If I should ever die, G-d forbid,” wrote one famous writer, “let this be my epitaph: ‘The only proof he needed for the existence of G-d was music.’” I’m not so sure that this holds true about all music, but it is certainly so with regard to the music that emerges from tefillah, in which religious expression merges with musical composition. I say this because I have heard Reb Benzion Miller daven.
Via the words of our tefillos, Reb Benzion took you on a musical journey to unknowable realms. When he stood at the amud, the world suddenly fell silent, and upon that silence this chasidishe chazzan built ineffable castles of music. His davening was almost a mystical experience.
This might have been so because his music was always more than mere music. Reb Benzion was perhaps one of the most ingenuous commentators on tefillah, articulating with his vocal acrobatics the words of the siddur and machzor. His davening made one think not of the skills of a cantor but of the avodah of a chasidishe rebbe. You almost wanted him to supplicate Hashem on your behalf. That is why his davening was appreciated by people who wouldn’t otherwise appreciate chazzanus. Moreover, after hearing him daven it became difficult to appreciate anyone else, which could be a problem.
Reb Benzion Miller passed away this Monday at the age of 77. Born on December 8, 1947, in a displaced persons camp in Foehrenwald, Germany, Reb Benzion was the son of Holocaust survivors. His father, Reb Aharon Daniel Miller, was a revered chazzan, shochet and mohel, continuing a family tradition that had served the Bobover chasidic court for generations.
Reb Benzion’s prodigious musical talent emerged early; he began singing at the age of five. He studied music theory and solfège under Cantor Samuel B. Taube in Montreal and honed his vocal technique at the Champaign School of Music. He later trained under Dr. Puggell, Cantor Avshalom Zfira and Allan Bowers.
Over the course of his distinguished career, Reb Benzion became one of the most celebrated cantors of his time. He sang in the most prestigious concert halls, accompanied by world-class orchestras, including the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra, the Jerusalem Symphony, the Rishon LeZion Symphony, the Haifa Symphony and members of the London Symphony Orchestra. In 1981, he became the cantor of Temple Beth El of Borough Park in Brooklyn, a position previously held by legendary chazzanim Mordechai Hershman, Berele Chagy and Moshe Koussevitzky.
I was privileged to interview him before Rosh Hashanah of 2012, in issue #87.
In Regular Garb
Offstage, so to speak, Reb Benzion was almost unrecognizable. When he donned his cantorial hat and let his voice vibrate majestically throughout the vaulted chamber of a shul, he seemed almost larger than life. That morning, however, as we sat and shmoozed in Ami’s offices, he was wearing his regular weekday clothes, a suit with a short jacket and a ready smile, which rendered him far more accessible than the last time I’d seen him.
“The most important part,” Reb Benzion began when I asked him about his davening, “is the text. How do you address it? It has to do with mood. You also have to be able to improvise. In chazzanishe shprach they call a good chazzan a ‘zugger.’ This means that he can come up with things on the spot without any previous notions. I learned this from my father. That’s how he davened and that’s how I daven. He was very musical. Things were always happening. He went from minor to major, from major to freygish; he always moved around. That way, it doesn’t become boring. When you’re ‘treading water’ in one place, how much can you take? When a chazzan lacks musicianship it becomes boring. I have a friend who says about some chazzanim, ‘They’re revving the engine while they’re in neutral. They’re not going anywhere.’”
“I don’t think the video or audio clips of you really capture what you do,” I told him.
He was unfazed by my candor. “The clips are usually of me singing something at a concert…shtiklach that are popular, famous and expected. But davening is always new. I never do the same Rosh Chodesh bentching twice. I have the main melody as the anchor, but the rest is always different. I can’t repeat what I did the last time. The mood is different. It’s all about the moment. I express how I feel at that moment in my davening. I might be bothered or annoyed, or happy and cheerful.”
“Do you think that what you do is done best in a shul, or can it also be done in a studio?” I asked him.
“I could do it in a studio too, but then you don’t have the same atmosphere. Tefillah can’t be keva (static). That atmosphere would be missing in a studio.”
“How about the Yomim Nora’im? Is the davening simply longer?”
“Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are a totally different experience. I have a friend next door to your office who used to be a chazzan. He said to me, ‘Why do you have to say so much? Just say ‘Hineni’ and ‘Unesaneh Tokef,’ and the rest say quietly and go home!’ I said, ‘I’m sorry. On Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur I also have to daven for myself. I’m not preoccupied with anything else. I’m just davening.’
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