Violin Concerto no.1, op. 60
Violin Concerto no.1, op. 60 was
written mostly in 1925 and completed and orchestrated the following year. It is
the first large-scale work following Achron's immigration to the United States,
It is also the first known concerto, for any instrument, with a movement based
entirely upon the actual musical substance of authentic biblical cantillation
(as opposed to programmatic or pictorial biblical depictions).
The concerto is divided into two
movements: I. Allegro Moderato and II. Improvisations sur deux themes
yemeniques (Improvisations on Two Yemenite Themes). The first movement is
constructed and derived directly from fifteen individual motives of traditional
biblical cantillation systems--or trops--known as ta'amei hamikra
(lit., the meaning or sense of the verse recitation), the musical punctuation
patterns indicated by signs or accents above or below words or syllables. These
symbols denote the established intonations and vocal accentuations for communal
reading of specific sections of the Holy Scriptures. The formulaic systems
comprise series of specific motives of unmetered pitches whose rhythms merely
correspond to the natural rhythm of the words and are repeated throughout a
biblical passage or section in varying orders and combinations and sequences.
Their original purpose pertained more to precision of grammatical punctuation,
syntax, and accentuation than to musical rendition, although it is generally
presumed that some form of quasi- singing always accompanied public biblical
reading even in the first millennium, if not before. These accentuation patterns
evolved into motives of a chant-like vocal rendition based on the natural rise
and fall of the voice in accordance with the prescribed punctuation. The
aesthetic product is a logogenic chant somewhere between cadenced speech and
nonmetrical singing.
Together with ancient psalmody,
biblical cantillation forms the oldest historical layer of all Hebrew
liturgical music, possibly with some roots in Jewish antiquity. The versions of
the Ashkenazi realm, which Achron has utilized in this concerto, probably date
at least to the Middle Ages, with subsequent evolution and variation, leading
to specific eastern and western European variants intact to this day. Many of
the Gesellschaft composers were particularly intrigued by biblical cantillation
as one of the chief potential sources of Judaic melos for a new modern national
music, and Achron turned to its wellsprings for many of his instrumental
compositions,
The cantillation systems vary in
content among the principal established geographical traditions: Ashkenazi,
Sephardi, Persian, Yemenite, Bokharan, etc. In each of those rites, with some
exceptions, there is a distinct cantillation pattern of motives for each of the
communally read biblical books: the Torah for Sabbaths, other holy days, rosh
hodesh (the new month), and certain weekday services; the Haftara (prophetic
portions of the Bible) for Sabbaths and other holy days; M'gillat enter (the
scroll of the Book of Esther) for Purim; Shir hashirim (Song of Songs)
for Passover; Ruth for Shavuot; Kohelet (Ecclesiastes); and Eikha (the
Book of Lamentations). Eikha is chanted in its entirety on Tisha b'Av, the fast
day on the ninth of the Hebrew month of Av, which commemorates and mourns the
destruction of both the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem (as well as the
fall of Bar Kokhba's fortress, Bethar, in his stand against the Romans, and the
Spanish Expulsion in 1492). According to tradition, both Temples mere destroyed
on the same date, nearly sin centuries apart.
Of the fifteen cantillation
motives used by Achron in this first movement, the most prominently featured
ones are from Eikha, which, despite other various cantillation motives
interspersed throughout, gives the movement an overall spirit of connection to
Lamentations and Tisha b'Av. When audiences first heard Leonard Bernstein's use
of Eikha motives sung in his Jeremiah Symphony, they mere often fascinated with
his discovery of their potential value for classical composition. Most people
did not realize that Achron had seized upon the same cantillation for a similar
purpose decades earlier, albeit for instrumental rather than vocal rendition.
One of the most recognizable
motives of other cantillations here, apart from Eikha, is the final sof
pasuk (end of the passage), the cadential formula for concluding each portion
of the Torah according to the eastern European (Lithuanian) variant, This
recurs at various points in the orchestra and in solo violin passages. Also
conspicuous is an entire phrase more commonly associated with the traditional
Ashkenazi rendition of the kiddush for the Three Festivals, but which
itself is derived from cantillation. This is particularly emphasized in elegaic
solo violin passages. Yet another transparent motive that is associated with
one of those Festivals, Shuvuot, and also derived from cantillation--the incipit
of the so-culled akdamut tune in its eastern European version--is given
triumphant expression in orchestral passages, sometimes in combination with
other unrelated motives.
The concerto opens with a
strident, almost hoarse brass statement of the most ubiquitous Eikha
association, the identifying initial motives for the first words of the Book of
Lamentations. That motive is immediately taken up by strings with high
woodwinds, and then by the full orchestra. This immediately conveys a sense of
desolation and conjures up the image of the national and religious calamity
that was the destruction of the Temples and of Jerusalem. Those who recite Eikha
annually will hear in their minds its unsung opening text, which accompanies
those motives: "How doth the city sit solitary, that was [once] full of people?
How she has become as a widow' She, that was great among the nations!"
The various cantillation motives
that follow are often interwoven with each other; elongated and abbreviated;
stated, modulated, and restated; augmented and reduced; developed and
fragmented. But they are nearly always recognizable and employed in such a way
that practically each passage somehow relates to the others. There is little if
any extraneous or secondary material, so that everything, including the
counterpoint, appears to grow out of the original cantillation. Although
cantillation motives are by definition both brief and small cells of only a few
pitches each, Achron broadens and embellishes some as a develop mental device.
This is especially effective in the extended, florid cadenza-like virtuoso
violin passages. Toward the end of the movement, three principal motives--by now
familiar--are heard contrapuntally and almost simultaneously among the solo
violin, the low strings, and the full orchestra.
The second movement is based on
two secular or quasi- secular Yemenite Jewish folksongs, which Achron
undoubtedly heard for the first time during his sojourn in Palestine. Their use
here represents another of the Jewish musical sources typically wined by
Gesellschaft-associated com posers: authentic indigenous Jewish folksongs from
the various lands of the Diaspora where Jewish communities had resided for long
periods.
The first of the two folksongs,
stated unharmonized and in full by the orchestra at the outset, is known as Eshala
elohim (I Will Ask God) and is typical of the Yemenite folk- tune genre in its
lean, crisp phrases, narrow range, and decisive rhythm. The song also reflects
the Gesellschaft's basic Zionist orientation in its perception of a Jewish
national art music with its lyrics: "We shall go up to [settle] our land, with
song and rejoicing." The second tune has not been located in any notated
collection and is not generally known today.
Achron himself described his
manipulation of the two tunes as "jugglery"; they both interchange and
sometimes work polyphonically together. Although nothing is actually left to improvisation,
the overall character suggests a feeling of improvisatory flights of fancy,
almost as if some passages had been left to the soloist. There are spontaneous
bursts of emotion as the continuous variations unfold with an almost primitive
flair.
Achron dedicated this concerto
to Jascha Heifetz--his world-famous colleague, friend, and enthusiastic
supporter. Even before orchestrating the work, Achron introduced it himself to
Serge Koussevitsky, accompanied by Nicholas Slonimsky. It received its premiere
performance in 1927 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by
Koussevitsky, played by the composer. Some of the Boston critics seemed
befuddled by the very notion of basing a concerto on such patently Judaic
material, and most glossed over it, as they felt unable to assess it. The
significance of the cantillation-based structure eluded most of them, yet the
critics for Novoye Russkoye Slovo, the newspaper of emigre Russian Jews,
made an interesting observation in referring to its "Dionysian imbalanced
exaltation" and its wide range of emotions--from rest less mysterious meditation
of strongly religious character to dizzying Dervish-like ecstasy."
The concerto received a few
subsequent performances--in New York, Vienna (with Louis Krasner), Krakow, and
Tel Aviv--but it then fell more or less into oblivion, although many violinists
knew of it and expressed interest over the years in its revival. By the time
the Milken Archive deter mined to record it, the full orchestral score was
nowhere to be found, and the project came close to being abandoned. After much
perseverance, the score was located, stuck away for decades in an old storage
area of its Vienna publishers. Even then, not all the instrumental parts
remained, and some had to be re-extracted.
This first concerto is clearly
the most inspired of the three he wrote, as well as the most tightly
constructed. It is both brilliantly scored for the orchestra and, though
technically demanding for the soloist, full of opportunity for meaningful, even
profound virtuoso display. Immediately following his conducting of the Berlin
recording session in t99B, the renowned Joseph Silverstein, himself an internationally
acclaimed violinist, offered an arresting if fanciful speculation: "Had Achron
remained in Russia after the Revolution (as did some of his Gesellschaft
colleagues) instead of emigrating, and had he still written the same concerto
there in the 1920s (certainly the first movement would have been possible),
this might well have been the modern Russian violin concerto introduced to the
west by David Oistrakh on his first visit to the United States to open the
Soviet--U.S. Cultural Exchange in the midst of the cold war in 19S6, instead of
the Shostokovich concerto; and then this Achron concerto would have joined the
standard repertoire."
Apart from its obvious intrinsic
musical merits, Achron's first violin concerto also serves as an ideal
illustration of the Gesellschaft's national-cultural mission. From an artistic
standpoint, it exemplifies composer Hugo Weisgall's general assessment of
Achron's music: "In his best music he succeeds, like Janacek and Bartok, in
making the idiom of the particular serve as the language of the universal."
Achron's juxtapositions of these
two differently based movements within a single work may amount to a
dialectical pairing of opposing ideas: the sacred against the secular; the
older European melos against the "new" (for Europeans) and exotic discovery of
the Jewish orient in the Yemenite tunes; gloom against joy; unmetered against metrical
Jewish music traditions; and the perpetual acceptance of lamentation over
Jerusalem's destruction and exile against the new optimistic and assertive
Zionist mission of return and rejuvenation. Whether these contradictions
provide an intended subtext for the piece remains, of course, a matter for
interpretation.
The Golem (Suite)
One of the most persistent
legends in western and central European Jewish folklore, frequently reinvented
and recycled since the early Middle Ages, surrounds a mysterious mythical
creature known as a golem. Although anything seen approaching humanly wrought
magic is clearly prohibited in Judaism, the long path of Jewish history has not
been without the emergence of natural human inclinations toward folk superstitions
and magical beliefs. Indeed, it has often been the task of responsible rabbinic
leadership to eradicate those notions. Some of the golem legends, however, are
further complicated by serious mystical and philosophical ramifications that
raise them above simple folk magic--in certain cases to the level of metaphor,
as opposed to physical reality or actual power.
Generically, a golem (also homunculus)
is a creature, usually quasi-human, i.e., made artificially through the magic
of holy names--a phenomenon hardly exclusive to Jewish legends and common to the
magic lore of various ancient cultures. The holy name involved in most of the
Jewish golem legends is, of course, that of God--the unpronounceable tetragram
of His actual Name, which connects to mystical ideas about the creative power
of Hebrew letters, words, and speech. The word "golem" derives from its single
mention in the Bible (Psalm 139:6), which led first to its Mishnaic description
of a fool and then to the Talmudic usage as an unformed and imperfect entity--in
philosophic terms, matter without form--which it acquired only in later versions.
On a basic theological plane, it might simply signify body without soul, but
the deeper connotations in early Talmudic and Midrashic
legends often concern secret powers of intuition derived from the primordial
clay, i.e., the earth, from which a golem is artificially fashioned.
The medieval form of golem
legends may have been generated by Talmudic and Midrashic references to a
mystical book citing the creative power of letters--of God's name and even of
the Torah. In that conception, various transformations and renderings of the
letters could contain secret knowledge of creation on an internal level. While
in the early part of the Middle Ages some saw in this a hidden guide to magic
procedures, in the later medieval period the ideal of a golem creation became
more symbolic and theoretical. In the 12th and 13th centuries, there arose
among the pietist sect known as hasidei ashkenaz the notion of golem creation
as a mystical ritual. Yet that was also the beginning of the idea of the golem
as an actual creature, even though the critics insisted that it had only
symbolic meaning--spiritual experience of ecstasy without practical benefits or
consequences.
In the ensuing centuries, the
various golem legends solidified as the image of a creature whose animation
usually depended upon the "holy" letters in physical contact with it--and in a
particular order. The golem also took on the character of a creature who could
serve its creator in practical terms, but could also be vaporized by removal of
the life-giving letter(s). Various kabbalistic opinions on the nature of a
golem--whether it could have power of speech or intellect--vary.
By the 17th century, by most
accounts, golem legends were no longer carefully guarded secrets of clandestine
rites, but were commonly known. The golem in relation to the concept of total
power over the elements that can cause utter destruction dates to the 16th
century (Elijah of Chelm; d. 1583), but most golem legends after that had
certain features in common: 1) some type of life could be ignited in the
creature by placing the four letters of God's name in its mouth or on its arm,
the removal of which mould cause its death; 2) there are parallels to
contemporaneous non-Jewish legends of a humanly created alchemical being; and
3) the golem may serve its creator, but once created, it can develop
independent or quasi-independent dangerous powers and can wreak havoc,
especially by continuing to expand in size, to the point where it must be
disintegrated back into primordial dust by removing either the tetragram or one
of three letters that had otherwise been placed on its forehead. (Those three
letters spelled "truth," but removal of the first letter left the word "dead.")
The most recent and best-known
golem legend is the one connected to 16th-century Prague, where the fashioning
of the creature is ascribed to Rabbi Judah Lowe (The Maharal). The Prague
legend has no historical basis, either in the city or vis-à-vis Rabbi Lowe. The
story developed only after his death, and its attribution was transferred from Elijah
of Chelm to Rabbi Lowe possibly as late as the second half of the 16th century,
according to some estimates. By that time, golem legends had also come to assign
to the creature powers of protecting Jews from persecution. The Prague golem
became especially attached to the city's Altneushul (Old-New Synagogue) and to
certain parts of its rituals, and there are even reports to the effect that
Goethe's The Sorcerer's Apprentice was inspired by his visit to that synagogue.
The Prague golem was said to have been fashioned out of clay, into which the
divine tetra gram was inserted--making it obedient to Rabbi Lowe's will.
Eventually it grew to menace the entire city, and he was forced to remove the
four letters and thereby return the golem to ordinary clay.
Beginning in Germany in the 19th
century, golem legends have been the subject of countless literary and art
forms, and modern interpretations have often been superimposed in modern Hebrew
and Yiddish literature. In the 20th century, the golem references have
invariably concerned the Prague golem, which has generated plays, ballets,
operas, abstract compositions, novels, poems, and even films.
In 1931, during his New York
years, Achron wrote incidental music for H. Leivick's The Golem, produced by
the Yiddish Art Theater, for which he scored music for only four
instruments--trumpet, horn, cello, and piano. The play was produced initially
(in Hebrew) in Moscow by Habima, the famous Hebrew theater troupe that was a
studio of Stanislavsky's Moscow Art Theater, which is regarded as the
foundation for modern professional Hebrew theater. (It later became the
National Theater of Israel.) Music for that production had been composed by
Moses Milner, one of Achron's fellow Gesellschaft members. It is possible that
Achron saw the Hebrew version while he was in Berlin, since Habima was
temporarily in residence there at that time, and he had some involvement with
its Berlin studio. But he is not known to have created any music for it until
its Yiddish staging in New York.
On the whole, Achron's music
proved too sophisticated even for the audiences at the Yiddish Art Theater,
who, despite their interest in serious theater (as opposed to the lighter
entertainment of the so-called Second Avenue variety), preferred more
inconspicuous incidental music. He therefore reworked some of those scores for
concert use. For The Golem suite, he selected five fragments of the original
incidental score and rewrote them for an atypical chamber orchestra (piccolo,
flute, oboe, English horn, clarinet, bass clarinet, bassoon, contrabassoon, two
horns, three trumpets, trombone, tuba, percussion, harp, piano, six celli, and
six double basses), but without violins or violas. The movements he extracted
depict the creation of the golem, its rampage, the fatigued wanderer, the dance
of the phantom spirits, and the petrifying of the golem.
The suite has an interesting
structural scheme. The "golem theme" in the first movement is repeated in the
last, but in enact retrograde--musically describing the creature's
disintegration into the clay from which it had come. The harmonies in the last
movement, too, mirror the initial statement of the first movement. However,
those structural devices are employed only as unifying techniques, seamlessly
accomplished so that the listener is unaware of them.
The Golem suite was premiered
by no less an internationally acclaimed maestro than Fritz Reiner (to whom the
piece was dedicated) at the Second International Music Festival in Venice in
1932. Unlike Stempenyu, which became one of his best-known works, The
Golem fell into virtual obscurity and received no further performances
until the Milken Archive's recording and its related performance by the Czech
Philharmonic conducted by Gerard Schwarz at the Musica Judaica Festival in Prague
in 2000.
Two Tableaux from the Theatre
Music to Belshazzar
In the Book of Daniel, the
biblical Belshazzar is the last king of Babylon and the son of Nebuchadnezzar,
who was king at the time of the Babylonian captivity and destruction of Jerusalem.
The biblical story contains a dramatic scene at a banquet given by Belshazzar
for his court, where they committed further desecration after the fact by
singing worshipful praises to idols and drinking mine from sacred vessels that
had been looted from the Temple in Jerusalem. When the image of a mysterious
hand appeared and wrote four cryptic words on a mall--mene mene tekel ufarsin--Daniel
was summoned to decipher them. He translated them for the assemblage as a
warning to Belshazzar of the impending fall of Babylon. Indeed, in the biblical
account, Belshazzar was killed the same night and (According to more historical
documents and accounts, Babylon was conquered by Cyrus, the king of Persia.
Also, it is now accepted that Belshazzar was not actually Nebuchadnezzar's son,
although he appears to have been regent of Nabonidus, the last historical
king.)
The Belshazzar story has
inspired numerous literary, visual, and musical works over the centuries.
Although it was viewed in the Middle Ages in relation to the concept of the
Antichrist, with Belshazzar as its precursor; from the Renaissance on, interest
in the story focused on its sheer dramatic parameters rather than its theological
significance. Among the many important literary works of the modern era are
Lord Byron's poem Vision of Belshazzar, which he included in his 1 Bit
publication of Hebrew Melodies, and Heinrich Heine's Belsazar (1827).
Among the most famous musical works are Handel's oratorio Belshazzar (1745) and
William Walton's Belshazzar's Feast (1931).
In 1924, living in Berlin immediately
following his emigration from Russia, Achron wrote the incidental music for a
play entitled Belshazzar, which was produced in Hebrew that same year by the TAI
- Teatron Eretz Israeli. Authorship of the play is credited to one Henia Roche,
whose identity remains unclear. Scholars of Jewish theater in Ger many during
that period have offered varying suggestions regarding its origin and the
question of whether Roche was the playwright or the translator of an earlier
German play. According to one account, the play was found in the Berlin
Staatsbibliothek. Menahem Gnesin, its director for the TAI production, claimed
that he first discovered it in Hadoar, a Hebrew literary journal in
which it did appear in 1904. More recently it has been claimed that the play was
actually by Heinrich Heine (who wrote the earlier poem on the Belshazzar
story), that the name Roche was used as a pseudonym, and that the version in Hadoar
was a translation from the German.
During his American period,
Achron created an independent concert work from two scenes of his original
score, which he rewrote and reorchestrated for large orchestra in 1931 under
the present title. The lavish scoring calls for twenty-eight wind instruments,
harp, and a large section of assorted percussion--in addition to strings. The
work climaxes with the startling scene at Belshazzar's feast.
Neil W Levin
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