Portuguese Hatzi Qadish, Amsterdam, 18th century

Eighteenth-century notated sources of Jewish liturgical music are rare, and the discovery of a new source from that period is a remarkable event. In February 2007, a manuscript whose leather binding has an engraving with the year 1793 was found in the estate of the late Hazzan Abraham Lopes Cardozo of blessed memory (1914-2006) in New York City. This manuscript, previously unknown to researchers, contains music from the Portuguese synagogue in Amsterdam. It was graciously donated by the widow of Hazzan Lopes Cardozo, Irma Robles de Lopes Cardozo, to the Jewish National and University Library in Jerusalem through the Jewish Music Research Centre. This document is intimately related to previously known musical sources of the Amsterdam Portuguese community from the same period that were thoroughly described by Israel Adler in his RISM. As its “relatives” (the vast majority of which are at the Ets Haim Library of the Portuguese community in Amsterdam), the present manuscript includes mostly Qadishim and Qedushot, selected verses from the Sabbath liturgy, and items from cantatas composed on behalf of this community by various composers. Overall, this manuscript appears to be a relatively late eighteenth-century compilation of pieces from earlier periods. A thorough examination of this manuscript will be published by Edwin Seroussi in the near future.
Fol. 6[a]-6[b] contains a Hatzi Qadish attributed to “Pr. Nozeman”. Other versions of this piece are found in ms. Ets Haim, 48E44 and ms. 23D24 of the library of the Jewish museum in Den Haag. The music may be attributed to Jacob Nozeman (1693-1745; see, R.A. Rasch, ‘Nozeman, Jacob’, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., 2001) a composer of German origin who was active in Amsterdam during the first half of the eighteenth century and was obviously known to the local Portuguese Jewish cantors.
This Baroque Hatzi Qaddish was revived in the framework of a Portuguese Erev Shabbat service performed by the first-year cantorial students of the H.L. Miller Cantorial Institute (Jewish Theological Seminary of America) at the Moreshet Israel Synagogue in Jerusalem on May 18, 2007. The Ashkenazi setting of the Qadish text is by Hazzan Marlena Fuerstman. The piece, providing a glimpse into the virtuoso vocal proficiency expected from the Portuguese cantors of Amsterdam in the eighteenth-century, was recorded for the JMRC website by Sidney Ezer accompanied by Jonathan Schultz in the congregational responses and is presented here with the consent of the performers.