In Celebration of Israel
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In Celebration of Israel More than half a century after his premature death, the life and the art of Kurt Weill (1900-1950) continue to fascinate. On...
In Celebration of Israel
More than half a century after his premature death, the life
and the art of Kurt Weill (1900-1950) continue to fascinate. On many
levels he is sui generis among the emigre composers of the 1930s,
and perhaps among all American composers -- especially in his juxtaposition of
styles. His music mirrors the various artistic, moral, political, and spiritual
contradictions of his generation and his times.
Weill was born in Dessau, Germany, the son of a cantor and
scion of a family of rabbis and rabbinic scholars whose Judeo-German roots have
been traced to the 13th century. He began composing at age 12; his first
surviving piece is a setting of mi addir in Hebrew, a text sung at
Jewish weddings, but his first substantial piece was a song cycle on poems (in
German translation) by the great medieval Spanish-Hebrew poet Yehuda Halevi.
While at the Berliner Musikhochschule, he studied with Engelbert Humperdinck
and was briefly an assistant to the conductor Hans Knapperstbusch at the Dessau
Opera. He then entered the master class of the legendary Ferruccio Busoni and
became acquainted with the music of some of the composers who would become important
leaders of the German avant-garde. During those years, Weill wrote his first
stage work, as well as his first symphony, a string quartet, and other concert
pieces.
In 1926 in Dresden, Weill enjoyed his first major theatrical
success: a one-act opera with a libretto by George Kaiser, with whom he would
collaborate on other important works. It was in Kaiser's home that Weill met
his future wife, the singer Lotte Lenya, who is generally acknowledged as the
pervasive propelling energy behind his work and certainly the champion of his
legacy.
Weill began a collaboration with the left-wing, socially
critical, and sympathetically communist poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht that
would yield a half dozen musical theater works, including the full-length opera
Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny (The Rise and Fall of the City of
Mahagonny) and the social satire Die Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera),
which is based on John Gay's 18th-century The Beggar's Opera and is, to
this day, regarded as Weill's greatest international success; it has been
translated into 11 languages.
The social messages and leftist perspectives in Weill's works
were sure to invite contempt from the Nazis and their followers, who viewed
social reformers as the agents of Germany's defeat in the First World War and
considered Weill's art an example of the quintessential "cultural Bolshevism"
that was lethal to German society. This, together with his affiliation with the
egregious communist Brecht, as well as the wider circles of Weimar's leftist
avant-garde, made Weill a focus of efforts to discredit him and sabotage his
performances. His so-called leftist sympathies, however, must be appreciated in
the context of the universalist and pacifist orientations of his time and circle,
rather than as a form of political commitment. When Weill's sense of artistic
isolation drove him from Germany in 1933, it was probably less as a Jew at that
stage and more for his unwillingness to reorient his work to an art devoid of
social or political dimension.
After a sojourn as a refugee in Paris, Weill went to New York in 1935, initially to supervise the production of The Eternal Road, a
unique amalgam of biblical pageant, music drama, Jewish passion play, and theatrical
extravaganza in the service of a Jewish ideological message. His collaborators
were director Max Reinhardt and playwright Franz Werfel. Inspired by the
anti-Jewish measures of the new Nazi regime in Germany as well as by the ideals
of the Zionist movement, the work was conceived to reflect the broad spectrum
of Jewish history and persecution through biblical accounts in the context of --
and related to -- events of the modern era. It attempted to convey the perpetual
homelessness of the Jewish people and to suggest an ultimate solution to their suffering
and wandering: a return as a national entity to their reclaimed and rebuilt
ancient home in Palestine -- the Land of Israel.
The "American" Weill turned away from the opera house
per se, even though some of his American musical theater works have been
considered operatic -- or even prototypes of a new form of American opera. He
focused instead on commercial theater, becoming a leading figure in the
revitalization of the Broadway musical and the exploration of a distinctly
American musical-dramatic genre. Weill's first full-fledged Broadway show was Knickerbocker
Holiday, in which Walter Huston sang "September Song," followed
by other scores including Lady in the Dark, One Touch of Venus, Street
Scene, and Lost in the Stars. He was working on a musical based on Huckleberry
Finn at the time of his fatal heart attack in 1950.
Although as an adult Weill shed his Judaism in terms of ritual
observance or religious commitment, he never disavowed his Jewish roots. To the
contrary, he was always proud of his father's cantorial calling and his distinguished
rabbinical lineage, and he bemoaned the difficulty of active Jewish identity
outside a communal context.
Of the major American musical theater composers and
songwriters who happened to be Jews -- among them Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin,
Harold Arlen, Jule Styne, and Stephen Sondheim -- Weill was one of the very few,
along with Leonard Bernstein, to write even a single synagogue piece. His
imaginative setting of the kiddush, commissioned in 1946 by New York's Park Avenue Synagogue for its annual Sabbath eve service devoted to new music,
is today considered a liturgical masterpiece. And he expressed his willingness
to compose additional Hebrew liturgical settings.
After The Eternal Road, Weill collaborated on two
further large-scale Jewish pageants -- We Will Never Die (1943) and A
Flag Is Born (1946) -- whose purposes, though ultimately unsuccessful, were
to galvanize public support in order to effect changes in government policies.
Weill's literary partner for both was playwright Ben Hecht, who had published
the first indisputable graphic evidence that the Holocaust and the "final
solution" were already under way. We Will Never Die was conceived
to bring the Holocaust to public attention and to provoke Allied action to save
Europe's remaining Jews. With an all-star cast and a chorus of 400 rabbis and
cantors, it played to 40,000 people in a single day in two performances at New York's Madison Square Garden, and then toured several cities.
A Flag Is Born
had an even more overtly propagandist and militant aim in
its support of the Revisionist Zionist cause, which thus separated it from a
large part of American Jewry, including advocates in Washington, as well as
from mainstream Zionist circles. Nonetheless, with a high-profile cast that
included Marlon Brando, Paul Muni, and Luther Adler, the production had 120 New York performances followed by a tour, and it raised respectable sums for its
Revisionist sponsors and their faction in Palestine.
There may always be some debate about the extent and
evolution of Weill's "Jewish identity," especially over whether his
Judaically oriented works represent either a form of spiritual "return to
his roots" or an awakening of a related ethnic-national consciousness -- or,
on some level, both. Certainly by the mid-1940s it would seem that the earlier
universalist and pacifist Weill had become Weill the fervent Jewish
nationalist. Many have been convinced that The Eternal Road represented
his own personal "road back" to Jewish identification, while others
have claimed that his Jewish works arose more simply from the feeling of solidarity
among Jewish artists that was precipitated by Germany's war against the Jews
and the enthusiasm for the Zionist enterprise as a response. On balance, though,
it is difficult in retrospect to imagine Kurt Weill the composer as divorced
from the genuine Jewish and humanitarian concerns expressed so artistically in
his Jewish works.
Hatikva
In 1947, when Kurt Weill's orchestral arrangement of 'Hatikva'
received its world premiere in New York, it was still -- as it had been for
decades -- the anthem of the modern Zionist movement, expressing the hope and
determination of a dispersed people for a permanent national home in Palestine.
Less than six months later, it had become the de facto national anthem
of the new sovereign State of Israel.
Its words were first penned in 1877-78, originally as 'Tikvatenu'
(Our Hope), by Naphtali Herz Imber (1856-1909). Imber was a so-called halutz
(pioneer settler in Palestine) poet of the First Aliya -- the initial wave
of Zionist immigration and settlement (1882-1903), mostly from the Russian
Empire and other parts of eastern and east Central Europe. He was born in Galicia, and in 1882 he came to Palestine, staying there for six years before traveling extensively
and settling eventually in America, where he lived out the remainder of his
days.
Imber is known to have written at least the first draft of 'Tikvatenu'
while living in Jassy [Iaşi], Romania, and he is thought to have been
inspired by news of the founding of the city of Petach Tikva (lit., gateway of hope)
in Palestine. A literary parallel to the poem's theme of persistent national
hope may be found in the words to an earlier Polish patriot song -- "Poland
is not yet lost while we still live" -- which later became independent
republican Poland's national anthem during the brief interwar period, and it
has been suspected that those words might have served as a thematic source for
Imber.
Soon after his arrival in Palestine, Imber shared his poem with
farmers and other residents when he was living at the settlement Rishon L'tziyon,
where he is said to have created additional stanzas, sometimes spontaneously at
readings. Eventually the poem contained nine stanzas with a refrain (od lo
avda tikvatenu ...), only the first two of which are retained in the present
incarnation, the anthem 'Hatikva'. His final revised draft was accomplished in Jerusalem, probably in 1884.
Imber included 'Tikvatenu' in his collection of poetry, Barkai
(Dawn), which he published in Palestine in 1886. Each poem or song text
(without specific corresponding music) in that volume was dedicated to a
particular Palestinian settlement. An annotation to 'Tikvatenu' indicates that
it was composed "at the request of one of the known nationalists." A
report in the Hebrew newspaper Hamelitz, published in Russia, referred
enthusiastically to the collection, boasting that in only those few years of
resettlement the people had already acquired a song repertoire, and quoting in particular
from 'Tikvatenu'.
The history, chronology, and morphology of 'Hatikva' have
been traced with authority -- and its stages of development established -- by two
Israelis: the amateur musicologist Eliyahu Hacohen, and the composer, scholar,
and critic Menashe Ravina, who in turn drew partly upon a 1941 article by David
Idelovitch, as well as from Imber's own documents and other sources. Working
independently, they seem to have come to the same basic conclusions. Leon Igli,
a musician and settler in Zikhron Ya'akov who had studied at the conservatory
in St. Petersburg, has been identified as the first to set 'Tikvatenu' to music
-- devising a musical version in 1882 that apparently ignored the strophic structure
of the poem and provided instead a through-composed version without musical
repetition from one stanza to the next. In that form it proved difficult to
sing communally, and it did not take off -- despite token prizes offered to
children who could learn it.
Numerous ungrounded assumptions and misunderstandings have
surrounded the origins, derivations, and developments of the song we now know
as 'Hatikva'. The marriage between the present tune and Imber's poem appears to
have begun in 1888. That version of the song was quickly and permanently established
-- with the subsequent variations one could expect from any song that relied for
its dissemination on oral transmission. Among the settlers in Palestine who
sang it during the First and Second Aliya periods, it was assumed to be an anonymous
folksong, and there appears to have been little concern about its lineage. By
the time of the yishuv (the Jewish community in Palestine under the
British Mandate) and the Third and Fourth Aliya periods, when a portion of the
population had some familiarity with European classical music repertoire, an
assumption seems to have persisted in some quarters that the melody had been
taken directly from the signature melodic material in the Bohemian composer Bedřich
Smetana's symphonic tone poem The Moldau, which was written in 1874 -- one
of six constituent tone poems or movements of his larger orchestral work Ma
vlast (My Fatherland). (To this day, Jews are fond of "recognizing 'Hatikva'"
upon hearing The Moldau performed, and one can still hear the proudly
voiced but naïve suspicion that Smetana might have borrowed his tune from the Jewish
anthem -- which, of course, could not have been the case.)
But the similarity between the two melodies applies only to
the first two-part phrase of 'Hatikva', and it involves simply an
ascending-descending pattern along the first six tones of the minor scale -- with
distinct rhythmic and ornamental divergences. That shared melodic pattern,
however, may have its roots in Central European musical folklore sources -- a common
melodic skeleton or archetype that may be considered a member of what
ethnomusicologists cite as a "tune family" -- in this case comprising numerous
incarnations throughout Europe that have been found in major as well as minor
scale guises. The succeeding part of 'Hatikva' (the refrain in the original multi-stanza
poem), however, beginning with the words od lo avda, constitutes a
complete departure from Smetana's melody.
Others have been convinced that the 'Hatikva' melody was
derived from the Sephardi tune for the liturgical poem tal (dew), as it
is sung in the Western or so-called Amsterdam Sephardi tradition. In that case,
some of the shared skeletal features do extend into the refrain or second part
of Hatikva, but only through its first phase.
The seminal Jewish music scholar and acknowledged pioneer in
the field of Jewish musicology, Abraham Zvi Idelsohn (1882-1938), who settled
in Jerusalem in 1906 and remained in Palestine until 1921, undertook a
now-famous comparative consideration of the 'Hatikva' tune in the context of
perceived parallels. Obviously unaware of information that generated Ravina's
and Hacohen's much later findings, he treated Hatikva strictly as an
anonymous, unidentifiable, and evolved folk tune, whose application to Imber's poem
-- so he assumed -- had been a consequence of folkloric evolution or spontaneous
phenomena rather than the conscious effort of an individual. Idelsohn compared 'Hatikva'
not only with the aforementioned melodies of The Moldau and the Sephardi
tal version, but also with a Spanish cancion, a Polish folksong,
a German folksong, two Basque melodies, and a well-known version of the hymn yigdal
that was current in England as well as in other Ashkenazi communities. The
common thread among most of those examples, however, still applies only to the
first part of 'Hatikva'. Nonetheless, Idelsohn suggested that the basic outline
of the melody constitutes in the aggregate a single "wandering tune"
that had traveled throughout western as well as eastern and east Central Europe, and even beyond. In that context, one could cite other cases that escaped
Idelsohn, but in which any listener might legitimately and instantly recognize
the first part of the 'Hatikva' tune: a Giovanni Battista Viotti violin concerto,
for example; or the Anglican hymn for the Holy Eucharist, "Let All Mortal
Flesh Keep Silence," which is identified in the 1982 authorized hymnal for
the Anglican liturgy as a 17th-century French carol and in some details bears
closer resemblance to 'Hatikva' than do other proposed examples and does span 'Hatikva''s
full octave range.
The pursuit of such "tune detection" between or among
unrelated musical works or sources, although sometimes musicologically
fruitful, can also be a risky undertaking without more evidence than two
similar phrases. As the erudite composer and pedagogue, Hugo Weisgall was fond
of reminding would-be musical detectives, "There are, after all, only 12 notes
available to us in Western music." One may need more hard information than
the audible similarity of two phrases in two distinct works to establish that anything
more than coincidence is at play; and this may apply even if those two phrases
are identical. Moreover, the fact that innocent listeners may be instantly
reminded of a particular tune upon hearing its echo in an unrelated piece may
be owed more to emotional associations than to the actual melodic history.
(Dare we assert that a certain passage in Brahms's D minor piano concerto
indicates that he was even aware of the American song "Home on the Range"?
Or that Verdi knew "The Yellow Rose of Texas" when he wrote La
forza del destino or the Ashkenazi Hanukka tune for the hymn ma'oz tzur when
he composed Don Carlo?)
In any case, even granting the likelihood that a skeletal tune
archetype underlies a part of the 'Hatikva' melody, it is because of the
research of Ravina and Hacohen that we can now know the specific identity of
the entire tune from which this version was drawn -- as well as the
circumstances surrounding its adaptation and application to Imber's words. It
is Samuel Cohen, another First Aliya settler in Palestine from Moldavia and a native of Ungeny, on the Romanian-Bessarabian border, who is now credited
with the deliberate adaptation of a popular Moldavian-Romanian folk tune to
which Romanian lyrics had been applied at some point prior to 1888 by G.
Popovitz. The song, about a farmer carting his oxen to market, was known by
then as 'Carul cu boi' (Wagon and Oxen). Cohen, however, referred to it as 'Hois!
Cea!' (Right! Left!), the words of the refrain. (The song appears to
have acquired at least one known early-20th-century parody variant, also in
Romanian, which refers to a way of life enjoyed before the advent of
motorcars.)
Already attracted to the poem 'Tikvatenu' while still in Romania,
when in 1887 his brother sent him a copy of Imber's poetry collection, Cohen
fashioned the musical adaptation the next year, shortly after he arrived as a
settler in Rishon L'tziyon, basing his version almost note for note on 'Carul
cu boi' as he had heard it sung by peasants and farmers in Moldavia-Romania.
His new setting caught on almost immediately and was spread among the various
settlements. But it did not remain associated with Cohen, and it soon took on, through
its singing at meetings and other gatherings among the Jews in Palestine, the persona of folk property -- a supposedly anonymous expression of Zionist
aspirations. Insofar as we know, the earliest printed version of 'Hatikva' with
this melody dates to 1895, in Breslau.
Many of the more than thirty known variations, adjustments,
and alterations that 'Hatikva' has undergone since Cohen's initial adaptation --
with regard to music as well as text -- have occurred as unintended results of
oral transmission and tradition. Other changes have been deliberate, in view of
altered situations or out of literary considerations. There have also been unsuccessful
attempts to reconcile the punctuation and accentuation of the words with the
standards of modern Hebrew. But it is a mistake to assume, as many critics have
done, that the admittedly incorrect syllabic stresses in the accepted version
are due solely to the poem's Ashkenazi Hebrew. Many of those stresses reflect
incorrect Ashkenazi pronunciation and are not merely a matter of Ashkenazi as
opposed to Sephardi or modern rules (tikvatenu, for example, where the
suffix occurs on the downbeat). In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, even
many of the most learned, enlightened, and modern-oriented Ashkenazi synagogue
and song composers (and cantors, for that matter) allowed purely musical
considerations to govern and did not always concern themselves with correct
syllabic stress, even when they would not have pronounced the same words
incorrectly in spoken Hebrew. And the entire history of Hebrew contrafacts and
other tune adaptations to Hebrew texts is fraught with cases of disregard for
intelligent syllabic accentuation. The same fault, however, can be found in
English and American music -- not only in folk and popular song, but also in
works by some of the most celebrated composers: Handel, for example, in his
oratorios; or Gilbert and Sullivan, who thought nothing of shamelessly forcing words
and entire sentences into melodies whose rhythm is at complete odds with their
prosody -- poetic license notwithstanding. But, like those examples, 'Hatikva' simply
would not stand up to syllabic correction and still retain its emotional power.
Contrary to popular assumption -- which is enshrined as fact
in many written accounts -- there is no record that 'Hatikva' (or 'Tikvatenu',
as it was then known) actually was sung at the First Zionist Congress in Basel
in 1897 or at the three subsequent congresses, although there is evidence that
it was sung at a meeting in Vienna in 1896 in the presence of Theodor Herzl,
the founder of modern Zionism. In fact, during that time frame there were
two announcements of competitions for the creation or suggestion of a Zionist
anthem -- one in the German Jewish journal Die Welt in 1898, and another at
the Fourth Zionist Congress (1900) in London. Neither effort produced any
submission that was deemed sufficiently meritorious. It is only at the Fifth Zionist
Congress (Basel, 1901) that we know for certain that this song was sung, at the
conclusion of one of the sessions. And at the Sixth Zionist Congress (1903) in
Basel -- the so-called Uganda Conference, at which the British Empire's offer of
that African territory as a Jewish national home in place of Palestine,
transmitted by Theodor Herzl himself, was roundly rejected with booing -- dissenting
factions appear to have sung it collectively, as if accepting it as an
expression of common ground. The enthusiastic singing of 'Hatikva' by the
entire assemblage at the Seventh Zionist Congress in 1905 is said to have
confirmed its status as the anthem of the Zionist movement, and it was sung at
all subsequent congresses as well as at most regional and local meetings and
rallies from then on. Yet its formal adoption as the official anthem -- despite its
earlier proposal by David Wolffsohn -- did not occur until the 18th Zionist
Congress in Prague (1933), by which time the title 'Tikvatenu' had given way permanently
to 'Hatikva'. "The congress declares," reads the resolution presented
there by Leo Motzkin, "that following many years of tradition, the blue
and white flag is the flag of the Histadrut Hatzionit (Zionist Federation,
i.e., the Zionist movement), and its anthem 'Hatikva' is the national anthem of
the Jewish people."
'Hatikva' also was sung unofficially as the de facto anthem of Jewish
Palestine under the British Mandate -- from the end of the First World War until
1947. Moreover, for many Jews in the Diaspora who were not necessarily
committed members of Zionist organizations or active in Zionist circles but
were nonetheless not opposed to the Zionist principles and ideals, 'Hatikva' gradually
became a sort of hymn of Jewish national solidarity, sometimes even on a
politically neutral plane, and it came to be sung frequently at general Jewish
functions, gatherings, and even services. And cantors in Europe would frequently
insert the tune into passages of the liturgy that refer to messianic
redemption, return to Zion, and other similar sentiments.
At the ceremony surrounding the formal declaration of
statehood on 14 May 1948, 'Hatikva' was sung by the assembly at the opening of
the proceedings and played at the conclusion by members of the Palestine Symphony
(now the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra). Since then it has been the national
anthem of the sovereign state, although that official status was not conferred
on it formally by the Knesset until 2004! (That after-the-fact situation is not
unique to Israel. "The Star Spangled Banner," although it functioned unofficially
as an American national anthem for years before its official adoption, was not
formally declared as such by Congress until 1931. Other contenders for that
role included "America the Beautiful" and, in some quarters, Irving
Berlin's "God Bless America.")
The revision of the refrain in Naphtali Imber's published version
of the poem to the present form of the text is credited to a teacher in Rishon
L'tziyon who, in 1905, according to Hacohen's chronology, emended the phrases hatikva
hanoshana (the ancient hope) to read hatikva bat sh'not alpayim (the
hope of two millennia), and lashuv l'eretz avoteinu l'ir bo david hona (to
return to the land of our fathers, to the city where David dwelt) to read lih'yot
am hofshi b'artzenu eretz tziyon viy'rushalayim (to be a free people in our
land, the land of Zion and Jerusalem). These emendations quickly became
effective in Palestine, while the earlier words continued to linger for some
time in the Diaspora.
In the decades preceding statehood and even afterward, not
all Zionist factions, and not even all residents of Jewish Palestine and then Israel, have endorsed the designation of 'Hatikva' as the Jewish national anthem. Over the
years, more than a dozen musical as well as text alternatives (including
another poem by Imber) have been suggested, out of political and religious as well
as aesthetic considerations. During the period of the Second Aliya (1904-14), 'Tehezakna
(Birkhat am)', a poem by Chaim Nachman Bialik, Israel's national poet, was sung
to a march-like tune reminiscent of some Russian revolutionary songs, and it
became a popular rival candidate in Palestine for the Zionist anthem. For a
while, newspapers there engaged in a running debate about the relative merits of
'Tehezakna' and 'Hatikva'. (Bialik himself seems not to have been involved in
the controversy, and apparently he refused to join 'Tehezakna' advocates in standing
when that song was sung.) In the Diaspora during those years and even beyond, 'Tehezakna'
often spontaneously followed the singing of 'Hatikva'.
On the other hand, there were objections to the melody at
various times and from various quarters on the grounds that it was a foreign
tune -- i.e., not Jewish in origin or initial function -- and that an original
tune, created expressly for this purpose, would be more appropriate. Indeed,
some new melodies were composed to the same poem, but they failed to dislodge
Cohen's adaptation and they became consigned to obscurity. Other objections even
concerned the minor mode of 'Hatikva', on the erroneous assumption that the
uplifting patriotic spirit of a national anthem requires major.
Some religious Zionist groups, already disaffected by the
secular nature of the Zionist movement, lobbied for a biblical text. They
usually proposed Psalm 126, shir hama'alot b'shuv adonai et shivat tziyon (A
song of ascents: When God brought back those who returned to Zion ...), which
refers to the restoration following the destruction of the First Temple and the Babylonian captivity. For religious Zionists, that would at least have
provided the desired acknowledgment of a Divine parameter to the modern Zionist
enterprise. A musical version of it by Hazzan Pinchas Minkowski was often
advocated. Some poets and composers wrote new songs altogether in the hope of
acceptance as replacements. And after the Six-Day War, in 1967, an extreme left-wing
Knesset member, Uri Avenary -- foreshadowing a kind of post-1990s Western "political
correctness" -- renewed his objection to 'Hatikva' on the grounds that its
Jewish particularity and emphasis unfairly excluded non-Jewish residents and
citizens of the Jewish state. He introduced a bill to replace it with Naomi
Shemer's suddenly famous song Y'rushalayim shel zahav (Jerusalem of
Gold), which, although composed a few weeks before the war in an unrelated context,
had been adopted virtually overnight as an ode to Israel's swift victory and
its reversal of Jordan's nineteen-year occupation of the eastern part of
Jerusalem -- including the site of the remaining retaining wall of the Temple,
and the ancient walled city ir david, the City of David. (On her deathbed,
in 2005, Shemer revealed that her melody had been based subconsciously on an
old anonymous Basque lullaby, although she had altered eight of its tones -- a not
insignificant departure.) Avenary's bill was never put to a vote.
The event that occasioned Weill's 'Hatikva' orchestration
was a dinner and private concert at New York's Waldorf-Astoria hotel on 25 November
1947, performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Serge Koussevitzky's
baton in honor of Chaim Weizmann's 73rd birthday and to raise funds for his pet
project in Palestine: the Weizmann Institute of Science, in Rehovot, founded in
1944.
Weizmann was a renowned British chemist -- born in Russian
Poland -- whose scientific discoveries had aided munitions productions by the
Allies in the First World War and whose influence in England played a role in
the issuance of the Balfour Declaration. He had been president of the World
Zionist Organization (WZO) since 1920, and by 1947 he was the acknowledged
elder statesman of modern mainstream Zionism. Although it was far from certain
that evening, he was soon to become the newborn State of Israel's first president.
Weizmann was especially committed to the dual role of pure
science and practical scientific research vis-à-vis international
understanding, and to the connection between science and statesmanship. He
envisioned the institute as a means to advancement and prosperity for the
entire Near East, and for forging links between its scientists and those of the
Western world. "Science can be a most potent force toward achieving the unity
of mankind," he observed in his address that evening, expressing the hope
that the institute would play a part "with all other men of good will and
scholarship among all nations and creeds toward the shaping of a new age of
knowledge, justice and peace." By then the institute already counted among
its patrons Albert Einstein; former New York governor Herbert H. Lehman;
broadcast mogul William S. Paley; and Henry Morgenthau, Jr., former secretary
of the treasury (under President Franklin D. Roosevelt), who introduced
Weizmann as no less than the "spiritual leader of the Jewish people."
The event succeeded in raising an estimated half million dollars for the institute.
But the tribute also turned into something of a quasi-political rally for
Weizmann (or had it been so designed?), not only with Morgenthau's introduction,
but also when the chairman of the reception committee referred to him
presciently but prematurely as "the first president of the new Jewish state"
and was applauded enthusiastically by the assemblage of 2,000 people.
There was an especially heady atmosphere at that dinner and
concert, which occurred at an auspicious moment in Jewish history. The
fledgling United Nations was in session in New York that very week, and on its
agenda were the twin issues of the partition of Palestine and Jewish statehood.
The previous day, at the meeting of the U.N.'s Palestine Committee at Lake Success, the partition proposal had lost by a single vote. But the full United Nations
was yet to vote, and that night the future of the state hung in the balance as
the Boston Symphony followed "The Star Spangled Banner" with Weill's
brand new 'Hatikva' score. "I would not like to prophesy," Weizmann
told the audience, "but maybe tomorrow night the nations of the world will
cast their vote in favor of a Jewish state. I hope that tomorrow we will at
last stop dreaming." Indeed, by 29 November 1947, his hope had become
prediction.
In the spring of 1947, Weill had visited his parents in Palestine, where they had emigrated from Germany in 1936. He had met Weizmann at his house
there, introduced by the American Zionist leader Meyer Weisgal. Weisgal had
conceived and produced Weill's The Eternal Road a decade earlier in New
York -- receiving one of the first donations for its production fund from
Weizmann as his friend as well as his personal representative in the United
States -- and had since become an ardent admirer of Weill's gifts. As the plan
for the November testimonial event took shape, Weizmann personally requested
that Weill be invited to create an orchestral arrangement of 'Hatikva' for the
occasion, clearly in expectation that it would eventually become Israel's national anthem.
Weisgal, the executive vice chairman of the American Friends
of the Weizmann Institute of Science, was entrusted with the necessary
communications with Weill. In one letter, he transmitted Koussevitzky's
permission to use "percussions [sic] as much as you want." In
Weizmann's post-event letter of thanks to Weill, he expressed the wish that his
arrangement would be "adopted by the Jewish state to be played on the
occasion of the first opening of Parliament." (It was not. The standard
harmonization and orchestration in Israel was made in 1948 for the Israel
Philharmonic by the Italian conductor Bernardino Molinari. Other Israeli
composers, such as Paul Ben-Haim, have made orchestrations as well.)
There was probably more than would have met most eyes to
Weizmann's invitation and to Weill's quick acceptance in the midst of
time-consuming commitments to other projects. For it is not generally known
that during the preceding decade, Weill had become intrigued with the Zionist
cause. Although, as a work aimed at broad public appeal, The Eternal Road was
clothed in biblical guises and perhaps even the veil of its Jewish playwright's
(Franz Werfel) personal Roman Catholic and Evangelical leanings, the production
-- from Weill's and Weisgal's perspectives -- had been at its core a Zionist
expression. To the age-old plight and problem of eternal forced Jewish wandering
and persecution, it suggested the Zionist solution in its dialogue and in its
conclusion -- when the entire cast proceeds upward to its land (aliya?), accompanied
by the singing of Psalm 126, Shir hama'alot (in English translation).
Composing that work had probably sparked Weill's own reawakening to his Jewish
identity in the context of modern secular Zionism. And he appears to have
become increasingly committed to Zionist sympathies -- not least through his subsequent
association with the outspoken Revisionist Zionist adherent, writer, and
playwright Ben Hecht. His two subsequent propaganda-oriented Jewish pageants
with Hecht, We Will Never Die (1943) and A Flag Is Born (1946),
promoted belligerent courses of action that Weizmann and the mainstream Zionism
leadership did not endorse, even on behalf of Jewish survival and Zionist aims.
A Flag Is Born was presented by the American League for a Free Palestine, Peter Bergson's American fund-raising front for the Irgun; and the
Revisionist-affiliated Committee for a Jewish Army in Palestine was associated
with both pageants. A Flag Is Born had advocated wresting Palestine from the British by Jewish military force if necessary. Now, however, with the
British at least outwardly ready to accept the partition plan and to vacate the
region, the possibility of statehood seemed closer and more real than ever. So
it would have been natural for Weill to welcome the opportunity for this role,
small as it was, in tribute to the man who might actually become the first
president of the sovereign state.
Inexplicably, Weill's 'Hatikva' arrangement is not really an
accompaniment conducive to communal singing. It seems more like a purely
orchestral version -- perhaps a brief overture or interlude based on 'Hatikva' --
which is how it has been recorded here. The introductory passage gives no clear
indication of when the anthem should begin. The melody line becomes buried or otherwise
obscured by the harmony in some places. And there is an unexplained "surprise"
interlude before the repetition of the final phrase, which will throw off
anyone not expecting it.
Granted, the printed program refers to the "playing"
(i.e., not singing) of 'Hatikva' (followed by Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony,
and Beethoven's Egmont Overture and Eroica Symphony). And
Weisgal had provided the text of the program page to Weill in advance for his approval,
which might unintentionally have misled him. Yet surely Weill would have known
that upon hearing the first strains of 'Hatikva', all assembled there would
have jumped spontaneously to their feet and begun singing the anthem.
(Actually, since it followed the American national anthem, they would already have
been standing.) Could this have been a recycled, if minimally tweaked or
expanded, instrumental piece from A Flag Is Born? Perhaps an interlude
or an accompaniment to some form of choreography? Until all of the musical
materials from that pageant can be located, assembled, and scrutinized, that
can at best be a supported guess. And so the mystery remains.
---
Julius Chajes
(1910-1985) was a highly accomplished virtuoso concert
pianist as well as conductor who settled in America as a refugee from the Third
Reich in the wake of the Austrian electorate's vote for annexation to Germany in the infamous plebiscite of 1938. But it was as a composer that he made his most enduring
contribution to the music of American Jewry -- to the American Synagogue,
largely in the Reform milieu but also in many Conservative synagogues, as well
as to the secular Jewish concert repertoire of his adopted country.
Chajes was born in Lemberg [L'vov], Galicia (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Hapsburg Empire, but now Poland), to a cultured
upper-middle-class family. He began piano lessons at the age of seven with his mother,
Velerja Chajes, a well-recognized concert pianist. His succeeding teachers
included Julius Isserlies, Hedwig Kanner-Rosenthal, and one of the legendary pianistic
giants, Moritz Rosenthal, in Vienna -- where a distant relative, Hirsch (Tzvi)
Peretz Chajes, was the chief rabbi from about 1918 until his death, in 1927. At
the age of nine Julius gave his first piano recital and wrote his first piano
piece, followed by a string quartet when he was thirteen; and at fifteen he
performed his own piano concerto (Romantic Fantasy) in Vienna. His second
string quartet was performed by the famous Rose Quartet, and later he was
awarded an important prize at the First International Piano Competition there
in 1938.
Beginning in 1934, Chajes lived for about two years in Palestine, where he chaired the piano department of the Beit L'viyim music academy in Tel
Aviv and also became interested in studying Jewish musical sources in antiquity
and some of the accumulated folk music of the region. During his stay in Palestine he was influenced by the emerging melos -- especially the socalled Mediterranean
style -- being developed by other Jewish composers who had also come from Europe. This, together with his exposure to Arabic and Hebrew Palestinian folk and folk-type
tunes and to the song repertoire of the settlers, made an indelible imprint on many
of his future compositions.
Chajes came to America in 1938, following his receipt of two
prizes from the Jüdische Kulturbund in Berlin for choral works the previous
year. His American reputation quickly took root, and his Psalm 142 for mixed
chorus and organ was performed at the 1939 New York World's Fair; at the Reform
movement's Union of American Hebrew Congregations 1942 convention; and at the
annual meeting and concert of the American Guild of Organists in 1944. In 1940 he
settled in Detroit, where he became an important figure in the musical life of
the Jewish community and the city in general. He founded a symphony orchestra of
the Jewish Community Center there, which gave sophisticated programs on a
regular basis for many years. He was the music director at Temple Beth El, and
beginning in 1950, he served on the faculty of Wayne State University. Meanwhile, he maintained his pianistic concert career, with performances that included
playing his own piano concerto with the Detroit Symphony conducted by Paul
Paray. He was also chairman and cofounder of the local organization HASHOFAR -- Society
for Advancement of Jewish Music -- and he cochaired the Detroit Round Table for Catholics,
Jews, and Protestants.
Chajes's catalogue ranges from works for full symphony orchestra
to concert choral settings -- a number of which were widely performed throughout
the United States during the 1940s and 1950s by Jewish choral ensembles -- to chamber
pieces and numerous songs; and some of his prayer settings became standard fare
in synagogue services. His operatic cantata The Promised Land was written
to commemorate Israel's 10th anniversary, and his three-act opera, Out of
the Desert, spanning Jewish history in the Near East from the biblical
account of the exodus from Egypt to the modern State of Israel, received its
world premiere in 1966.
Hebrew Suite, Adarim, Old Jerusalem
Chajes's Hebrew Suite is exclusively an
instrumental piece. Its title, which might suggest only a language, refers to
what was then often called "Hebrew culture" -- the folkloric,
literary, and artistic expressions that sprang from modern Zionist-oriented
sensibilities and represented the new, youthful, and optimistic guise of Jewish
identity. The first movement, Prayer: Tranquilo, is a continuous
unfolding and development of the opening clarinet statement, giving the
impression of a soulful longing for the ancient Jewish homeland and all it has
represented for more than two millennia in terms of a spiritual gravitational
center, and as the focus of much of the liturgy. The overall character of this
movement is more eastern European than Near Eastern in its cantorial-like lines
and ornaments -- in the clarinet and violin solo passages, and especially in the
cadenza that concludes the movement.
The second movement, Walls of Zion, in reference to
the walled ancient part of Jerusalem (ir ha'atika, or "the old city"),
begins with a mystical contemplation that serves as an introduction to an echo
of a lively Hassidic tune. This could be interpreted as a depiction of Hassidim
dancing at the walls of or within the old city, since some Hassidic groups
inhabited Jerusalem long before statehood and even before the modern Zionist
movement. But it could also represent one of the many Hassidic or Hassidic-type
tunes that were brought from Europe to Palestine by some of the early
secular-oriented settlers and adapted to Zionist lyrics to become halutz (pioneer)
songs. Hora, the third movement, which refers to the best-known Israeli
folk dance, is a clever canonic treatment of a folksong that was at one time
familiar in America as an "Israel-related" song.
Hebrew Suite
was originally composed in 1939 as a chamber work for
clarinet, piano, and string quartet, and was revised for orchestra in 1965. The
chamber ensemble version, in which Walls of Zion is the final movement,
contains an additional movement that Chajes removed for the orchestral piece: Galil.
That movement was based on a popular Palestinian-Israeli folksong, El yivne
hagalil (God Will Rebuild the Galil [Galilee]), which probably dates from
the Second Aliya period and may be part of a series of songs from that time
that were deliberately fashioned by Jewish settlers in imitation of Arabic
songs. Chajes turned it into a four-part round and published it separately as a
choral version. It was probably one of the most widely performed Hebrew choral
pieces in America during the mid-20th century, not only among high school and
college choruses throughout the country but also by such esteemed conductors as
Robert Shaw and Margaret Hillis. Said to have generated more in royalties for
Chajes than all his other works combined, the arrangement was performed by the
Mormon Tabernacle Choir at one of its conferences and was used in the sound
track of the film Ben Hur in 1959.
'Adarim' and 'Old Jerusalem' are two of Chajes's most beloved songs. Both reflect
typical, admittedly romanticized perceptions of the aura and spirit of Jewish Palestine from early aliya (immigration) periods until statehood, and even
afterward. Both songs were standard repertoire at Jewish concerts throughout America during that time frame, and were among the most conspicuous representations of modern "Jewish
music" -- especially in relation to Israel -- on general concert programs.
Both reflect the kind of aural exoticism that used to be attached to images of
the region. Both songs exploit elements and cliches of the Arabic hijaz mode,
with its characteristic lowered seventh degree and augmented second interval;
and both expressions alternate stately, lyrical, and contemplative sentiments with
sparkling dance figures.
'Adarim' is an artistic setting of a Palestinian shepherd song whose lyrics are
by Assaf Halevi to a melody by Shlomo Weissfish. Chajes originally set it in
1939 with an accompaniment of oboe and piano, and then he created the
orchestral version in 1950; but the oboe is still used to represent the
quintessential shepherd's pipe, and the pastoral quality is maintained by orchestral
economy.
'Old Jerusalem
' is a setting of Psalm 134 to Chajes's original melody, to
which he gave the flavor of a Palestinian folksong. The structure is basically
A-B-A, where the B section interrupts the preceding flowing reverential statement
with sharply defined staccato rhythmic impulses that reflect rejoicing at the
opportunity to worship and praise God, as the Psalm suggests, in Jerusalem -- and
to be blessed by God "out of Zion."
---
Herbert Fromm
(1905-1995) was one of the most prominent, most prolific,
and most widely published composers of synagogue and other serious Jewish music
among those German- and Austrian-Jewish musicians who found refuge from the
Third Reich in the United States during the 1930s and who became associated principally
with the American Reform movement -- a circle that also included Isadore Freed
(1900-1960), Frederick Piket (1903-74), Julius Chajes (1910-1985), and Hugo
Chaim Adler (1894-1955).
An accomplished organist and conductor as well as a
composer, Fromm was born in Kitzingen, Germany, and studied at the State
Academy of Music in Munich -- with, among others, Paul Hindemith. After a year
as conductor of the Civic Opera in Bielefeld, he held a similar post for two
years at the opera in Würzburg. After 1933, when Jews were prohibited from participation
in German cultural life, he was an active composer and conductor in the
Frankfurt am Main section of the Jüdischer Kulturbund in Deutschland, which
provided the only permitted artistic opportunities for Jewish musicians during
the Nazi era until 1939. It was in that context that he began to employ Jewish themes
and texts in his compositions.
Fromm immigrated to the United States in 1937. He assumed
the post of organist and music director at Temple Beth Zion in Buffalo, New York, followed by a similar appointment at Temple Israel in Boston, where he remained
until his retirement, in 1972. In 1940 and 1941 he worked once again with
Hindemith, privately as well as during summers at Tanglewood, refining his technique
and style and developing a highly individualistic approach to music for Jewish
worship and music of Jewish expression -- judiciously modern, yet imaginatively respectful
of tradition and never on the fringe of the avant-garde. In 1945 he won the
first Ernest Bloch Award for The Song of Miriam, and he was later
awarded an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters by Lesley College.
Among his large opera of liturgical and liturgically related
works are several full services and numerous individual prayer settings -- many
of which became part of the standard repertoire in Reform synagogues -- as well
as Judaically based pieces geared for concert performance. Among his
outstanding non-synagogal and secular works are Memorial Cantata, The
Stranger, three string quartets, a violin sonata, a woodwind quartet, and
many songs. Fromm also authored three books: The Key of See, a travel
journal; Seven Pockets, a volume of collected writings; and On Jewish
Music, from a composer's viewpoint.
Fromm was known for his insistence on high aesthetic standards
and his harsh criticism of the populist trends and the raw, mass-oriented
ethnic elements that could be found increasingly in American synagogue music.
Composer Samuel Adler (Hugo Adler's son), his lifelong friend and colleague,
has recalled that it was not so much those musical elements, per se and
on their own appropriate turfs, that angered Fromm as it was his view that such
adulterated synagogue music "hindered the worshipper from being able to
face the highest in life." And in that context, Adler remembers that Fromm
challenged himself and his work with the Hebrew admonition contained in Pirkei
avot (Sayings of the Fathers), a part of the Mishna: Da lifnei mi ata omed
--"know at all times before Whom you stand."
Pioneers (Halutzim)
When the famous conductor Arthur Fiedler invited Fromm to
compose a work for the Boston Pops Orchestra in 1971, Fromm chose to create
this brief musical depiction of the resettling and rebuilding of the Land of Israel. Basing the piece in part on his earlier Palestinian March (1942),
which he revised and adapted, he titled the new work Pioneers (Halutzim)
-- in programmatic reference to the early Zionist pioneer-settlers in Palestine in the decades preceding the founding of the state, in 1948. The initial theme quotes
from Na'ale l'artzenu b'rina (We Will Go Up to Our Land with Joy), a
well-known anonymous halutz song dating at least to the Third Aliya, or
the immigration period of the early 1920s. It is a march-like tune of unknown
origin that appeared in a number of Jewish songster publications from the late
1920s through the 1940s. It was printed in America as early as 1929 in such a
community songster, published by the Board of Jewish Education in Chicago. Fromm also adapted the same tune independently for a synagogue hymn, with English words
by the American Jewish poet and hymnist Penina Moise (1797-1880), which he
published in a small hymnal in the late 1940s.
The Na'ale l'artzenu tune is expanded and elaborated through
the first section of this orchestral piece. A second theme, which reflects a
perceived Near Eastern character, is introduced by the flute and developed by the
woodwinds. The trumpet introduces a third theme, followed by a reprise of the halutz
song. Following a brief reappearance of part of the second section, a short
coda brings the piece to an enthusiastic, optimistic conclusion.
Yemenite Cycle
Fromm's Yemenite Cycle stems from his first
visit to Israel, in the autumn of 1960. In addition to renewing his
acquaintance with many friends and colleagues who had emigrated there from
Germany and Austria during the 1930s -- such composers as Joseph Tal [Gruenthal]
and Paul Ben-Haim [Frankenburger], who were by then in the forefront of the
Israeli music world -- Fromm had the opportunity to hear a good deal of sacred as
well as secular Near Eastern, Arabic, and North African Jewish folk music for
the first time. As was true for even well-educated and Judaically cultured American
and European Jews at that time, particularly those not specifically or professionally
immersed in Israeli culture through Zionist activities, those foreign sounds
and exotic flavors were a revelation to him, and those discoveries both
intrigued him and broadened his consciousness of Jewish musical tradition and expression.
Despite the fact that these traditions had flourished for a long time in their
respective lands of origin, it is primarily owing to the emergence of modern
Israel and the ingathering (kibbutz galu'yyot) there of communities that
many of these oriental Jewish repertoires first came to the attention of the West
-- apart from a handful of scholars. (The wealth of commercial recordings that
reflect musical traditions of the many oriental Jewish communities in Israel -- ethnomusicological documents as well as popular and even entertainment-oriented
arrangements -- had yet to become readily available in the United States.)
Fromm was drawn in particular to the modalities, rhythms,
and other features of Yemenite Jewish folksong, some of which -- although
various Yemenite tunes had been adopted by the early settlers in Palestine -- had
become an integral part of the overall Israeli folksong culture ever since the
wholesale resettlement of Yemenite Jewry in Israel beginning in 1949-50.
Shortly after his return from that trip to Israel, Fromm wrote this group of settings of traditional folksongs. He preceded them by a brief
instrumental introduction, which incorporates perceived Near Eastern cliches
but not any specific traditional folk material. Only two of the four sung
melodies and two of the texts are actually of Yemenite provenance, but the
title is used liberally to suggest the overall Near Eastern character of all
four songs. Except for the concluding one, Shalom l'vo shabbat, the
tunes are left intact in the vocal lines, without imposed variations,
alterations, or extensions. But the accompaniment -- which Fromm assigned to modern
instruments that have, or are believed to have, ancient counterparts or
forerunners in biblical references and archaeological-organological findings -- follows
his usual neoclassical style.
The text of Yom ze l'yisra'el belongs to the
category of songs known as z'mirot shel shabbat -- songs that traditionally
are sung at the Sabbath table before, during, and after each of the three
festive meals on Friday night and Saturday. Most of those texts date to within
a century of the Middle Ages, while a few have earlier roots. But each has
accumulated countless tunes among the numerous Jewish geographical, regional, and
cultural traditions. The poem Yom ze l'yisra'el was for a long time
attributed to ARIzal, the acronym for Rabbi Yitzhak Luria (1534-1572), an
important Kabbalist whose name is contained in the acrostic -- even though most
of his poetry is in Aramaic rather than Hebrew. Recent scholarship, however, has
confirmed not only an earlier suspicion that not all stanzas are by Luria, but also
that the entire poem was written instead by Yitzhak Hendeli, a 16th-century
poet living in Crimea. Obviously the same name in the acrostic could account
for some of the previous confusion. Moreover, the eminent Israeli musicologist
and acknowledged authority on Sephardi music, Edwin Seroussi, has found the
poem to be modeled on a secular Spanish poetic form of that period. This
particular musical version is an anonymous Yemenite tune, a variant of which
appears in the monumental Thesaurus of Hebrew-Oriental Melodies by the
aforementioned Abraham Zvi Idelsohn, in the volume devoted to Yemenite tunes.
There, however, it is attached to the words of an unrelated and obscure Sabbath
song.
Bammidbar
is Fromm's title for the song Lammidbar sa'enu, the
words of which were written by Alexander Penn (1906-1972) to an anonymous
Arabic folk tune. Fromm treats it canonically, with the flute and harp in imitation
of the basic rhythm of the vocal line.
Zamm'ri li is an anonymous Yemenite Hebrew folksong that first
appeared in print in Mishirei ha'aretz (From Songs of the Land), a rare
collection published in 1932 by the Keren Kayemet (Jewish National Fund).
Adapted by Menashe Ravina [Rabinovitz], the song expresses the longing for
return to the ancient homeland.
Shalom l'vo shabbat is a Yemenite ode to the Sabbath and
its aura of peace and respite from weekday cares and concerns. The words are
frequently attributed to the 17th-century Yemenite Hebrew poet Shalem Shabazi, but
contemporary Israeli scholars maintain that the author was Se'adyah, a
16th-century Yemenite poet whose name appears in the acrostic. The melody here
is also an anonymous Yemenite tune, which is printed in this same variant in
Idelsohn's Thesaurus. The text was adapted to this melody originally by
Sara Levi-Tannai, a choreographer who was born in Jerusalem to Yemenite parents.
In 1949 she founded the world-famous Inbal Dance Theater, which is devoted
especially to Yemenite folklore in song and dance. Fromm has added phrases to
the original vocal line before the final strophe, where he calls for the simple
recitation of the word shabbat. And the rhythm has been altered in the
counterpoint between the vocal and instrumental lines. Yemenite Cycle received
its premiere at one of Fromm's annual music festivals at Temple Israel in Boston.
---
Born in Radzin [Radzyn], Poland, composer, choral conductor,
and educator Max Helfman (1901-63) arrived in America at the age of
eight. He soon became a sought-after boy alto in New York orthodox synagogue
choirs, and he acquired a traditional religious education. His musical gifts
became increasingly apparent, and he began experimenting with choral conducting
and composition on his own, eventually studying at the Mannes College of Music.
Although he never had a formal university education, he became a self-taught
intellectual, familiar with the canon of both secular Jewish and Western
literature and philosophy.
At the age of twenty eight, Helfman was awarded a three-year
fellowship at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, where he studied piano,
composition, and conducting with Fritz Reiner. From then on, his activities
reflect a constantly evolving musical, cultural, and social orientation, manifested
in three major areas of commitment. One was his intensive involvement with
religious music as both conductor and composer. For many years, until his
permanent relocation on the West Coast in 1952, he was a renowned choirmaster
and music director at leading New York area synagogues. He wrote settings for
Sabbath, High Holy Day, and Festival liturgies, as well as for other services.
His secular works were premiered at Carnegie Hall.
Helfman was also heavily involved in Yiddish choral circles,
primarily as director of New York's largest unabashedly leftist Yiddish chorus,
the Freiheits Gezang Verein, which he took over in 1937 and which combined with
similar groups to form the Jewish People's Philharmonic Chorus. This ensemble
and others like it were commonly known as "communist or communist-leaning
Yiddish choruses." Whether that identification actually represented party
commitment or cultural attraction to communism on an emotional plane is
difficult to ascertain. The phenomenon must be understood in the context of the
times, which involved general working-class concerns, utopian sentiments, and,
simply, antifascism -- but not always political anti-Americanism or
anticapitalism. Helfman also headed the Jewish Workers Music Alliance, an
organization of affiliated choruses in nearly thirty cities, and he published arrangements
of songs of the labor movement and of international proletarian class struggle.
It is not clear whether Helfman's directorship of the
Freiheits chorus reveals particular ideological sympathies or merely
represented another good choral opportunity, since it was considered a fairly
prestigious position at that time. Nonetheless, the association did unfairly
color some people's views of him, at least until he shed most of his Yiddishist
interests in favor of Zionist and Hebrew cultural perspectives.
In 1945 the Histadrut Ivrit of America and the American Zionist
Youth Commission established a Jewish Arts Committee to promote Zionist / Palestinian-oriented
Hebrew culture and arts in the New York area. Its goals were to stimulate an
ongoing dialogue with artistic life in Jewish Palestine, to attract American
Jewish youth to Zionist ideals through artistic expression, and to establish
ties between the two communities. Helfman was appointed the Arts Committee's
artistic director and conductor of its Hebrew Arts Singers.
This new chorus and the Arts Committee's focus on Hebrew
cultural expression and the nationalist perspectives associated with Zionism
were fundamentally different from the worldview articulated in the Yiddish
choral idiom that the Freiheits chorus espoused. For Helfman, the new endeavor
marked the beginning of yet a third and different artistic and pedagogic
direction, which culminated in a significant part of his contribution.
He soon came into contact with Shlomo Bardin, the Zionist
Youth Commission's executive director; their relationship would have
far-reaching consequences. Inspired by Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who
was deeply concerned about the alienation of Jewish youth from their heritage
and who sought to make Judaism meaningful to the new generation while not
detracting from its full participation in American society, Bardin established
a cooperative-type institute based on the cultural aura and idealistic spirit
of the kibbutz. Seeking a highly competent faculty committed to Jewish
consciousness, he engaged Helfman as the new music director of the Brandeis
Camp.
The Yiddish musical idiom was relevant neither to the goals
nor the student makeup of the camp. Instead, the musical program there was to
relate to the new and exciting endeavor in Palestine (and soon Israel) -- music evoking the return t
Hatikva (more info)
-
Hatikva - 1:55
Old Jerusalem (Psalm 134) (more info)
-
Old Jerusalem (Psalm 134) - 4:44
Pioneers (Halutzim) - March on Israeli Motifs (more info)
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Pioneers (Halutzim) - March on Israeli Motifs - 5:11
Israel Suite (more info)
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I. Hamisha - 2:50
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II. Laila had'mama - 2:06
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III. B'yom kayitz - 1:17
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IV. Laila pele - 0:51
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V. Ma yafim halleilot - 1:43
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VI. Sisu v'simhu - 1:20
Hebrew Suite (more info)
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I. Prayer - 3:29
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II. Walls of Zion - 2:37
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III. Hora - 1:08
Adarim (more info)
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Adarim - 4:42
The Palestine Suite (more info)
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I. River Jordan - 3:40
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II. Andante - 4:19
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III. Celebration - 2:01
Yemenite Cycle (more info)
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I. Introduction - 1:03
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II. Yom ze l'yisra'el - 2:09
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III. Bammidbar - 2:19
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IV. Zamm'ri li - 2:19
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V. Shalom l'vo shabbat - 2:35
Yom b'kibbutz (A Day on a Kibbutz) (more info)
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