A Joyful Noise: Claiming the Songs of My Fathers (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "When I was a child in Baltimore, Maryland, I imagined that from the highest point of the arc of my swing I could see the..." (more)
Key Phrases: Yom Kippur, New York, Deborah Weisgall (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

At the beginning of her memoir, poet and novelist Weisgall (Still Point), recalls her childhood longing for a place within the musical and religious culture of her family. But, as a girl, she was excluded from taking part in the rituals that resonated so deeply for her. Descended from generations of cantors, her grandfather Abba brought his family to America from Czechoslovakia in 1920. Her father Hugo composed secular operas (among them Six Characters in Search of an Author, which was based on a play by Luigi Pirandello and opened at the New York City Opera in 1959) and conducted the synagogue choir. Growing up in 1950s Baltimore, Weisgall developed a sharp eye for family dynamics. Her father's career as a teacher and composer periodically uprooted the family, but he was never quite able to separate himself from the Baltimore synagogue of his father, often traveling home hundreds of miles for a single religious holiday. Weisgall observes her father and grandfather's "musical struggle between parochial and secular life" (choosing between the steady job of a cantor and the more tenuous but diverse career of an opera singer) and tried to find for herself where faith and music intersect. It is only when she became a mother herself that Weisgall joined the more tolerant choir of the synagogue in her parents' community in Maine, finally able to take an active part in her musical and religious heritage, confident that her own daughter wouldn't have to struggle to be heard. This simply written chronicle subtly traces the author's coming of age, providing a highly personal vision of music as part of Jewish religious culture. (Sept.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

A conventional chronology only tells the facts; Weisgall, a poet, novelist, and art critic for the New York Times, tells about the passion underlying them. She introduces the reader to life in her Jewish family in Baltimore, sharing the power of faith in God that sustained her grandfather through the great cultural change he experienced as an immigrant and her father as he viewed the Holocaust from afar. Life revolved around the synagogue, and here the men in her life mesh music and faith, her grandfather as cantor and her father as choir director (he was also an opera composer). Weisgall, a girl, was excluded from fulfilling her fondest dream, sharing her faithAespecially through song. Finally, however, in the 1990s she was able to join the choir, excluded no more; this is the story of her struggle. Highly recommended.AKaren Steenwyk, Brewton, AL
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 262 pages
• Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Pr; 1st edition (September 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0871137585
• ISBN-13: 978-0871137586
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,025,732 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

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

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.

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

By	Bruce J. Wasser (Lake Bluff, IL) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: A Joyful Noise: Claiming the Songs of My Fathers (Paperback)

"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.

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

By	Keiko Motoshima (Bunkyo, Tokyo Japan) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: A Joyful Noise: Claiming the Songs of My Fathers (Paperback)

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.