Episode 7: Symphonic Music

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Several large-scale symphonic works of Jewish inspiration are featured in Episode seven.

Episode Transcript

Leonard Nimoy
Beginning in the late 19th century, symphonic music began to reflect new influences.  Composers turned to folk music and ethnic themes and incorporated them in symphonies, tone poems, and overtures.  Dvorak turned to Czech sources, Grieg tapped his own Norwegian tradition…and Jewish composers started to express their history and tradition through symphonic music as well.  By the end of the twentieth century, the repertoire for the symphony orchestra had been enriched by numerous works related to Jewish traditions and experiences. 

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 the Naxos label. On today’s program: symphonic music of Jewish inspiration, including works by Darius Milhaud, Stefan Wolpe, and David Diamond.

Leonard Nimoy
The Artistic Director of the Milken Archive, music historian and musicologist Neil Levin, talks about the principal ways that a symphonic work can have a Jewish character or identity.

Neil Levin
A symphonic piece, whether it be a symphony in a classical form or whether it be a tone poem can have a Judaic connection in broadly speaking, I would think, one of two ways. First of all, there's the musical material issue. A piece's Judaic connection can relate to the musical material, to the selection of pitches and rhythms, to the melody, to material that historically, and I emphasize historically, has a Jewish connection or Jewish roots. For example, if one were to write a symphony, even in classical form, where the first theme is a melody well known in certain synagogues for hundreds of years. The second theme is perhaps a bit of biblical cantillation from any one of a number of traditions and then develop those themes in a classical way, that obviously is a piece with Judaic connections. The second way the symphonic piece might be Judaically related is the issue of program music. In other words, it's programmatic parameter. It may or may not have to contain any historically Jewish or Judaic, secular or sacred material. It may or may not incorporate authentic Jewish folk tunes or synagogue melodies or cantillation. But the programmatic parameter has to do with its depiction of some subject or narrative or incident in Jewish life or Jewish history or both.

Leonard Nimoy
Neil Levin. Our first selection today is by the composer Joseph Achron, one of the leading figures in the Jewish national art-music movement of the St. Petersburg school of Jewish composers, which was active in Russia a century ago.  Conductor Gerard Schwarz reflected on that group of composers in conversation with Neil Levin.

Gerard Schwarz
It seems like composers,creators, whether they're writers, painters, or musicians, influence each other. So when you think historically now about symphonic music, you think about a period of extraordinary creative energy taking place in St. Petersburg, in Russia. Many of those great composers from St. Petersburg came to the United States. Tell us a little bit about that extraordinary time historically of what was going on in St. Petersburg and why, of course, it came to us here in our country.

Neil Levin
Well, we call the episode in cultural history, the St. Petersburg School or the St. Petersburg Gezelshaft. At the very beginning of the 20th century, an organization came into being with the name the Gezelshaft far Yidisher Folks-Muzik in St. Petersburg, or the Society for Jewish Folk Music in St. Petersburg. It attracted a number of Jewish composers, intellectuals, poets, performers who were interested in creating a Jewish national art music. Jewish music, up until then, anywhere in the world, was either folk music or theater music or liturgical music. What this group in St. Petersburg did was to turn to their folk music roots. The St. Petersburg Gezelshaft Composers and their colleagues in the branches in Moscow and Odessa and Riga sought, essentially, to create a new music, a classical music as it were, out of that folk mellosh. The society itself only lasted for a very short time because with the October Revolution in 1917, its days were pretty much over. Only a few of those composers came to the United States, but it was enough to make a serious mark. One of them was Joseph Achron, another was Lazare Saminsky, another was Solomon Rosowsky, Jacob Weinberg. But the influence from that short episode in Russia was tremendous.

Neil Levin
And it really was the foundation for creating a Jewish national art music or a Judaica related classical music. And the cudgel was picked up in the United States.

Leonard Nimoy
Joseph Achron was born in what is now Lithuania in 1886. He was a virtuoso violinist as well as a composer, and is probably best-known for his “Hebrew Melody.” He also wrote many extended concert pieces, including his incidental music for the play “Belshazzar,” based on an episode in the Biblical Book of Daniel. Here are two tableaux from that music, performed by the Barcelona Symphony/National Symphony Orchestra of Catalonia conducted by Gerard Schwarz.

Joseph Achron's Two Tableaux from Belshazzar

Leonard Nimoy
Gerard Schwarz conducted the Barcelona Symphony/National Symphony Orchestra of Catalonia in that music by Joseph Achron. From this Naxos release we heard Two Tableaux from his incidental music for “Belshazzar,” concluding with “Belshazzar’s Feast.”

Leonard Nimoy
On today’s program from the Milken Archive we’re listening to symphonic music of Jewish inspiration and identity. I’m Leonard Nimoy. In a conversation recorded for this program, Gerard Schwarz spoke with Neil Levin, the Milken Archive’s Artistic Director, about the relationship between Jewish composers and their religion.

Gerard Schwarz
You have some of these extraordinary composers, American composers now, someone like David Diamond, who was actually born in the United States. Samuel Adler, born in Germany. Herman Berlinski, Joseph Achron, Darius Milhaud, Kurt Weill, Stefan Wolpe, who are not American born. But what do you believe was the impact of their Judaism on their compositional style and music?

Neil Levin
The great art music that's Judaically related is by composers who did not confine themselves to that. That was one of their expressions. I mean, Achron wrote Three Violin Concertos. One of them is very much Judaically related, every note of it in terms of its content. The other two are good violin concertos.

Gerard Schwarz
What I find so interesting, especially about David Diamond, because I'm so close to him, is that towards the middle of his life, he shied away from things Jewish. Then later in his life, it became very important to him. But it went through that period. You think about so many composers who question their religion, question their heritage, and very often come back to it later in life. Is that true of some of the other composers that we've recorded?

Neil Levin
It certainly is in some cases. In the case of Diamond, he was profoundly influenced by traditional cantorial music when he was a child in Rochester, New York, when you Yosselle Rosenblatt, probably the most famous canter of all time in terms of public perception. When Rosenblatt would come to give a concert in Rochester and his father took him, he told me how profoundly that affected him. That kind of emotional impact, to say nothing of pure musical impact, never leaves one. I don't know that there's any specific explanation. For many artists, the 1967 Six Day War was an absolute watershed event in terms of identity and awareness and cultural feeling for Judaic roots, regardless of what one's position was on political Zionistic matters. Obviously, people differ. That event really marked a turning point in many artists' psyche. It was a feeling throughout the American Jewish community in general, reflected by its artists.

Leonard Nimoy
Neil Levin, talking with conductor Gerard Schwarz. David Diamond, as of late 2004, was still active at the age of 89, living in Rochester, New York, where he was born. His work entitled “Brotherhood” – or in Hebrew, “Ach’va” – was commissioned for the celebrations in 1954 of the 300th anniversary of the Jewish community in America.

Leonard Nimoy
Like Copland’s “Lincoln Portrait,” it is an uplifting work with spoken texts, in this case from a variety of sources. The premiere was given in Washington, DC, in 1954, with narrator Lorne Greene. In this performance, recorded especially for the Milken Archive, Theodore Bikel reads the texts, and the Seattle Symphony is conducted by Gerard Schwarz.

David Diamond's Aḥava Brotherhood

Leonard Nimoy
Theodore Bikel was the narrator, with the Seattle Symphony Orchestra conducted by Gerard Schwarz, in music from David Diamond’s work entitled “Ach’va” – or “Brotherhood” – from 1954, from a Naxos CD.

Leonard Nimoy
This two-hour program, part of a series from the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music, is devoted to symphonic music with Jewish themes. In the second half of the program we’ll hear compositions by Darius Milhaud and Stefan Wolpe. I’m Leonard Nimoy. This is the W-F-M-T Radio Network.

Leonard Nimoy
Welcome back to this program from the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music. I’m Leonard Nimoy. Today we’re listening to music for the symphony orchestra with Jewish themes.

Leonard Nimoy
Lowell Milken, who founded the Milken Archive in 1990, talked about the events that led to his decision to undertake this immense project.

Lowell Milken
It was in the mid 1980s after I had had the experience of sponsoring a number of concerts and actually commissioning some original compositions and so on. And that brought me into much greater interaction with composers like Michael Isaacson and Sam Adler, cantors, most vividly, Nate Lam. And I began to see that there was not only a impressive body of music, but that so much of this music had been performed once or twice and would be lost to future generations. And I really perceived that as a great opportunity, an opportunity to try to preserve the collective memory of this music. And that's really what gave rise in 1990 to the creation of the Milken Archive.

Leonard Nimoy
Lowell Milken. We’ll begin the second half of today’s program with the first of two works depicting the Biblical figure Moses. Stefan Wolpe, a native of Berlin, left Germany in 1933 for Vienna, where he studied with Anton von Webern. He spent the years from 1934 to 1938 in Palestine, eventually immigrating to the United States. Conductor Gerard Schwarz and music historian and musicologist Neil Levin had these reflections on Stefan Wolpe and his musical vocabulary.

Gerard Schwarz
When we think of Stefan Wolpe, we think of, at least I think of, a very severe composer. It's hard to imagine that his language would be conducive to anything that could relate to, in some sense, religious music or Jewish music. But how do you juxtapose the religious aspects with the language of Wolpe?

Neil Levin
I think it depends very much upon what you bring to it and when you hear it. I remember being at the recording session for this project when we did a big piece of Wolpe, which really is a ballet, Man from Midian which is Moses, of course. I remember asking myself, Why do we always think that he is so severe? It didn't sound that way then, but then I've heard Wolpe for a lifetime. This is just a very personal reaction, but I think Wolpe is one of those composers who does sound very much less severe and less rigorous the more you listen to it. The other thing is that good composers who address the liturgy, whether it be Judaic or Christian or other, historically are more conservative when they do that. If they're really good composers, they have always looked at the liturgy and been more traditional, more historically connected, even if the music is totally original. So therefore, I think it's true of Wolpe. Wolpe was one of a group of composers who was invited in the 1930s to write piano settings for simple, well known Hebrew, Palestinian folk songs, songs of the second and third aliyah of the pioneers in what was then Palestine.

Neil Levin
He set himself limitations on rigorousness and so forth. I think that's the mark of a good craftsman.

Leonard Nimoy
Stefan Wolpe’s ballet score “The Man from Midian” – based on the Biblical figure Moses – was completed in 1942. Here is music from that ballet in a performance recorded for the Milken Archive by the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Joseph Silverstein.

Stefan Wolpe's The Man from Midian

Leonard Nimoy
Joseph Silverstein led the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra in that music from Stefan Wolpe’s ballet score entitled “Man from Midian,” released on a Naxos CD. You’re listening to a program of orchestral music on Jewish themes, part of a series from the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music.

Leonard Nimoy
Darius Milhaud also composed a piece on the theme of Moses, that pivotal figure in Jewish history. One of the celebrated group of French composers called “Les Six,” or “The Six,” Milhaud is best-known for his polytonal excursions and his jazz-inflected music like “Le Boeuf sur le Toit,” which takes its name from a bar in Paris. However, his Jewish identity announces itself at the very start of his autobiography, whose first words are: “I am a Jew, born in Provence.” Here again is the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted this time by Gerard Schwarz, in music from Milhaud’s work “Moïse” – “Moses.”

Darius Milhaud's Suite from the Ballet Moïse

Leonard Nimoy
Two movements from Darius Milhaud’s “Moïse,” or “Moses,” performed by the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Gerard Schwarz. This week’s program from the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music is devoted to symphonic works. I’m Leonard Nimoy.

Leonard Nimoy
Next is a work based on another figure from the Bible: “Midrash Esther,” by Jan Meyerowitz (MY – er – OH – vitch). A midrash is an imaginative commentary on the Bible by way of story-telling. This work is in effect the composer’s musical commentary on the queen of Persia who revealed she was Jewish in order to save her people from destruction. Yoel Levi leads the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra in two movements from Jan Meyerowitz’s Midrash Esther.

Jan Meyerowitz's Symphony Midrash Esther

Leonard Nimoy
Music from a work by Jan Meyerowitz called “Midrash Esther” – the composer’s reflections on the Biblical heroine of ancient Persia. In a Milken Archive recording released by Naxos, Yoel Levi conducted the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra.

Leonard Nimoy
Gerard Schwarz and Neil Levin, Artistic Director of the Milken Archive, spoke recently about the next composer featured on our program: Samuel Adler.

Gerard Schwarz
It seems to me like Sam is very much a man of two worlds, a very secular, great composer, and on the other hand, someone who is very, very connected and touched by things Jewish.

Neil Levin
Sam Adler is another example of what I mean when I talk about the broader cultural perspectives of composers not being confined specifically to one thing, be it Judaic or anything else in terms of expression. On the one hand, Sam Adler is a well known composer throughout the world of symphonic music, of concertos, of lieder, of chamber music, of all kinds of things. And he devotes a certain part of his expression to Judaic things because it's a very important part of his own awareness, his own cultural history. His father was a very important cantor in Mannheim. They left shortly after Kristallnacht, and his father continued to be a cantor in the United States. And Sam has always been involved in Judaic things in the synagogue, in music of the synagogue, not only composing, but also in influencing others and teaching and so forth. So that is a very important part of his life, but it's not the only part. He is first and foremost an artist.

Leonard Nimoy
Adler, born in 1928, composed his Symphony No. 5 – subtitled “We Are The Echoes” -- in 1974 and 1975. It draws on poetry and prose by Karl Wolfskehl, Muriel Rukeyser, James Oppenheimer, Carol Adler, and Abraham Joshua Heschel. Its five movements are “We Go”; “Even During the War”; “The Future”; “We Are the Echoes”; and “God Follows Me Everywhere.” Phyllis Bryn Julson is the soprano soloist, and the composer conducts the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra in the Symphony No. 5 by Samuel Adler.

Samuel Adler's Symphony No. 5

Leonard Nimoy
The Symphony No. 5 of Samuel Adler, subtitled “We Are The Echoes.” The composer led that performance by the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, recorded especially for the Milken Archive and issued by the Naxos label. The soprano soloist was Phyllis Bryn-Julson.

Leonard Nimoy
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. Neil W. Levin is Artistic Director.

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Lowell Milken	Neil Levin	Gerard Schwarz

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