Chabad Nigunim - Part II

00:00 The hemsech to the earlier installment been a year to Necheach, which stands for Negunei Chasi DeChabad, Chabad melodies. We continue now with installment number two. About twelve years after the passing of the Bashemtev in the year seventeen sixty, there arose after the istalkus of the Mezritcher Maggid, a new light of Hasidism in the Jewish world known as Chabad, from the initial letters of the words chochmah, binah, and da’as, which indicate the intellectual principles upon which it was based. While Chabad Hasidism drew from the fountainhead of the Bashemtev's philosophy, it developed its own flavor and characteristics. Shneur Zalman of Liadi, known as the Alter Rebbe, founder of the Chabad movement, deepened and broadened the content of Hasidism. He also discovered new depth in Hasidic song. The Bashemtev had revived song itself in Jewish life. The Alter Rebbe revealed the inner soul of Hasidic melody. Chabad melody differs considerably from general Hasidic song. It is not only joyous and ecstatic, it is reflective and mystical, with a pensive and yearning quality. The archetype of all Chabad song may be found in the famous ten melodies composed by the Alter Rebbe, who was himself a gifted interpreter of song. The most famous one is the so-called Rav's Nigun, or the Nigun of the four bovis, four stanzas or themes. Chabad songs are unique in content and in form. Some express longing, other express meditation, introspection, and self-evaluation. Still others express joy and ecstasy. But all alike reveal the inner state of the singer's soul. Chabad song has no

02:05 set forms or formulas. Rather, it aims to free song from dogmatic rules. Sometimes a single strain, a mere twist, will suffice to express the inner state of a Has-Hasid's soul. At other times, a melody progresses through several emotional and spiritual stages. Since the very core of the Chabad melody is the sentiment, the emotion that creates it, such melody has little need for words. On the contrary, a text sometimes limits the sphere of pure melody, which, wordless, can go into infinity. Chabad philosophy maintains that what is impossible to express in words may and should be conveyed in melody. While words give expression to an idea, they also transpose the idea from the purely spiritual realm to the mir- material world. Melody does the opposite. In song, an emotion ascends upward, climbing the mystical biblical ladder of perfection, step by step to the ultimate. Like the Bashemtev, the Alter Rebbe gave primacy to melody. "The tongue is the pen of the heart," he said, "but melody is the pen of the soul." Commenting on this thought, the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, previous Rebbe, remarked, "Speech reveals the thought of the mind, but melody reveals the emotions of longing and delight. These stem from the inner self, from the very soul, and are much higher than reason and intellect." The fifth Lubavitcher Rebbe, the Rebbe Rashab, has defined song itself as the revelation of higher beauty. But form, sayber in song, is beauty proper at its highest peak. The previous Rebbe, stressing the importance of accuracy in transmitting a

04:16 melody, observed, "A melody should be sung with the same correctness that one would employ in citing a commentary on Torah learned from one's teacher or rabbi." At the previous Rebbe's direction, the Society of Necheach was established to publish and record Chabad melodies. In Taf Shin Ches, nineteen forty-eight, the Society issued the Sefer HaNigunim, edited by Rab Shmuel Zalmanov, which contains an extensive Hebrew essay on Jewish music and comments on the one hundred and seventy-five melodies compiled. In Taf Shin Yud Zai, in nineteen fifty-seven, appeared a second volume containing an additional thirty-five melodies. In Taf Shin Chof, nineteen sixty, the Rebbe instructed that they should compile a record of Lubavitcher nigunim, and that is the first Lubavitch record in nineteen sixty.