Shalom Chaverim: A Song History
Zemereshet, the Israeli archive of early Hebrew song, lists both the words and the music of "Shalom Chaverim" as by unknown authors.[1] Andreas Marti, commenting on the German hymn site evangeliums.net, explains that its few Hebrew words greet friends with peace and bid them farewell until they meet again, making it a song of leave-taking; in his view the round is now so widely known that its origins can no longer be traced.[2] The archive describes it as a canon for three voices and records its earliest printings, words and music together, in Germany in 1935: in Shirei Eretz Yisrael from the Jüdischer Verlag in Berlin, and in Hawa Naschira, published by Anton Benjamin of Leipzig and Hamburg, which set it to a form of the tune beginning in the relative major and gave it words greeting children and their teacher.[1] Zemereshet also cites a 1938 songbook from Anshe Emet Synagogue, Songs of My People, and notes that Henry Klausner used to teach the canon at choir gatherings in Israel and abroad.[1]
Hebrew Bible, Spain, ink, tempera and gold on parchment, 1300–1350. A medieval Hebrew manuscript, shown because the round's words are Hebrew; it has no connection to the song.
The Weavers sang it at their 1955 concert at Carnegie Hall, and the performance was issued on the album The Weavers at Carnegie Hall; Zemereshet notes that the record's credit to "Paul Campbell" names no actual arranger; the Weavers adopted that pseudonym for copyright purposes.[1] A 2018 piece in the Forward by Benjamin Ivry connects the song with an arrangement published by the Weavers' Fred Hellerman and points out that the whole text is just three Hebrew words, sung over and over as a round.[3] Hymnary.org lists the tune in 46 hymnals and gives its source as an Israeli folk song; among them are The Hymnal 1982, The United Methodist Hymnal (1989) and Glory to God (2013).[4] In German-speaking churches it is number 434 in the 1994 Evangelisches Gesangbuch, and evangeliums.net pairs it with a German adaptation that asks the Lord's peace to accompany the singers.[2]
Spelled "Shalon Chaverim," it is one of the 28 rounds, canons and circular songs in Mark Gilston's Playing-A-Round With Dulcimers, a book for groups of dulcimer players who all play the same line but begin at different moments.[5]
Sources
- Zemereshet: "Shalom Chaverim".
- evangeliums.net: "Schalom chaverim (Kanon)".
- The Forward: "The Secret Jewish History Of The Weavers".
- Hymnary.org: "Shalom Chaverim".
- Mark Gilston: "Playing-A-Round With Dulcimers".
- Image: Hebrew Bible, Spain, ink, tempera and gold on parchment, 1300–1350. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.