ld
lays have clothed themselves with a modern garb--a new rhythm vibrates
through our historic melodies, keener strength in the familiar words,
heightened dignity in the cherished songs. Two generations and all parts
of the world have hearkened to your harmonies, responding to them with
tears of joy or sorrow, with feelings stirred from the recesses of the
heart. To your music have listened entranced the boy and the girl on the
day of declaring their allegiance to the covenant of the fathers; the
youth and the maiden in life's most solemn hour; men and women in all
the sacred moments of the year, on days of mourning and of festivity.

A quarter of a century ago, when you celebrated the end of twenty-five
years of useful work, a better man stood here, and spoke to you. Leopold
Zunz on that occasion said to you: "Old thoughts have been transformed
by you into modern emotions, and long stored words seasoned with your
melodies have made delicious food."

This is your share in the revival of Jewish poesy, and what you have
resuscitated, and remodelled, and re-created, will endure, echoing and
re-echoing through all the lands. In you Higros the Levite has been
restored to us. But your melodies will never sink into oblivious
silence. They have been carried by an honorable body of disciples to
distant lands, beyond the ocean, to communities in the remote countries
of civilization. Thus they have become the perpetual inheritance of the
congregation of Jacob, the people that has ever loved and wooed music,
only direst distress succeeding in flinging the pall of silence over
song and melody.

Holy Writ places the origin of music in the primitive days of man,
tersely pointing out, at the same time, music's conciliatory charms: it
is the descendant of Cain, the fratricide, a son of Lemech, the slayer
of a man to his own wounding, who is said to be the "father of all such
as play on the harp and guitar" (_Kinnor_ and _Ugab_). Another of
Lemech's sons was the first artificer in every article of copper and
iron, the inventor of weapons of war, as the former was the inventor of
stringed instruments. Both used brass, the one to sing, the other to
fight. So music sprang from sorrow and combat. Song and roundelay,
timbrels and harp, accompanied our forefathers on their wanderings, and
preceded the armed men into battle. So, too, the returning victor was
greeted, and in the Temple on Moriah's crest, joyful songs of gratitude
extolled the