A Few Words to My Critic

Mark Varshavsky

1901

Mr. Engel concludes that the music to my songs is not folk, because, in his opinion, it includes the rhythms of waltz music and mazurkas, and these dance rhythms are used even in the cases where I have more Jewish melodies. But the form and character of rhythms is not the only factor that gives musical compositions their physiognomy. It depends on other elements of the melody. And even if we say that these songs resemble Polish dance tunes . . . are dance rhythms really so foreign to Jewish song? I would direct my harsh critic to the recent published collection of Jewish folk songs by Ginsburg and Marek, and he will find examples of songs with polka and quadrille melodies . . . I have never pretended to present a scientific arrangement of specimens of Jewish folk musical creativity . . . [I have sought] merely to give the people melodies that preserve the Jewish coloring.

Translated by
James
Loeffler
.

Credits

Mark Warshavsky, “A Few Words to My Critic," Khronika voskhoda, Apr. 12, 1901.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 7.

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Creator Bio

Mark Varshavsky

1848–1907

Born in Odessa, Russian Empire (today in Ukraine), Mark Varshavsky (Warshavski) was brought up in Zhitomir and attended a state-sanctioned rabbinical program there for his secondary education. In 1875, he earned his law degree in Kiev (Kyiv), where he lived the rest of his life. He earned a paltry living practicing law, and in his spare time, he composed and performed songs with piano accompaniment. Though never a professional musician, he caught the attention of Sholem Aleichem with his songs, and the writer encouraged the lawyer to put down his compositions in notation. In 1901, Sholem Aleichem helped Varshavsky publish Yidishe folkslider mit notn, a collection of twenty-five of Varshavsky’s tunes with an introduction by Sholem Aleichem. After touring alongside Sholem Aleichem for a time, Varshavsky moved to Belgium to work as a lawyer for a commercial firm. In 1905 he became ill and moved back to Kiev, where he died two years later. Varshavsky’s pieces have been published in many volumes and collections of Yiddish song, and several of them remain well known today.

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