Episode 11: Holocaust

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This episode features several musical responses to the extermination of six million European Jews in the Second World War, including a “new haggada” based on the Warsaw ghetto uprising, many poem settings, and an elegy for Anne Frank.

Episode Transcript

Leonard Nimoy
In her diary entry for May 3rd, 1944, the 14-year-old Anne Frank wrote: “There is in people simply an urge to destroy -- an urge to kill, to murder and rage. Until all mankind undergoes a great change, wars will be waged. Everything that has been built up, cultivated, and grown will be destroyed and disfigured…after which mankind will have to begin all over again.”

Leonard Nimoy
Hello, I’m Leonard Nimoy. Welcome to another program in a 13-part series that celebrates three and a half centuries of uninterrupted Jewish life in the United States through music, as documented by the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music, and issued on CD on the Naxos label. On today’s program: music composed in response to the attempted annihilation of the Jewish people by Germany – the Holocaust.

Leonard Nimoy
The word “holocaust” comes from Greek roots meaning “completely consumed by fire.” It carries connotations of extermination and of religious sacrifice, and has come to be applied to the historical event that in Hebrew is known as the “Shoah” – the murder of six million civilian men, women, and children in Europe—only and simply because they were Jews, or because the Germans decided they were Jews. Neil Levin, the Artistic Director of the Milken Archive reflects on the word and its implications.

Neil Levin
Even the word Holocaust is a trivialization of the episode in history. I'm not the first to say that, just as Kristallnacht was a complete trivialization of what happened. I mean, that shattered glass. It wasn't shattered glass, it was shattered people. And there is a major problem that I, as an artist, have, that many artists have in terms of the Holocaust and art. Adorno is famous for that statement that no poetry should ever be written after the Holocaust. I think that's too embracive a statement to take at face value, and I don't know if he meant it at face value. It's true that there is an incredible amount of trivializing in music and painting and art and all that. It's true that the best memorial to Auschwitz might have been just to leave it empty. So it's a very difficult situation. We have pieces here that deal with something in one way or another, some aspect that, at least I believe, is not trivial, is not some almost prurient interest.

Leonard Nimoy
Conductor Gerard Schwarz, in a conversation recorded for this radio series, asked Neil Levin about the music that came to be written in the wake of this shattering event.

Gerard Schwarz
When we think of American music that came out of the Holocaust experience, we actually think of two generations of composers, one who had a direct connection to the Holocaust and those that were not probably even living during the time of the Holocaust. So can we first look at the importance of Max Helfman in Jewish music, in American music, and in music during the time of the Holocaust?

Neil Levin
Max Helfman was primarily a synagogue composer and a choral conductor. And he came from Europe, came from Eastern Europe, came to New York. He was very active in both secular and religious, but more secular, actually, choruses, especially the Yiddishist choruses, including the very far left wing ones. The piece called Di naye hagode, which literally means the new Hagada, is different from anything else he wrote. This is a piece about the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, which occurred during Passover. The Haggada, of course, is the retelling or the telling of the Passover story, which Jews are mandated to do annually. One of the most famous Yiddish poets of all time, Itzik Fefer, who later was murdered by Stalin, wrote a poem about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. It's a kind of epic poem. So Helfman set this as a full-length work with narration and chorus, no soloists, large chorus and full symphony orchestra. Now, the reason he called it the Di naye hagode, because that wasn't the name of the poem as far as I remember. Helfman called it De naye hagode because he was saying, Look, the exodus from Egyptian slavery and Egyptian bondage was the old Haggada. This is the new telling, even for those Jews who are not religious, who don't even celebrate Passover, who don't find an identification with something biblical.

Neil Levin
This is your new Haggada. This defines this is what we have come up against.

Leonard Nimoy
Here are excerpts from this singular work by Max Helfman: “Di Naye Haggada,” or “The New Narrative.” In this performance from a Naxos CD, Nick Strimple conducts the Choral Society of Southern California, the Los Angeles Zimriyah Chorale, and the Young Musicians’ Debut Orchestra. The narrator is Theodore Bikel, under the dramatic direction of Isaiah Sheffer.

Max Helfman's Di naye hagode

Leonard Nimoy
“Di Naye Haggada,” or “The New Narrative” – a musical response to the Holocaust by the distinguished American synagogue composer, Max Helfman. It was narrated by Theodore Bikel, and the performance – led by Nick Strimple – included the Choral Society of Southern California, the Los Angeles Zimriyah Chorale, and the Young Musicians’ Debut Orchestra of Los Angeles, with dramatic direction by Isaiah Sheffer. It was recorded by the Milken Archive for release on the Naxos label.

Leonard Nimoy
On this program from the Milken Archive, we’re listening today to music created after the destruction of European Jewry known as the Holocaust. In contrast to the extended work by Max Helfman, the composer Lazar Weiner was moved to write a short art-song, as Milken Archive Artistic Director Neil Levin explains.

Neil Levin
He came to the United States to be a classical pianist and got involved in Yiddish circles in New York. And he was introduced to really deep and sophisticated and profound Yiddish literature and poetry and ended up becoming the most important composer in history of Yiddish art songs. He addressed the Holocaust in one song. And when he says, Yidn zingen ani ma’amin. Ani mamin means I believe. It's part of the liturgy in the morning based upon Maimonides' 13 principles of the Jewish faith, which start out, I believe with perfect faith, X, Y, Z, and so forth. And Jews being marched to their death, very often kept saying to themselves, Ani mamin, I believe, I believe, you are not going to destroy my faith. ' So Weiner took this poem that was called Yidn zingen. Jews are singing Ani mamin. It has a connotation. They're singing Ani mamin. In other words, they're being marched to their death. And it's a beautiful statement musically.

Leonard Nimoy
Here is that song by Lazar Weiner, performed by Cantor Raphael Frieder, accompanied by the son of the composer, Yehudi Wyner.

Lazar Weiner's Yidn Zingen Ani Ma’amin

Leonard Nimoy
The song “Yidn Zingen Ani Ma’amin,” composed by the master of the Yiddish art song Lazar Weiner. Yehudi Weiner accompanied Cantor Raphael Frieder in this Naxos release, recorded by the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music.

Leonard Nimoy
Gershon Kingsley was born in Germany in 1923. As a teenager he was sent by his parents to Palestine in the wake of the intensified persecution and imminent danger in Germany before coming to the United States, as Neil Levin tells Gerard Schwarz.

Neil Levin
Gershon Kingsley is from Germany originally. He was in Berlin. His parents sent him out during the '30s. When you could still get out, he was on the last train, a sealed filled train where Jews could get out on the way to Palestine. His parents put him. I never saw his parents again. And he went to Palestine with a lot of German Jewish youth movement people and Zionist movement people, including many of the people who became the great names in classical music in the Israeli establishment, most of the Israel Philharmonic. Kingsley, I think, was a teenager at the time. And then eventually, later on, he came to the United States, and he became a composer very much interested in electronics. He wrote the first service for the moog synthesizer for a synagogue. He probably was most successful on the material playing for his popular song, Popcorn. I came to him sometime in the '90s, and I suggested that he write a piece to address poetry in various languages by people in various concentration camps who wrote this poetry while they were interned in various camps. And he came up with this selection of poems. There's Yiddish, there's Czech, Polish, French, German in this piece, and he called it Voices from the Shadow.

Gerard Schwarz
Interestingly, he's actually recording events through his art, and he's perpetuating the memory of those events. And I think that is much of the purpose of this music, it's not only to create great music, but it's also for us all to remember and to make sure that we always remember. And through poetry, especially poetry from the Holocaust, from the concentration camps or by authors who were there, it makes it even more poignant.

Leonard Nimoy
Kingsley’s “Voices from the Shadow” is scored for four soloists with piano, clarinet, and string quartet, and it had its world premiere at New York’s Lincoln Center in 1997. Here are excerpts from a Milken Archive recording on the Naxos label, with sopranos Mary Catherine George and Amy Goldstein, tenor Matthew Walley, and baritone Larry Picard, together with an instrumental ensemble conducted by the composer.

Gershon Kingsley's Voices from the Shadow

Leonard Nimoy
The Finale of Gershon Kingsley’s work “Voices from the Shadow,” preceded by other selections from the same work, which includes texts in Yiddish, English, French, and Czech. The composer directed this performance by an instrumental ensemble with soloists Mary Catherine George and Amy Goldstein, sopranos; tenor Matthew Walley; and baritone Larry Picard, from a Naxos CD. In this program from the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music, we’re listening this week to musical responses to the Holocaust.

Leonard Nimoy
Gerard Schwarz, conductor of the Seattle Symphony and member of the Milken Archive’s Editorial Board, spoke with Artistic Director Neil Levin about another work that deals with the Holocaust.

Gerard Schwarz
One of the most extraordinary pieces that we did by the younger generation of American composers was Robert Beaser's The Heavenly Feast. This particular work is so personal, so deeply felt, so imaginatively composed, that that one feels that he truly has a deep understanding of what he's writing about, not only musically, of course, but in terms of all the words that are sung so fabulously by Connie Hauman.

Neil Levin
Yeah, and I think the orchestration is brilliant here. The power of it, the emotional build, the way he builds almost in a Wagnerian way to climax and so forth. It's a piece, I think, that doesn't have any parallel work in the literature.

Leonard Nimoy
Here is Robert Beaser’s “The Heavenly Feast.” Gerard Schwarz conducts the Seattle Symphony, with mezzo-soprano Constance Hauman.

Robert Beaser's The Heavenly Feast

Leonard Nimoy
“The Heavenly Feast,” by Robert Beaser, who was born in 1954. Mezzo-soprano Constance Hauman was soloist with the Seattle Symphony Orchestra conducted by Gerard Schwarz.

Leonard Nimoy
This two-hour program, part of a series from the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music, is devoted to music created in response to the campaign to annihilate European—and eventually all—Jewry known as the Holocaust. In the second half of our program, four more works by American composers, including Lukas Foss’s “Elegy for Anne Frank.” I’m Leonard Nimoy. 

Leonard Nimoy
Welcome back to this program from the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music. I’m Leonard Nimoy. Today we’re listening to works composed in the wake of the Holocaust. Shortly we’ll encounter music by the American composers Bruce Adolphe, Lukas Foss, and David Stock.

Leonard Nimoy
The Milken Archive is working to disseminate this music in a variety of ways, as founder Lowell Milken explained in a recent interview.

Lowell Milken
The recordings have been one way. The radio series is a very important medium. We intend to sponsor concerts and encourage concerts that profile this music and other outstanding music. We are going to be having conferences. We had a conference, by the way, in New York in November of 2003, entitled Only in America. These are concerts, both of scholarship, of lay participation, of concerts in addition. We're developing a curriculum. Probably within the next two years, we will release a 20 volume set, which will be entitled The World of Jewish Music in America. That particular set, as opposed to our current releases, which really are more profiled in terms of composers, this will be much more by genre. We are working on a documentary of music of American Jewish life. We have a very active website, and we will eventually be, I believe, in the music publishing business as we make this music available, because one of the key elements of this program is to try to encourage composers and artists to use Jewish themes in their music and for this music to be heard. So we see it as a responsibility of ours to make this music available.

Leonard Nimoy
Lowell Milken. To begin the second half of today’s program, a work inspired by the artists imprisoned in the concentration camp called Terezin. Here again are Gerard Schwarz and Neil Levin.

Gerard Schwarz
Terezin is a concentration camp that we hear a lot about, especially in the musical world, because so much music came from that camp. There are a number of extraordinary composers who died during the Second World War from that camp, whose music has survived. It wouldn't be in our series because it's not American music. And yet here we have a work by Robert Stern called Voices from Terezin.

Neil Levin
Terezin and Theresienstadt are often misunderstood. It was called The Paradise Ghetto during the war because what the Germans did was set up a phony front to make it appear that, yes, it was an incarceration, but life was good in there. They even allowed the Red Cross to visit and say, well, there's nothing wrong. I mean, look, it's wartime. I mean, wartime, you can incarcerate. I mean, it doesn't mean they're being tortured or anything. But of course, that was completely not true. But because of the devious plan to show the world that they were allowing even artistic freedom in both the city and the camp, in what is today Czech Republic, certain artistic things flourish there that couldn't have in other camps. And Stern is referring to that collective voice.

Leonard Nimoy
Robert Stern, born in 1934, teaches on the faculty of the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. He has composed a number of works on Jewish themes. “Voices from Terezin” was recorded especially for the Milken Archive, and is performed here by the Barcelona Symphony/National Orchestra of Catalonia led by Karl-Anton Rickenbacher. The singer is soprano Ana Maria Martinez.

Robert Stern's Voices from Terezin 

Leonard Nimoy
“Voices from Terezin,” by Robert Stern. Soprano Ana Maria Martinez was soloist with the Barcelona Symphony/National Orchestra of Catalonia led by Karl-Anton Rickenbacher, a Naxos release.

Leonard Nimoy
That last composition is named for a notorious German concentration camp in what is now the Czech Republic. The next work we’ll hear, “Out of the Whirlwind,” takes its title from the Biblical book of Job, and is directly related to the Holocaust in its references. Its composer is Bruce Adolphe. Gerard Schwarz spoke with Neil Levin of the Milken Archive about the composer and this music.

Gerard Schwarz
It's interesting to look at some of the younger composers who really have accepted their Judaism in a different way than generations before. And in Bruce's case, I think he very much feels that, and he has shown it in a very personal way in the music that he writes.

Neil Levin
One of the interesting things in this piece, he uses the words of a Yiddish poem that grew out of the resistance in the Holocaust, the Jewish underground in Poland. Bruce Adolphe took the words but created his own music, even when there was a folk tune attached to the poem. One of those wonderful poems is the Rivkele, di shabesdike. And this was because in one city, the Germans came in, rounded up all the men, shot them on the spot, And it was on the Sabbath. So all their wives were known as the Sabbath Widows. And the song came into being called Rivkele, di shabesdike. It doesn't really mean the Shabbat's Widow, but to that group, it meant it. And it was a touching, touching poem and a touching song. And Bruce incorporated that into this work, as well as the Ani Mamin, which is part of the Daily Liturgy.

Leonard Nimoy
Here, from a Naxos CD, is Bruce Adolphe’s adaptation of the traditional song “Ani Ma’amin,” “I believe ” – the final movement of his cycle “Out of the Whirlwind” – as performed by tenor John Aler and mezzo-soprano Phyllis Pancella, with the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music Wind Ensemble directed by Rodney Winther.

Bruce Adolphe's Out of the Whirlwind 

Leonard Nimoy
The soloists were John Aler, tenor, and Phyllis Pancella, mezzo-soprano, in an excerpt from the cycle “Out of the Whirlwind,” by Bruce Adolphe. They were accompanied by the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music Wind Ensemble, directed by Rodney Winther, in a performance issued by the Naxos label.

Leonard Nimoy
One of the best-known composers represented in today’s program is Lukas Foss. Gerard Schwarz made this observation to Neil Levin.

Gerard Schwarz
When we I think of the great multi-talented composer-conductor pianists of the second half of the 20th century. Of course, the name Leonard Bernstein jumps out at us. And the other name that jumps out of us is Lukas Foss. Great pianist, excellent conductor, and a wonderful composer. On this series, the elegy of his for Anne Frank is represented. A remarkable composer and an exquisite piece.

Neil Levin
And some of his music is so quintessentially American in its recollection of certain sounds and rhythms and so forth. He was born in Berlin, actually, and I think he wrote quite a number of judaically related works. This one, the Elegy for Anne Frank. Look, Anne Frank became, at a certain period of time, a symbol for general popular perception of suffering of Jews and the Holocaust and so forth. Here was the first perception to anyone that Jews had had to even go into hiding. So what Lukas Foss is doing here is not really elegizing the story or Anne Frank, but the symbol. That this was the first little opening of the window to what had been going on to general American, at least theater-going audiences.

Leonard Nimoy
The “Elegy for Anne Frank” by Lukas Foss is performed by the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, Christopher Wilkins conducting.

Lukas Foss's Elegy for Anne Frank 

Leonard Nimoy
Music by the Berlin-born American composer Lukas Foss: his “Elegy for Anne Frank,” with Christopher Wilkins conducting the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra. This week’s edition of Music from the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music focuses on works created in response to the Holocaust.

Leonard Nimoy
Our final selection today was written by the Pittsburgh-based composer David Stock.

Gerard Schwarz
David Stock wrote this marvelous piece, A Little Miracle. It actually uses a Yiddish folk song, doesn't it?

Neil Levin
I'm not sure, and I'm proud to say I'm not sure, because David's not sure. David Stock is not sure. When I hear some of these tunes, I often don't know whether they are simply reflective of a lot of Yiddish folk songs.

Gerard Schwarz
There's a real tradition of that, obviously, in the music of Bartók or in the music of Janáček, or the music of Dvořák, for that matter, where it sounds so much like it's folk music. In fact, Kodály had to often say, just everyone knows every melody in this work is original, even though it may sound like something else.

Neil Levin
The only problem with that is he thinks it's original. One of the most famous cantors of the late 19th and very early 20th century, Zeidel Rovner, who was a dean of the virtuoso chazanim of cantors. And he came from a totally different world. He had never known about classical music or anything of the sort. And once when it was Odessa, his wife took him for the first time to hear an opera. He was a man a long black coat and a long white beard and so forth. He's hearing his first opera, and it was Faust. And when it came to the famous course, he turned to his wife in all sincerity and said, They stole. They stole my melody. Because somewhere he had heard that in a street band or somewhere, and it registered subconsciously, and he used it in some piece, some synagogue piece, you see. So you never really know.

Leonard Nimoy
Neil Levin, in conversation with Gerard Schwarz. Here now are mezzo-soprano Elizabeth Shammash, and the Berlin Radio Symphony under Gerard Schwarz, in a Milken Archive recording on Naxos, of David Stock’s “A Little Miracle.”

David Stock's A Little Miracle

Leonard Nimoy
A piece for mezzo-soprano and chamber orchestra called “A Little Miracle,” by David Stock. In a performance available on a Naxos CD, Gerard Schwarz conducted the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, with mezzo-soprano soloist Elizabeth Shammash.

Leonard Nimoy
And with that performance we’ve concluded our look at American music that deals with the Holocaust—the destruction of European Jewry during the period of the Second World War. You’ve been listening to another 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.

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