Sacred Service for Sabbath Eve

 

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Liner Notes

Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Sacred Service for the Sabbath Eve was written originally in 1943 on request from his friend Rabbi Nahum Immanuel, interim rabbi at Beth Sholom Temple in Santa Monica, California. Its premiere was originally envisioned for that Reform congregation and is therefore set to the prayer texts as they appear in the Union Prayer Book—except for the sections added later.

Castelnuovo-Tedesco had already written several individual prayer settings, beginning with l’kha dodi (1936) at the request of an Amsterdam synagogue for an a cappella male choir (his first setting of the Hebrew language). He had revised it for mixed choir and organ, at Cantor David Putterman’s invitation, for a performance in 1943 at the New York Park Avenue Synagogue’s first service of new liturgical music. Although Castelnuovo-Tedesco had not been actively involved in the Florence synagogue prior to his emigration, apart from holy day attendance, he had become acquainted with cantors and synagogue music directors in Los Angeles, who invited him to compose for their congregations. Yet he had never attempted an entire unified service, and he saw Rabbi Immanuel’s invitation as an opportunity to write a work dedicated to his mother’s memory. He later recalled that his mother had helped him with the Amsterdam l’kha dodi by transliterating the words with correct accentuation for him and making a literal translation. Also, at that time he was feeling increasingly anxious about the fate of his many relatives left behind in Europe, and he felt “filled with Jewish inspiration.”

As he began to contemplate the work, Castelnuovo-Tedesco was confronted by various obstacles. One was the mixed formal use of English and Hebrew, including English recitation, in the American Reform service (and in many Conservative/non-Orthodox services of that time as well). This seemed alien to him and presented an aesthetic imbalance. His resolution was to fashion organ accompaniments for those recitations, in which themes of preceding choral parts were developed in what he called a “melologue.” His resolve was to compensate for this perceived aesthetic dissimilarity by striving all the more for stylistic unity throughout. The organ, too, was problematic for him—not for reasons of Jewish legal prohibitions of musical instruments on Sabbath or other holy days, but because he held the common but historically erroneous prejudice against its sound as one associated with Western Christian churches. In fact, the organ had been introduced into Reform and Liberal synagogues in Germany in the 19th century, not to emulate Christian services, but for musical-aesthetic reasons and to facilitate orderly, Western-style congregational hymn singing. Moreover, organs had existed in a number of western and central Europe orthodox synagogues as well, albeit only for legally permitted occasions such as weddings, non–holy day services, and liturgical concerts. In any case, Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s subsequent use of the organ in his liturgical pieces after the Sacred Service suggests that he might have come to appreciate its sound within the context of Jewish worship.

An academic issue posed a more interesting conceptual problem for Castelnuovo-Tedesco in selecting an overall musical approach: whether to attempt to base the service on historical ground—specifically on early liturgical traditions or practice. He appears to have flirted briefly with the idea of using a reconstructed sound of Jewish worship in antiquity, or at least in its premodern stages. This would have meant consciously avoiding Western classical techniques, and he came to the conclusion that little could be known of the actual musical sound of early Hebrew liturgy, especially with its continuous acquisitions of musical features of host countries and cultures over the centuries. Also, he realized the difficulty of finding a way to utilize organ, part-writing, polyphony, or harmony in any such reconstruction, since he knew that none of these had existed in those early periods and that choral monody had probably prevailed. So he determined instead to follow specifically the Italian polyphonic tradition, in that way at least relating the work to another, albeit non-Jewish, aspect of his Italian heritage. He also saw a historic rationale for turning to the approach of the 16th and 17th-century Italian composer Salomone Rossi, the first to apply independent Renaissance polyphony to Hebrew liturgy.

The Sacred Service was completed at the end of 1943, although the composer later remarked, “In a way, it was never finished.” The premiere, however, never occurred at the Santa Monica synagogue. By early 1944 Rabbi Immanuel had left that interim post to become rabbi of the new Westwood Temple, in no position yet to cover the costs of the large professional choir the composer required; neither was the Santa Monica synagogue interested or able, since Rabbi Immanuel appears to have been its primary champion. Castelnuovo-Tedesco withdrew the service.

Two years later Cantor Putterman excerpted three movements from the full service—mi khamokha, May the Words, and kaddish—which were performed at the Park Avenue Synagogue in 1945. Castelnuovo-Tedesco had offered Putterman these three movements only on the condition that the Sacred Service would soon be performed in its entirety. Until that time, the Park Avenue services, which had become annual events, presented only individual compositions by a variety of composers in a single evening, but not yet entire services by single composers. However, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, stressing that he felt this to be his best work in many years, insisted that he wanted “for the first time to have it performed in its entirety; if not entire, I would not give you permission.” In 1950 the Sacred Service was premiered in full at Park Avenue, with some newly added movements. It was also recorded by the State Department for radio broadcast on the Voice of America. As the first complete singly composed service of the Park Avenue Synagogue commissioning program, it established a precedent, and that practice continued until at least 1976.

For the expanded Sacred Service for Park Avenue, Castelnuovo-Tedesco composed four brand-new settings for l’kha dodi, kiddush, ma tovu, and hashkivenu. These have been incorporated into the present Milken Archive recording.

Castelnuovo-Tedesco commented that he felt this to be one of his “most purely inspired works,” one of the pieces in which he began to “find” himself again. He observed that it had been inspired by neither dramatic nor mystical feelings, but by recollections of serenity from his early home life. How much the Service meant to him on an inner spiritual level is suggested by his expressed fantasy of being able to “hear it once in the synagogue in Florence” where his family had worshiped. When he sat among the congregation and watched the Torah being taken from the Ark, that synagogue had evoked in him an image of Jewish antiquity, and its image was filled with memories of family traditions. In America he had come to associate it with his personal Judaism. But in a special emotional way it indicates a return full circle to Jewish roots.

Castelnuovo-Tedesco fantasized that if he were ever to write a second service, it would either be in a completely nontraditional style or it would involve a faithful artistic resurrection of authentic tradition going back to antiquity. In that case he would employ a choir monodically—as he correctly supposed was the case in the ancient Temple and for a good time afterward—but with all the instruments enumerated in the Bible (in Psalm 150) instead of organ. “It would be a kind of jazz band, as was probably the Levites’ orchestra (in the Temple). Certainly no synagogue in America, perhaps in the whole world, would consent to perform it.” Of course, there had been the Bloch and Milhaud services with orchestra, performed in a prayer service context, albeit classically employed. And in the 1960s there were a few willing experimenters, even with actual jazz and blues ensembles, who found synagogues willing to accommodate. But for the most part Castelnuovo-Tedesco was correct in his skepticism. It is a pity that he did not live to witness that time when a few more musically visionary synagogues, including even some within the Conservative movement, were willing to experiment with orchestral services. Some, such as ...And David Danced by Charles Davidson (in a basically traditional Conservative congregation), have been successful in using the orchestra not only to retain but also to reinforce the prayer experience, in no way expropriating the congregation’s own role. Castelnuovo-Tedesco would have approved.

Even though Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s own tradition was Sephardi, the Sacred Service was written according to Ashkenazi pronunciation and accentuation, which was the prevailing practice in America, except in specifically Sephardi congregations. Many Conservative and then Reform—followed even by some Orthodox—synagogues only gradually adopted the Sephardi pronunciation later, in order to be synchronized with the official pronunciation in Israel.

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Lyrics

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Credits

Composer: Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco

Performers: Ted Christopher, Baritone;  Jeremy Cohen, Tenor;  Ronald Corp, Conductor;  Rabbi Rodney Mariner, Speaker;  Hugh Potton, Organ;  The London Chorus

Additional Credits:

Publisher: Universal-MCA Music Publishing, a division of Universal Studios
Translation from Hebrew: Rabbi Morton M. Leifman