Yoel David Loewenstein
Yoel David Loewenstein (1816-1850), also known as the Vilna Balebeysel, was a 19th-century Jewish cantor in Vilna. A prodigious singer from childhood, he officiated at the Great Synagogue of Vilna and was celebrated for a lyric tenor voice and brilliant coloratura. The tragic events of his life held great fascination for Jewish audiences and were dramatized in several novels and plays.
Epithets
His surname was originally Loewenstein, but he later took on the name Strashunsky after his father-in-law. In Yiddish he was nicknamed Der Yingele (the little lad) in youth, and later Der Balebeysel, a diminutive of baal habayit (householder) after he married and became financially independent.
Early life and rise in Vilna
Loewenstein was born in Libau (Liepaja), in 1816. His father, Tzvi Hirsch Bochur Halevi Loewenstein, was chazzan of the Choralna Synagogue in Libau. The family moved to Vilna in 1822, when his father was appointed city chazzan there. By the age of eleven, Yoel David was already known as a remarkable singer, and the congregation often urged that he officiate in the Great Synagogue on Shabbat, substituting for his father.
He showed extraordinary musical aptitude in childhood, singing with a clear soprano voice. After his father's sudden death in 1829, he was selected as his successor despite his youth. A wealthy congregant, Mordechai Reiness Strashun, took him as a son-in-law and provided him a lifetime allowance.
Voice and musical style
Contemporary descriptions emphasize his lyric tenor voice, brilliant coloratura, and a style rooted in Jewish folk-tune idioms with an "Eastern" flavor. He was also regarded as a talented composer; his pieces were described as original, charming, and expressive of Jewish-oriental sentimentality.
At around age twenty-three, Loewenstein began formal music study with Stanislaus Moniuszko, a Polish musician who settled in Vilna as a teacher and organist. Moniuszko overheard Loewenstein singing a melody he had only recently composed and, astonished by the accuracy, invited him to study vocal training, harmony and composition with him.
Operatic career in Warsaw
In 1841, Moniuszko was appointed as a professor at the Warsaw Conservatory, and Loewenstein greatly missed his musical companionship. Shortly afterwards, all three of Loewenstein's children died tragically, one after another. He was devastated, and decided to travel away from Vilna, to overcome his sorrow. Whilst he visited other cities, his primary objective was seemingly to reunite with Moniuszko in Warsaw. Moniuszko organized several concerts for Loewenstein to perform, and he was received with such great acclaim that many non-Jews sought out his services at the Warsaw Choralna synagogue.
Loewenstein premiered the role of Jontek in Moniuszko's opera Halka, for which he shaved off his beard and changed his clothes. The title character was played by the daughter of Count Ivan Paskevich, with whom Loewenstein began an affair. His long absence from Vilna gained the suspicion of his wife, father-in-law, and the trustees of the congregation, who sent a wealth of urgent letters asking when Lowenstein would be returning. Yoel David's internal conflict between his religious life and his artistic ambitions, combined with the waning of his affair with the Countess, spurred him to flee abruptly to Vienna.
Vienna and personal crisis
In Vienna, he met Salomon Sulzer, whose powerful artistry reportedly shattered Loewenstein's self-image as the leading chazzan of his time. This new style of Western chazzanut also confused him even more – whether he should return to the Lithuanian-Polish style of his roots, learn the new style of Sulzer, or give up on his cantorial past and throw himself into opera.
Final years and death
In the end he had a complete mental and physical breakdown. He returned to Vilna melancholic, a shell of his former self. He continued to dress in the German fashion, and his wife was almost a complete stranger to him. Despite deep reluctance from both his wife and his father-in-law, he convinced her to agree to divorce, and resigned from his position as chazzan of the Great Synagogue.
His guilt over his affair led to him to withdraw entirely from his cantorial career and become an ascetic wanderer, wearing tattered clothes and devoting himself to Talmud study. Many pleaded with him to chant a service, but their efforts were mostly in vain. Nevertheless, there are several stories, from Dubno, Grodno and Berditchev where the Vilna Balebeysel appeared, led the most heavenly services, deeply penetrating the hearts of all the worshippers and then disappeared just as suddenly.
He was eventually located by his sister and father-in-law, who managed to place him in an asylum in Warsaw. His condition gradually deteriorated, and he later contracted tuberculosis. He passed away on 17 Tammuz 1850, shortly after reciting his own epitaph "Adam do'eg al ibud damav, v'eino doeg al ibud yamav".
Legacy
Though Loewenstein did leave behind a great number of his compositions in manuscript, his wife purportedly burned all his notebooks in a jealous rage over her unrequited love. Still, a number of his outstanding works were copied down by those who had the privilege to hear him in person. These few samples reveal an orginal, individualistic approach to chazzanut and traditional Eastern European shteyger of which he was the outstanding exponent. Despite the scarcity of surviving works, he is remembered as the iconic Vilna Balebeysel, a prodigy whose brief career left a lasting impression on Lithuanian Jewish musical memory.