SYMPHONIC MUSIC OF JEWISH EXPERIENCE

This is part two of a multi-part exhibit on the Symphonic Music of Jewish Experience.

Part 1: Concertos |  Part 3: Suites |  Part 4: Symphonic Songs

For centuries, Jewish life in Europe was primarily lived separately from the majority population. As emancipation and the Haskala (enlightenment) led Jews toward increased participation in general society, the need to demonstrate that Jewish culture was—or could be—on par with European culture became more pronounced.

The turn of the twentieth century, with the Zionist movement in full swing and nationalistic fervor all over Europe, was a particularly influential time for this. Composers, folklorists, and ethnomusicologists were trekking into remote regions to document folk music traditions thought to be on the verge of extinction. And a group of accomplished Jewish musicians at the St. Petersburg Conservatory were encouraged by their teacher, the composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, to utilze Jewish folk music in their compositions. “How strange that my Jewish students occupy themselves so little with their own native music,” the composer remarked upon hearing one of his students’ arrangements of a Jewish folk tune. “Jewish music exists; it is wonderful music, and it awaits its Glinka” (see Loeffler 2010:106).

All of which compelled many (non-Jews as well as Jews) to wonder: could Jews, like Germans, Russians, or Italians, have an identifiable “national” music based on Jewish folk music traditions? One answer to that question came in the form of the Society for Jewish Folk Music, an organization formed by Rimsky-Korsakov’s students that dedicated itself both to preserving Europe’s Jewish folk culture, and to making it the basis of a common, national Jewish culture. Much of the music composed by Jews during this period—and since—can be viewed as a kind of response to this question.

This multi-part exhibit explores how composers have addressed this question within the realm of symphonic music: symphonies, concertos, tone poems, and other primarily instrumental works for orchestra. Though the repertoire appears in the Milken Archive in multiple thematic volumes, it is considered here in the context of form to provide a more general look at how composers have dealt with specific forms vis-à-vis Jewish music. Part two concerns the symphony, with nine representative works.

*Where available, details concerning a work’s composition and premiere have been provided.

Symphony Midrash Esther

The notion of midrash (commentary) is an often-employed metaphor for composers discussing Jewish music. It serves as a means of connecting the present to the past by way of interpretation.

This is not how Jan Meyerowitz meant the term when he employed it in the title of this programmatic symphony. Rather, Meyerowitz arrived at the “mood and character” of the piece by reading rabbinic midrashim on the Book of Esther, which he felt “intensifie[d] the impact of the Biblical story through powerful, often weird, details.”

The symphony's first movement sets the stage by portraying impending doom, which comes to fruition in the second movement, depicting Haman’s rages. According to the program notes that accompanied the work's premiere, Meyerowitz has also apparently added his own commentary here, having worked in a musical depiction of the swastika symbol. The third movement relates the love between Esther and Ahasuerus, while the fourth evokes the spirit of Purim, the holiday that celebrates Esther’s heroic act that saved the Jews from destruction.

Symphony: Songs of the Soul

Shirei n’shama encompasses a broad range of Jewish musical traditions: Ethiopian Jewish chant, Hasidic nigunnim, eastern European liturgical and folk music, Ladino folk song, and Yemenite Jewish music. “I wanted to do a piece that reflected the polycultural nature of the Jewish people as a nomadic people,” he said of the work, which was premiered at the Jewish Arts Festival of Long Island in 1987.

Amram's relationship with Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and others in the 1950s has indelibly tied him to the beat generation. But he has followed music (and the muse) wherever it takes him: Uptown, where Leonard Bernstein appointed him the first composer-in-residence at the New York Philharmonic; Downtown, to the Five Spot, where he played with Charles Mingus and other jazz visionaries; to Africa, Europe, the Near East, and the American Heartland.

Throughout his career, Amram has remained humbly and acutely aware that it is only through a sincere connection to his Jewish background that he can faithfully and respectfully approach cultures not his own.