Ma Vlast and "Hatikva"; not that one was derived from the other but that there was a single folk-song in circulation in the eastern Austro-Hungarian empire from which both melodies were derived. Should have known better!
I also never realized that the melody of "Hatikva" fits Shir Ha-Ma'alot (Psalm 126); apparently however the use of this melody has also caused some controversy in the Haredi community!
posted by goingonit at 11:13 AM on August 23, 2021 [4 favorites]
Whenever one tries to trace songs through the "folk tradition", things always are messier than you'd expect: the paths of popular music, folk music, and art music intertwine in curious ways and people love to make songs seem older, newer, folkier, artier, etc. which complicates things tremendously. One of my favorite examples of this is "Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye", which went from a vaudeville piece making fun of the Irish to an antiwar anthem in the space of fifty years.
I definitely fell into the trap of assuming that there was a closer connection between Smetana's Ma Vlast and "Hatikva"; not that one was derived from the other but that there was a single folk-song in circulation in the eastern Austro-Hungarian empire from which both melodies were derived. Should have known better!
I also never realized that the melody of "Hatikva" fits Shir Ha-Ma'alot (Psalm 126); apparently however the use of this melody has also caused some controversy in the Haredi community!
posted by goingonit at 11:13 AM on August 23, 2021 [4 favorites]
This is very cool. I had no idea that it wasn't officially the Israeli national anthem until 2004.
Watching Israel win its first gold medal and hearing them play Hatikva a few weeks ago and the crowd cheering all the medalists right afterwards definitely gave me the shivers - it may not be the most beautiful piece of music, but it did what it says on the label. Though apparently it caused a different stir in India
posted by Mchelly at 12:34 PM on August 23, 2021 [2 favorites]
Watching Israel win its first gold medal and hearing them play Hatikva a few weeks ago and the crowd cheering all the medalists right afterwards definitely gave me the shivers - it may not be the most beautiful piece of music, but it did what it says on the label. Though apparently it caused a different stir in India
posted by Mchelly at 12:34 PM on August 23, 2021 [2 favorites]
Oops - just realized it wasn't their first gold medal - at the time the news reports were saying it was. And they won another after that which I missed - but it was still pretty cool to see for the first time in my life.
posted by Mchelly at 12:47 PM on August 23, 2021
posted by Mchelly at 12:47 PM on August 23, 2021
OMG Bollywood Hatikva!!!! (Or Bollywood Vltava if you prefer -- the shared phrase is pretty much in both.) Amazing!
posted by goingonit at 3:00 PM on August 23, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by goingonit at 3:00 PM on August 23, 2021 [1 favorite]
Years ago, I was in a ("Western") music history class where the instructor wanted to give an example of nationalism in music. He started playing Smetana's Moldau, and the small proportion of the class that knows Hatikva when they hear it all kind of looked around and smiled. After the excerpt, he called on a few people to talk about the music, expecting to be talking about Slavic nationalism, and found himself quite surprised anyone mentioned Israel. Reader, he was unfamiliar with Hatikva and he got to have a fascinating moment finding out in the middle of his class from his students that his example of nationalism in music was more-or-less the same melody as a national anthem.
I also thought there was a common folk song ancestor and have heard Carol cu Boi before, but didn't realize that was such a modern song it was about electrification.
posted by zachlipton at 3:03 PM on August 23, 2021 [2 favorites]
I also thought there was a common folk song ancestor and have heard Carol cu Boi before, but didn't realize that was such a modern song it was about electrification.
posted by zachlipton at 3:03 PM on August 23, 2021 [2 favorites]
the melody of "Hatikva" fits Shir Ha-Ma'alot (Psalm 126)
Shir HaMa'alot is notoriously adaptable to a huge number of tunes, e.g. Waltzing Matilda. We had a FPP here about songs that let you do that, but I can't remember what they were called.
posted by Joe in Australia at 7:09 PM on August 23, 2021 [2 favorites]
Shir HaMa'alot is notoriously adaptable to a huge number of tunes, e.g. Waltzing Matilda. We had a FPP here about songs that let you do that, but I can't remember what they were called.
posted by Joe in Australia at 7:09 PM on August 23, 2021 [2 favorites]
!! So do people use Waltzing Matilda when benching in Australia?
posted by goingonit at 8:16 PM on August 23, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by goingonit at 8:16 PM on August 23, 2021 [1 favorite]
No, but we could. Incidentally, “Scotland the Brave” also works.
posted by Joe in Australia at 1:34 AM on August 24, 2021
posted by Joe in Australia at 1:34 AM on August 24, 2021
This was nice:
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:02 AM on September 19, 2021
Moving! Corona-inflected day-long Yom Kippur prayers in one of Tel Avivs best known spaces, Dizengoff Square, ends with singing the national anthem #Hatikva. The final Yom Kippur song in the prayer books of most of the worlds Jewish congregations is Next Year in Jerusalem. https://t.co/3TbxqdVNQR— Arnold Roth (@arnoldroth) September 16, 2021
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:02 AM on September 19, 2021
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