Klezmer Music In Fiddler On The Roof

It is undeniable that music plays a major role in the musical Fiddler on the roof, the music demonstrates happiness, anger, celebration, despair and other feelings to the audience. A lot of the music in fiddler such as “If I were a rich man”, “To life”, and “Miracles of miracles” can be characterized as Klezmer music. Klezmer is a genre of music that found tradition in the Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern Europe in 19th century. The characteristics of the Klezmer style music is the clarinet and violin, this is because music is often banned in Romania, violins and clarinets are comparatively quieter and easily transportable. Klezmer music is often played at weddings and celebrations, and in a major key. Songs also tend to have laughter or sobbing, this can be seen in the song “miracles of miracles”. Another characteristic is that they often incorporate chanting and verses into the song. As seen in “If I were a rich man” there are lyrics that are incomprehensible by the public; in an interview with the writer Sheldon Harnick, He said that the purpose of the verse is to mimic chanting as they do in Klezmer music.
In the bottle dance for example, we went to many orthodox Jewish weddings and observe how they dance and the different steps they use. He thought of the bottle dance when he saw a young man doing tricks with a bottle on his head. Fascinated by this idea, he created a whole dance that have Jewish elements such as the cross steps, back steps, as well as clapping and sliding while a keeping a bottle stable on the dancer’s