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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Joyful Noise to some is a Joyful Symphony to Others, August 20, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: A Joyful Noise: Claiming the Songs of My Fathers (Hardcover)
Psalm 100 begins, "Make a joyful noise to the Lord...serve the Lord with gladness." This statement appears above the synagogue in Ivancice, Moravia/Slovakia -- the synagogue where the author's grandfather and father sang and prayed. In "A Joyful Noise," Deborah Weisgall, a critic for The New York Times, tells a moving story of growing up with two remarkable men who lived life as if they were characters in an atonal opera. Her Czech-born grandfather Abba served as a cantor in Baltimore; and her Czech-born father, Hugo, was an often frustrated opera composer, JTS teacher, and conducter of the Baltimore synagogue's holiday choir. They were descended from a long line cantors. It was in this milieu that Deborah grew up in the 1950's. But as a female member of the family, she learned that she could not fully participate in the musical tradition of her forebears. A Joyful Noise recounts Deborah's turbulent search for a place within the family tradition, and finally, her triumphant discovery of a way to make the men who would exclude her - who are also the men she loves - listen to her voice. As in the high holiday prayer, Unasena Tokef, these men were like the great shofars, yet a still small voice needed to be heard. I can assure you will not survive Chapter 13 with dry eyes. I highly recommend this book not only as a memoir, but as a book that evokes the feeling of growing up as a Jewish female in the 1950's, reminds the readers of that cool and warm feeling of opening the door for Elijah during a seder, records the Jewish flight to the suburbs, recounts a girl's lifelong desire to be noticed, and her pain of first love.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
somber, contemlative memoir celebrates music, laments family, August 25, 2001
"A Joyful Noise," Deborah Weisgall's serious and brooding memoir, is far from a fluffy celebration of music and Judaic heritage. Its subtitle, "Claiming the Songs of My Fathers," more accurately captures the sense of conflict and struggle which permeates the life of a talented, tormented and frustrated young woman, who at once soars with the rich musical background of both her father and grandfather but simultaneously is denied participation and validation because of her gender. "A Joyful Noise" elicits both compassion and anger from the reader; one senses that had the author been born some twenty years later she would have had much more direct access to both her own talents and her clearly-articulated love for her heritage. The author does not disguise the central theme of her memoir. After a disappointing experience at a Passover seder, Deborah expresses her yearning to join her father and grandfather as full participants in both music and heritage. "I hummed the songs as quietly as I could, aching to get them right, afraid that my father would hear my wrong notes and correct me. They ran perfectly through my head but not from my mouth. I loved them. I wanted them." Yet, she understands that her ambition does not correspond with the very heritage she so deeply desires. Segregated, minimized and isolated due to sexist traditions and practices, Jewish women have had to sublimate their otherwise honorable ambitions into other avenues of expression. Sensing that possibility, even as a child, Deborah laments: "My desire was as strong as theirs; my voice was not. My breath stalled against my vocal cords, and the back of my throat throbbed from stopped-up songs and angry tears. I wanted to sing. I wanted to be heard." Weisgall's quest for authenticity, for voice, occurs during a period of national affluence and cultural indifference in the 1950s and on the cusp of our nation's profound social revolution of the 1960s. Deborah comes of age in a tension-riddled family; her non-religious mother, Nathalie, is indifferent to housework, and her beloved father, Hugo, consistently produces operas which are artistically gifted but critical failures. The Weisgalls constantly move from their Baltimore roots, whether it be to Maine for summers, or from college town to another, where Hugo can sustain his family's material needs while he tries to fulfill his own battered expectations as an artist. Deborah realizes the discord in her family is real; her mother's physical beauty cannot hide her bitterness just as her father's rapture with musci cannot hide his own frustration with failure and betrayal. Looming like a dense cloud over the family is the Holocaust, whose disruptive horror has created a permanent sense of dread and loss. In a desultory search through her parents' closet, Deborah discovers a shoe-box stuffed with raw and brutal photographs of cocentration camp victims. She understands in a visceral sense the impact of genocide on her father, who directly witnessed the horrific scenes while he served as a translator for the liberating United States Army during World War II. The Weisgalls are derivative survivors, having lost their past, their roots, their culture through the Holocaust. The author is able to trace the genesis of family friction to this loss of place. Nathalie, a lover of beauty, flounders in America; Hugo, linked in memory to his childhood in Czechoslovakia, wrestles with his own struggle to match his father (Abba) without the support of cultural stability and identity. The memoir is not without its faults. Unless one has a solid grasp of opera and classical music, Weisgall's detailed descriptions of her artistic passion tend to overwhelm the reader. Deborah's ultimately successful climb to identity occurs too abruptly, as well. Her ultimate chapters, which recount her experiences as Radcliffe and her emergence as an independent, secure woman, appear rushed and lack the elegant detail so prevalent throughout descriptions of her childhood. Nevertheless, this serious and introspective work deserves the critical praise it has garnered. "A Joyful Noise" deftly interweaves music, religious heritage and family into a tapestry both instructive and inspiring.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Gives me a mirror to look into myself, December 30, 2002
The author gave a birth of her daughter in ' 89, so did I deliver my third kids . This may be only one common thing to share between her , except both are Shubertian. Jewish and Japanese are often compared, and they are conspicuously differnt in the spiritual distance of each individual from the history of their own people. We , Japanese ,are genious of forgetting and we could change the attitude toward US so dramatically that Ruth Benedict couldn't help studying Japanese war captives. Whereas Jewish people,language wise, music wise , are trying to carry on the tradition, even though great constraint between the host country culture and also between generations of their own people. And 'an die Music'. Tan Dun, a Chinese composer living in NY,once said,' Western music develops horizontally'. I also admit, music are differnt in East and West, maybe because of Eastern ear VS Western ear. But when lyrics intermediate sounds and internal reality that words evoke , what type of ears you may have, you can enjoy music of differnt culture. So many operas, lied, Italian songs and hymns apperared in this books have told me so.
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