Good Essay About Symphonie Espagnole And Kol Nidrei In The Jazz Singer

We first hear Symphonie Espagnole during the introduction to the Cantor, and the relationship he has with his son, Jakie. The Cantor laments his son’s absence on the Day of Atonement as he prays for Jakie to return and sing Kol Nidre, which is traditionally sung in Jewish synagogues on the Day of Atonement. The dense string arrangements here are heavy with longing and further exacerbated as the Cantor finds out Jakie has been seen singing ragtime songs at a local bar. In this entire sequence, Symphonie Espagnole accompanies this friction between the Cantor and Jakie. These two characters also represent a timeless conflict between tradition and modernity and between father and son. The use of this piece of music echoes this sentiment. Its Spanish exoticism reflects an increasingly culturally diverse modern world, and Jakie’s point of view. This is then starkly juxtaposed with Kol Nidrei. The contrast of the rawness of human voices and the orchestral symphony draws us in to this particular story. A moment ago, the story was a universal one, now, we see the world from the Cantor’s very personal point of view. It is intercut with shots of Jakie leaving the family home. The intensely solemn Kol Nidrei highlights the difficulty for both father and son in breaking this tradition.
Symphonie Espagnole appears again at the Cantor’s birthday. As Yudleson enters, the same melodies play faster, backed by oom-pah rhythms, which makes the piece suddenly comedic. He is introduced to Jakie (now Jack) as “a guy called Noodleson”. The viewer suddenly sees Yudleson as an amusing outsider. His ethnicity is alien, and so from a distance, we now see him and indeed the Cantor as the ‘other’. Again we have stepped back from the personal side of the story and can see it from a wider, sociological perspective.
After performing a dress rehearsal of his new broadway show, Jakie is again conflicted. This section is composed of short, simple parts, full of trills, space and drama. Jakie finally has to choose directly whether he will follow his own path or disappoint his father. As we see the Cantor on his deathbed, Jakie’s voice singing Kol Nidrei enters. This the moment the narrative has been moving towards. We have waited, along with the Cantor, in anticipation to see whether or not Jakie will sing, so that this second appearance of Kol Nidrei in the film has much more weight than the first.
The use of these two pieces of music in the film is interesting. Both pieces have several somber melodic lines that are almost identical, and both also have certain social and ethnic connotations. It is simultaneously the connection and the contrast between these two pieces seems to be important. There is no right and wrong here, but rather the message is one of compromise. As Jakie’s Mama iterates “he is not my boy anymore - he belongs to the whole world now”.