Episode 1: Introduction

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This opening program in the acclaimed radio series that introduced the world to the Milken Archive features orchestral and chamber pieces, excerpts from an orthodox sacred service, and a collection of Yiddish theater songs by Joseph Rumshinsky.

Episode Transcript

Leonard Nimoy
Just one generation after the arrival of the Mayflower, in the year 1654, the first Jewish immigrants arrived in North America. Like many later newcomers to these shores, they came as indigent refugees from persecution. And like so many nationalities that later built this new nation, they eventually established the community and contributed richly to American culture, in literature and journalism, in theater and in film, and especially in music. Hello, I'm Leonard Nimoy. This is the first program of a 13 part series that celebrates three-and-a-half centuries of uninterrupted Jewish life in the United States by exploring the extraordinary range of its music. For more than a decade now, the music of the American Jewish experience has been documented in a unique undertaking, the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music. It was created by the Milken Family Foundation in 1990 through the vision of its chairman, Lowell Milken. We'll hear from him a bit later in this program, and we'll listen to examples of the more than 600 works by over 200 composers represented in the Milken Archive.

Leonard Nimoy
To place this music in its cultural, historical, and musical context, we'll draw on conversations between the internationally acclaimed Conductor Gerard Schwarz and the artistic director of the Milken Archive, Neil W. Levin. At the outset, Gerard Schwarz asked Neil Levin about whether there is indeed a distinctively Jewish kind of music.

Gerard Schwarz
The other day, I did a little talk with the very distinguished composer, David Diamond. We were playing his Aḥava, his wonderful piece that we recorded for the Archive. I asked David, Is there a Jewish music, I mean, in terms of actual modes, melodies, motives? His answer was yes. He felt that there are certain melodic material, certain modal melodic material, even certain harmonies that he would consider to be Jewish. Now, I find that odd in a way because I use the example at that time, you take the slow movement of the New World Symphony of Dvorak, is that a spiritual or is that a Czech folk song? Well, it could be either one. If you sing it to yourself, you could say, Oh, that's from the American Negro experiences as spiritual. Or you can say this is Czech folk music.

Neil Levin
You've brought up the best composer to use as an example. I often do this in lectures and deliberately fool people to start with. I'll take the Dvorak violin concerto in the last movement, I think it's the second theme.

Gerard Schwarz
The way you sing it, it sounds very Jewish, I must say.

Neil Levin
That's my point. I have recorded that with a male choir who is expert in singing genuine Chasidic kinds of melodies. I play the recording and point out how Dvorak probably took that from a Hasidic melody in the Carpathian Mountains. Then, of course, I tell him the truth that that melody is absolutely not part of any Hasidic repertoire in the world. So far as we know, it was probably a Moravian folk tune. But it's the way you do it. It's the inflection of the voice because music, like anything else, is never pure. There is no such thing as racial purity. We all know that that's total bigotry to propose that there is something like that. There's no such thing as cultural purity or musical purity. There's interaction through the centuries. What David Diamond is proposing may be true for Eastern European Jewry out of which he came. But the very sounds that David Diamond is talking about, those sounds would be absolutely foreign to Yemanite Jewry, Persian Jewry, Bukharian Jewry, all those Jewry that are just as much Jewish as Eastern European.

Leonard Nimoy
Milken Archive artistic director Neil Levin speaking with maestro Gerard Schwarz. For our first selection of music, perhaps it's most appropriate to begin with the foundational document of the Jewish people, the Bible. The stories of Scripture have inspired countless works by Jewish and Christian composes alike. The Siberian born composer Aaron Avshalomov composed his Four Biblical Tableau when he lived in Portland, Oregon in the 1920s. It recalls three scenes from the Bible, Queen Esther's prayer, Rebecca by the well, and Ruth and Naomi, followed by a processional. This music, by Aaron Avshalomov, is performed by the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Gerard Schwarz.

Four Biblical Tableaux by Aaron Avshalomov

Leonard Nimoy
The Four Biblical Tableau by Aaron Avshalomov, performed by the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Gerard Schwarz from a Naxos release. You're listening to the first program in a series drawn from the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music. I'm Leonard Nimoy. The Milken Archive is a project of the Milken Family Foundation. Lowell Milken, who created the Milken Archive, talks about how the project fits the foundation's purposes.

Gerard Schwarz
As we look at this American Jewish musical experience, it has so many facets, whether it's religious music, whether it's music for the Synagogue, whether it's Klezmer music, whether it's some folk material, Yemenite or Ladino or whatever it may be. It seems to me like we have a huge, vast amount of extraordinary music. Except for the most obvious sacred service by Darius Milhaud or something, which is a classical work for baritone chorus and orchestra. Except when you have a work like that, you have so many interpretive decisions to make when you're starting to deal with the Yiddish theater music. Even with the Yiddish language. How do you deal with all these interpretive ideas of all the different facets that this series represents, not only the classical music that is in some ways the easiest to perform?

Neil Levin
Well, Jerry, you know that we did a lot of work together on the editorial board. We worked very hard for, I would say, three years, if I remember, just in selecting the best repertoire of each genre. It's not the genre that counts, it's the quality within the genre and according to the parameters of that genre. So that would apply to jazz, it would apply to folk music, theater music, religious music, whether it's sophisticated religious music or folksy religious music, there's still quality issue concerned there. I think that that's the primary consideration. You asked about interpretive issues. That's partially a question of authenticity, partially a question of esthetics. That's a difficult balance in some of these genres. I think we've achieved them in the Yiddish theater genre, for example. It was a question of authenticity in terms of legitimate voices as opposed to 1990s pop voices for a 1910 show. In terms of orchestration, that would have been the actual orchestration and the actual instrumentation of that period. It's also a question of choosing what we felt were the best songs. I mean, The Eternal Road of Kurt Weill, Kurt Weill's major pageant in some respects, his magnum opus.

Neil Levin
You and I luckily agreed on what we felt were the best excerpts to become highlights. Of course, there's the subjective issue, too. Nobody can say that my choices are the only possible ones. There has to be some subjectivity.

Leonard Nimoy
Neil W. Levin, artistic director of the Milken Archive, in conversation with maestro Gerard Schwarz. The vast world of Jewish music includes the traditions of the Jews of the Mediterranean. Here are five songs that originated in the folklore of Jews with roots on the Iberian Peninsula, the Sephardim. They're from a collection entitled At Grandfather's Knee, arranged by the composer Simon Sargon. Born in Bombay in 1938 and trained at the Juilliard School, Sargon was music director of Temple Emanuel in Dallas for over 25 years. These songs are performed by Sopranos Anna Maria Martínez, accompanied by pianist Kristin Okerlund.

At Grandfather's Knee by Simon Sargon

Leonard Nimoy
The traditional Sephardi Ladino or Judeo Español song La Borracha, and four other such traditional songs whose origins lie in the folklore of Jews with cultural roots on the Iberian Peninsula, arranged by Simon Sargon and performed here by Ana Maria Martínez with pianist Kristin Okerlund. It's just one of hundreds of selections of music that are part of the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music. A later program in this series will be devoted to exploring the secular and sacred music of Sephardi Jews in America, those Jews whose roots extend back to pre 16th century Spain and Portugal. The Archive takes very seriously its goal to render this music authentically right down to the pronunciation in the text, whether in the vernacular Ladino language or Judeo Espanol spoken by Eastern and Mediterranean Sephardi Jews or Yiddish or Hebrew. Neil Levin answered a question from Gerard Schwarz about the challenge of getting the linguistic idioms, dialect, and diction accurate.

Gerard Schwarz
Let's talk about the text for a second. What about the Hebrew? What Hebrew do you use? What Yiddish do you use? Who oversaw all these big issues of pronunciation?

Neil Levin
The unfortunate answer for me is that I oversaw them all because it has to depend upon the music. Hebrew, if we are performing music that is Ashkenazi, that is European, whether its roots are Western or Eastern European, but European Jewry, and it was written with the accentuation according to Ashkenazi pronunciation, I'm not getting into whether for political, inter-syngogue reasons it's advisable now or not advisable to change, even though you destroy the accentuation. I'm not suggesting one or the other, but that's not our problem. Our problem is artistic here in this situation. And so, we pronounce traditional cantorial texts in Ashkenazi, the way they were written, otherwise the accentuation is wrong. On the other hand, we have a lot of music that was written with modern Hebrew. It's loosely called Sephardi, but really it's modern Hebrew. Then we pronounce it according to those texts, the Milhaud service. Milhaud himself preferred that it be sung according to what is today modern Hebrew or loosely called Sephardi. He wrote it in two versions because the synagogue that commissioned the piece was a classic reform Temple Emanuel in San Francisco and still using the Ashkenazi pronunciation. So we had to make decisions in each case.

Neil Levin
In Yiddish, if we performed classical Yiddish, for example, art songs, more than 50 Yiddish art songs, Lider, Kuntsleder, the Yiddish analog to Schubert or Grams or Wolfe, and so forth, that's literary Yiddish. We went through a lot of hoops, a lot of work to make sure that that is pronounced exactly according to literary Yiddish, analogous, let's say, to standard English. If we do the theater, we did the opposite because the theater people on Second Avenue, turn of the Century, 1910, 1940, 1950, doesn't matter, were not literary people. Their Yiddish was not only a Vilenian Galician dialect, which is quite different, it's not even that simple. It wasn't consistent. They had no such things as language coaches in the Yiddish theater that didn't know such things. So we deliberately did it with the authentic inconsistency. So it's been a separate issue each time.

Leonard Nimoy
One of the most famous concert works in Hebrew is the Chichester Psalms of Leonard Bernstein. Settings of Psalm text in the original language of the Bible, commissioned for a chorus festival in England. Here is a new Naxos recording made expressly for the Milken Archive with Gerard Schwarz leading the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and choir. The treble or boy soprano is Michael Small.

Chichester Psalms by Leonard Bernstein

Leonard Nimoy
Gerard Schwarz led the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Choir in that performance of Leonard Bernstein's Chichester Psalms, a Naxos release. The boy soprano or treble was Michael Small. A future program in this series will profile this most famous of American Jewish musicians, including world premiere recordings of several hitherto-unknown Bernstein works. I'm Leonard Nimoy, and you're listening to the first program in a 13 part series presenting music from the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music. In the second half of this program, music to accompany a staged version of a story by Isaac Bashevis Singer. This is the WFMT Radio Network.

Leonard Nimoy
Welcome back. I'm Leonard Nimoy, your host, for this introduction to the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music and its series of recordings on the Naxos label. This is the opening program in a 13-part radio series that explores some of the 600 different pieces of music that make up this extraordinary collection. The Milken Archive encompasses symphonies, operas, concertos, cantorial masterpieces, and synagogue services, as well as folk music, popular music, and songs from the Yiddish theater. The founder of the Milken Archive, Lowell Milken, recalled one of the most touching events that took place in the course of making these recordings.

Lowell Milken
There have been so many memorable events over the past 15 years in working with the Archive. One of the really treasured aspects for me is having the ability and having the opportunity to attend some of the recording sessions. And there was one recording session that was really an unforgettable experience for me, and that was when we traveled to Berlin in the year 2000 to record Herman Berlinski's Avodat Shabbat, which was a musical setting for full orchestra and chorus. He took the prayers of a Friday evening service and wrote an original music for that, really written for the concert hall. Berlinski had been born in Germany in the year 1910. And in 1933, just months after Hitler took power, fled the country, fled to Poland, eventually had to escape Poland, fled to France. Ultimately, when France surrendered to Germany, was imprisoned, eventually was able to flee France to Spain and came to the United States. And here we were bringing Berlinski back to Berlin in 2000 to record what he viewed to be one of his finest works. That was an electrifying session as before we recorded each one of the pieces, he would speak to the chorus and the orchestra in German and explain to them the significance of the individual prayers.

Lowell Milken
It was a very touching event. When he returned to the United States, he sent me a letter. This letter I have never forgotten and in fact, I often will read the letter once every month or so to remind me of the impact of the Archive and how important our work is. And in this letter, he said:

"A score is nothing but paper. It is silent and unlike a painting, does not reveal itself by just looking at it. A recording, however, done with the quality and care of all the recordings of the Milken Archive, bring the work to the attention of those who eventually may want to perform it, or at least will form an opinion about it."

This, to a living composer, means the possibility of the survival of his work, and future generations will be thankful for reserving and safeguarding this artistic legacy. That is what we have tried to accomplish with the project of the Milken Archive.

Leonard Nimoy
Lowell Milken, the founder of the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music. The artistic director of the Milken Archive, Dr. Neil W. Levin, spoke with maestro Gerard Schwarz about what constitutes Jewish music.

Gerard Schwarz
It's important to say that this is not a series about Jewish composers, but Jewish themes or Old Testament themes.

Neil Levin
This is crucial to bring out. This is not a racist project. I don't care whether a composer is Jewish. I care about whether the music relates to Jewish experience, period. Obviously, that's going to pertain 90 % or 95 % to composers who are Jewish, but that's got nothing to do with it. That's chance. We have some major works written by non-Jews that are very, very Judaically related, even liturgical works. There are some important composers who just wanted to write for the Synagogue, who were commissioned to write for the Synagogue in New York, for the Park Avenue Synagogue, who was the major Commissioner of New Synagogue music. William Grant still wrote for the Synagogue. Roy Harris, Dave Brubeck with the jazz service, which is one of our very important projects, was commissioned by the reform movement, by the Union of American Hebrew congregations. There are many, many others. Thomas Beveridge wrote an ecumenical piece using the Hebrew liturgy and the Roman Catholic liturgy and the Anglican liturgy for a memorial work called Yizkor Requiem. So it has nothing to do with the Jewishness or the personal tastes or predilections religiously of a composer.

Neil Levin
I'm not interested any more than we'd ask a person what his beliefs are if he writes a religious piece. We only care about the music.

Leonard Nimoy
Neil Levin talking with Gerard Schwarz. We're listening next to music inspired by 20th century literature. Yehudi Wyner's incidental music to a play adapted from Isaac Bashevis Singer's story, The Mirror. It explains the interior life of a Jewish woman living in a small Eastern European town. Composer Yehudi Wyner, a native of Calgary, Alberta, grew up in New York City. He has held the Naumberg Chair of Composition at Brandeis University since 1990 and previously headed the composition department at Yale. His music for The Mirror is performed in this Naxos release by soloists Carol Meyer sopranos; Judy Brown Kirchner, mezzosoprano; Matthew Kirchner, tenor; and Richard Lalli, baritone. With an instrumental ensemble that includes Daniel Stepner, violin; Richard Stoltzman clarinet; James Guttmann double bass; and Robert Schulz, percussion.

The Mirror by Yehudi Wyner

Leonard Nimoy
Incidental music for the play The Mirror after Isaac Bashevis Singer’s story of the same name, composed by Yehudi Wyner, from a Milken Archive recording on the Naxos label. The singers in this performance were Carol Meyer, soprano; Judi Brown Kirchner, mezzo-soprano; Matthew Kirchner, tenor; and Richard Lalli, baritone. The instrumental ensemble was made up of Daniel Stepner, violin; Richard Stoltzman, clarinet; James Guttmann, double bass; and Robert Schulz, percussion.

Leonard Nimoy
This is the opening installment of a 13-part radio series about Jewish music in the United States drawn from the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music. I'm Leonard Nimoy. As we've already heard, Jewish music in America incorporates a wealth of music for the concert hall, chorus, as well as symphonic. But of course, it also includes compositions for the synagogue, liturgical works inspired by Jewish worship or specifically intended for worship services. Much of the music heard in American synagogues derives from European styles and traditions, but bespeaks an American imprint, as Neil Levin explains in conversation with Gerard Schwarz.

Neil Levin
There is a level of artistic and social freedom, apart from political freedom in the United States, that until recently didn't exist on that level anywhere else. It's true that state voting rights for Jews weren't universal in the United States until amazingly late in the 19th century. But we're talking about artistic freedom, which spawns artistic inspiration. Vienna was the seat of the birth of modern cantorial music. No city is as important historically as Vienna in Ashkenazi synagogue music, which permeated all Eastern as well as Western Europe. And by the end of the 19th century, Vienna had synagogue after synagogue with major choirs and conductors and cantors, and some of the most famous cantors of all time served at least a couple of years in Vienna. And yet you won't find symphonies, or piano concertos or violin concertos or any classical music by Jewish composers in Vienna or in Germany or anywhere where there was this freedom. You won't find such pieces incorporating Judaism elements or based on Jewish modes or motives. You'll find religious music. Jewish music in those free societies meant religious music. The idea of Jewish art music, that idea began in Russia, but it was only for about 10 years because as soon as the Russian Revolution came, that was the end of it.

Neil Levin
It got transplanted to America. The only two places where art music, classical music grew into a major body were the United States and obviously, Palestine, which then later became Israel. Later, the idea got picked up in England and a few other countries and so forth. But it is really a manifestly American thing. So that really is the binder here, you see. Even the American Yiddish theater, the popular, the mass entertainment popular Second Avenue theater, out of which Bay mir bistu sheyn grew and so forth. That's an American invention. It's based upon Viennese light operetta, but even the Viennese light operetta composers such as Emmerich Kalman, who was Jewish, didn't write Jewish operettas. So the Jewish aspect of it is American. So I would say everything beyond the liturgical that we have covered here in this project is American.

Leonard Nimoy
Neil Levin, artistic director of the Milken Archive. One of the remarkable documents in the Milken Archive is a complete traditional service for the first night of Slihot, much as it would be heard in an Ashkenazi Synagogue on the Saturday night before the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah. It is a service where the congregation preparing itself for the annual period of reflection called the Ten Days of Repentance, adds petitions for forgiveness and liturgical poems to the regular daily prayers. Here are several excerpts from that complete Milken Archive recording on the Naxos label of the traditional Slihot service. It is performed by Cantor Ben Zion Miller with Schola Hebraica, conducted by Neil Levin.

A Traditional First S'liḥot Service

Leonard Nimoy
Selections from the traditional synagogue service for the first night of Slihot – the period of special prayers preceding the Jewish New Year. These excerpts are taken from a complete recording of that service on the Naxos label produced by the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music – prayers as they are heard in synagogues of the Ashkenazi Jewish rite, originating in Central and Eastern Europe.

Leonard Nimoy
Besides classical compositions and liturgical music, American Jewish culture made an enduring contribution to popular music through the composers of Tin Pan Alley. Many of them based their songs directly on the music of the Yiddish theater. To conclude this program from the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music, here’s a group of songs by one of the most popular of the songwriters from the theaters of Second Avenue on New York’s Lower East Side: Joseph Rumshinsky.

Great Songs of the Yiddish Stage, Volume 3

Leonard Nimoy
Songs from the Yiddish theater by Joseph Rumshinsky, one of the most popular composers of Yiddish theater music, sung in a Naxos CD by Amy Goldstein, soprano; Joanne Borts, mezzo-soprano; and Cantors Benzion Miller, Simon Spiro, and Robert Bloch, tenors. A future episode of this series will be devoted to compositions for the Yiddish-language theater that thrived in New York a century ago.

Leonard Nimoy
The Milken Archive’s mission is not only to preserve the music of the past, but also to foster its performance in the future. Gerard Schwarz asked Artistic Director Neil Levin how that might happen.

Gerard Schwarz
What about now looking to the future, into the 21st century that we're a part of now, what do you think, the creation of this extraordinary series of remarkable pieces, what influence will that have on performers? Will this great music be performed? It's a question that is very in the forefront of my mind because as I listen to one CD after another that comes out on our series, I realize that everyone is extraordinary. Of course, then you deal with a tremendous history we have, the history of Beethoven and Brahms and Schubert and Mendelssohn. And then you have the 20th century history and now the 21st. Where will these pieces fit in? Where will they get performed? Who was going to be the champion for these works?

Neil Levin
Conductors such as yourself?

Gerard Schwarz
Well, that's a given.

Neil Levin
Sir Neville Mariner said it very well when we finished a recording session with the Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields, and we had a little discussion, and he said that this was a whole revelation to him and to the orchestra. They were beginning to program some of the music to which we introduced them. The Vienna Choir Boys, here's a case where we introduced the Vienna Choir Boys for the purposes of our recordings to music in Hebrew, to liturgical music, and they are now performing it on their tours. I believe they're going to be performing it all in the next couple of years on their American tours as well. I look even to the future, 50 years from now, when I'd like to think that ev en the American label won't be necessary anymore, and we'll be talking about music. When we first started this project, I visited various cities to start setting up recording possibilities. When I went to Vienna, I met with an old friend of mine, a pianist, and she's not Jewish. I told her about the project, and her first reaction was very negative. She said, Well, what are you trying to do?

Neil Levin
The religious music I can understand, but you're trying to do what Hitler did. You're trying to segregate. Why have a separate project for Jewish art music, symphonies, operas, and so forth. Why isn't that part of the general? At first I was a little put off by that. But then I realized what she meant. Now I've come to say the following. For the time being, we need to do this because nobody knows about it. I would like to think that 50 years from now, the best of this music will be part of the general repertoire and not necessarily be part of American Jewish music under an umbrella. I think Henry Fogel said it beautifully when we talked to him in the beginning when he joined the editorial board. At that time, he was president of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He said, Look, I wish that all chapters in American music were being addressed this way. Jewish music in America is a part of the American cultural heritage, just as is Irish music, just as is Negro spiritual music, just as is jazz. We can go on and on, American Indian music and so forth. But eventually, it should be all part of music.

Leonard Nimoy
Neil Levin, speaking with Maestro Gerard Schwarz about the future of the music heard in this series.

Leonard Nimoy
You’ve been listening to the first program in a 13-part series devoted to the recordings of the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music, currently being issued on CD by the Naxos label. The Milken Archive was created by Lowell Milken, chairman of the Milken Family Foundation. Neil W. Levin is Artistic Director. 

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