Boston Camerata & Joel Cohen - The Sacred Bridge: Jews And Christians In Medieval Europe (1991)

Originally recorded in 1989, The Sacred Bridge contains a speculative program linking various genres of Christian and Jewish religious music, most of it medieval. The Boston Camerata continued to perform the program in various forms in subsequent years. A 2011 reissue on the Warner Classics and Jazz label stripped the packaging of its notes, which included justifications by longtime Boston Camerata conductor Joel Cohen of many of the musical decisions he made. But the basic idea of Jewish-Christian musical interchange comes through clearly enough for the general listener. Cohen makes the daring decision to interleave verses of Psalm 114 in Gregorian and Ashkenazy chant versions and finds a striking similarity between them. This is not a total surprise, given the roots of Christian chant in the Near East (and ultimately in the ancient world), but the family similarity has rarely been so concisely and dramatically demonstrated. The rest of the album features various forms of European Jewish music that have close or more distant links to the wider culture. There are Spanish Sephardic pieces rendered in the Cohen's usual sparse style; later performers have done it more evocatively, but in this genre, as in so many others, the Boston Camerata was ahead of the curve. Especially intriguing are two pieces from Carpentras in Provence, apparently originating in the 18th century, classified here as "Jewish folklore of the Mediterranean basin" but definitely reflecting the influence of Classical-period practice. Sample the Circumcision Song, track 8, for the rather haunting effect. The last part of the album features another alternation, juxtaposing Sephardic religious songs with pieces by Spanish King Alfonso X "El Sabio"; this technique casts the tolerant world of medieval Spain uniquely as a society rooted in ancient musical practices. An interesting release whose interest goes well beyond its purely ecumenical qualities. -- James Manheim