https://youtu.be/084cpqOT4N8Yigdal Elohim Chai – A miscast ’Three-Weeks’ Melody?This London melody for ‘Yigdal Elohim Chai’ may well have more to it than meets the eye. The first thing to note is that it is the only transcription for that piyyut to appear in the de Sola - Aguilar anthology published in 1857. Accordingly, it can be safely assumed that it was the tune used on most, if not all, Friday nights in the London Spanish and Portuguese community in the mid-nineteenth century. In more recent times, however, it seems to have suffered an unfortunate and perhaps unwarranted demotion, banished to the three Shabbatot falling Ben Hametsarim. A relegation that has been applied with equal force to its use as a setting for ‘En Kelohenu’ and ‘Adon Olam’. By contrast, the New York variant of this melody, sung in Shearith Israel to the final Kaddish every Friday night, bears no hallmark whatever of seasonal sadness. In Amsterdam, its character is even more emphatically one of celebration, as it is the designated setting for that same Kaddish on the eves of each of the Shalosh Regalim.While these three versions of the melody are very similar to each other, they are not musically identical. For example, the London variant remains in the original major key - resolving to the tonic, while those of New York and Amsterdam undergo a modulation to the relative minor and resolve to that tonic. Such divergences are not surprising and are common within musical traditions that develop in separate locales. That said, there is one difference between the three traditions which may not be accounted for quite so perfunctorily, and which could well be the tip of a musicological iceberg. Uniquely, and quite startlingly, the first eight bars of the Amsterdam variant of this melody follow - note for note - the opening eight bars of the Piyyut ‘Lekh Leshalom Geshem’. The obvious question to arise here is whether this is simply the result of a muddled musical memory or whether these two melodies are, in fact, long-lost cousins?The present recording is the London version, based on the arrangement of the choir by Jacob Hadida (choirmaster 1933-1937 and 1945-1954).Please share.