Out of the Whirlwind

 

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Liner Notes

Written in memory of the millions of Holocaust victims, Out of the Whirlwind was commissioned by Kingsborough Community College, in Brooklyn, to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the Allied liberation of the German concentration camps in Europe. The project was initiated by Simeon Loring, who conducted the premiere in 1984 in anticipation of the actual commemorative year (1985). The six-movement work is scored for mezzo-soprano, tenor, large wind ensemble (wind orchestra), piano, harp, and bass. It is based on Yiddish songs by Holocaust victims—some who survived the camps and German-built ghettos, and others who were murdered.

1. Es brent [Undzer shtetl brent]
(It [our town] Is Burning)

This song was adopted after the war as a “Holocaust” expression, even though it was written before the German invasion of Poland—before anyone even anticipated the turn of events that became the Holocaust. Yet it has become one of the most frequently sung songs at Holocaust commemorations and memorial services. It was written by Mordkhe [Mordecai] Gebirtig (1877–1942), one of the last popular European Yiddish folk poets, whose simple but poignant folklike songs were among the best known not only in eastern Europe, but throughout Yiddish cultural circles worldwide. Gebirtig wrote this song following a pogrom in the Polish town of Przytyk in 1938, where the arsonists and murderers were local Poles, not Germans. Following the German occupation of Poland, Gebirtig continued to compose poetry and songs in the Kraków ghetto, until he was shot by Germans in 1942. The sentiments and the words were subsequently to prove prescient, almost prophetic of the Holocaust and the world’s indifference: “Our town is burning, and you just stand with your arms folded.” Adolphe used both the poem and the melody only as raw material for this movement.

2. Mayn mame hot gevolt zayn af mayn khasene
(My Mother Longed to Be at My Wedding)

The original song is by Emil Gorovets (1926–2001), a Soviet Yiddish singer and songwriter who emigrated to the United States after the war. In this song, the bride’s mother has been murdered by the Germans and thrown, along with many other victims, into a ditch, or mass grave. The bride, during her wedding, hallucinates that her mother is there with her, singing in celebration, and she keeps turning to the musicians in the band, exhorting them, “Play, [klezmorim] musicians,” as if asking them to cause her, for the moment, to forget the horrible truth. In this movement the composer used the complete text, but only parts of the original melody. “It felt a little constraining,” he remarked, “but I took the parts that haunted me.”

3. Treblinka

The composer of this melody and the poet are both unknown, but the song was sung in the ghetto of Biala Podlaska. Treblinka was one of the most notorious death camps to which Jews were being transported from their trapped position in the ghettos, which had been constructed by the Germans as holding depots. In the song, the Jews are being made aware of their destination and fate. Only the original words are used in this movement.

4. Rivkele, di shabesdike
(Rebecca, the Sabbath One)

Only the melody of this song is utilized for this instrumental movement, almost as an interlude. The words, whose melody is anonymous, are by Peysakh Kaplan (1870–1943)—a writer, composer, music critic, and editor of the Yiddish daily Dos naye lebn (The New Life), in prewar Bialystok. Kaplan was murdered in the Bialystok ghetto in 1943. The song concerns a horrifying incident in the Bialystok ghetto on the Sabbath of July 12, 1942, when 5,000 Jewish men were dragged from the synagogues and shot by the Germans. Women whose husbands had been murdered that day became known as “the Sabbath ones”—or, in effect, “the Sabbath widows.”

5. Shtil di nakht
(Still the Night)

The composer of this melody is unknown. The poem is by Hirsh Glik (1922–44), a resistance fighter who was a member of Yungvald, a literary group of young poets, before the war. He is probably best remembered for another of his Yiddish songs (words only), Zog nit keyn mol, which became the hymn of the United Partisan Organization in 1943 and then spread to nearly all the ghettos and camps in eastern Europe, and which is now the de facto official hymn of Holocaust commemorations everywhere. Glik wrote Shtil di nakht after a successful raid, during which a young woman, who had just barely learned how to hold a gun, successfully blew up a German ammunition-bearing convoy with a single shot. Glik was later imprisoned in a concentration camp in Estonia, where he was shot by the Germans in 1944. According to Adolphe, this movement is essentially both an arrangement and a “recomposition” of the song.

6. Ani ma’amin
(I Believe)

These words are taken from the twelfth of Moses Maimonides’ (1135–1204) “Thirteen Articles of Faith” and have been set to different tunes at various times by various composers, This particular version has become especially associated with the Holocaust, since it was frequently sung by Jews in ghettos and camps as they were marched to their deaths. The piece concludes with a solo English horn playing a variant of the tune while, in the composer’s own words, “the entire orchestra tries to crush it.”

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Lyrics

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Credits

Composer: Bruce Adolphe

Performers: John Aler, Tenor;  Phyllis Pancella, Mezzo-soprano;  University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music Wind Symphony;  Rodney Winther, Conductor

Additional Credits:

Publisher: Norruth Music Inc. (Dist: MMB Music)
Editing Engineer: Marc Stedman

Translation: Eliyahu Mishulovin