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Levy: Masada / Canto De Los Marranos

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Program Notes CANTO DE LOS MARRANOS (Song of the Crypto Jews) The so-called golden age of Spanish--or Iberian-- Jewry, which flourished for...

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Program Notes

CANTO DE LOS MARRANOS

(Song of the Crypto Jews)

The so-called golden age of Spanish--or Iberian-- Jewry, which flourished for significant periods since the 8th century in Moslem-controlled areas of the Iberian Peninsula, had come to a gradual end by the 14th century, with the ultimate establishment of Christian hegemony in what is Spain today. Although the expansion of Christian rule was punctuated by periods of tolerance and even Jewish prosperity, the overall position of the Jews in Christian Spain deteriorated throughout the era during which Moslem rule simultaneously shrank.

By the 14th century, Jewry was subjected to fierce persecution from which it never recovered. The culminating massacres in 1391, in which an estimated 70,000 Jews were murdered and entire communities extinguished (except in Moslem- ruled Granada and in Portugal, owing to royal protection), resulted in significant numbers of Jews surrendering to baptism and conversion. Continued persecution led to a second wave of conversions in the early 15th century.

Some, though not all, of these "new Christians," or conversos, continued to practice Jewish customs and ceremonies in secret--as "crypto Jews," or marranos

("swine," the derogatory epithet originally attached to them). But as nominal Christians now subject to the authority of the Inquisition--the Congregation of the Holy Office--their recidivism, covert or otherwise, would constitute heresy that could be punished legally (or "purified") by death. Over the course of the 15th century, the road led rapidly to the outright expulsion from Spain in 1492 of all who had declined conversion.

Reflecting on the work, Levy articulated his evocative programmatic and extramusical purpose:

Canto de los Marranos seeks to evoke the tragic memory of the hunted conversos, their initially nominal Christianity together with their stubborn devotion to their ancient faith--increasingly forgotten with succeeding generations, but to which some managed to cling as long as even the faintest remembrance lingered. The work makes reference to mixtures of Roman Catholic and Hebrew liturgies--the latter in the original Hebrew at some moments, and at others in Ladino, or Judeo-Espagnol.

The work opens with a quotation from the actual 1492 expulsion decree, in English translation. The succeeding juxtapositions of Roman Catholic liturgy in Latin and original Hebrew liturgical quotations--or Ladino or Spanish translations of them--create the impression of the singer seeking to remind herself of her Jewish identity, professing outwardly what is required for public perception, as well as survival, but almost as if nullifying it with the Judaic interpolations At the same time, those Judaic quotations might be understood as representing the inner thoughts of the conversos while they reluctantly uttered the liturgy of the official faith to which they had been forced to convert.

Ladino is a mixture of 15th-century Castilian Spanish and Hebrew, which developed as a mostly secular vernacular language of those Jews who left the Iberian Peninsula and resettled in eastern Mediterranean lands. The actual song, Benedicho su nombre, also almost certainly postdates the Spanish expulsion as a Ladino song. Levy draws upon these elements liberally here, with a degree of artistic license for powerful dramatic and poetic effect rather than for historical accuracy.

In its original version, Canto de los Marranos was a commission from the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, the lay arm of the American Reform movement, and it received its premiere in 1977 by soprano Phyllis Bryn-Julson and the San Francisco Symphony, conducted by Phillipe Entremont. Despite glowing reviews and much critical acclaim, Levy subsequently withdrew it. This new version, created for the Milken Archive recording, is essentially a complete rewriting based on the original one.

SHIR SHEL MOSHE (Song of Moses)

Shir Shel Moshe is Levy's setting of kabbalat shabbat (welcoming the Sabbath) and Sabbath eve liturgies as a musically complete, unified service. It was commissioned by Cantor David Putterman and the Park Avenue Synagogue in New York in 1964. In 1943, Putterman had initiated a program in which he commissioned new works for the Hebrew liturgy from both firmly established and promising young composers--non-Jews as well as Jews. The fruits of those commissions received their premieres at the synagogue's annual Friday evening Sabbath eve service of new music, which became one of the most important Jewish cultural events nationally, as well as a significant and eagerly anticipated event on New York's annual cultural calendar. The program lasted more than thirty years and attracted contributions by some of the most prominent and soon-to-be prominent American composers.

Originally those annual new music services comprised settings of individual prayers or liturgical texts by several composers. But beginning in 1950, with Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco's Sacred Service for the Sabbath Eve (op. 122), Cantor Putterman commissioned full services by single composers on an annual basis. By 1964, when Putterman invited Levy to compose this service, Levy was already beginning to come to public attention because of the commission for his opera Mourning Becomes Electra. In fact, he initially declined the Park Avenue commission because his attention was already focused on that work, but typically, Putterman persisted and eventually persuaded him to accept, so that ultimately Levy worked on both at the same time. Perhaps for that reason he later described Shir Shel Moshe as "very simple... I didn't have time to go into something more complex." But the composer's own characterization might be a bit deceptive, if not overly humble, since the very simplicity of which he speaks lends the work an engaging quality, free of pretension.

In his review of the work after its premiere, Erwin Jospe, an experienced composer of synagogue music and at that time dean of the School of Fine Arts and professor of Jewish music at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles, noted:

It speaks well for Mr. Levy's honesty that he writes in the style in which he ought to, his own. He is not pretending to be somebody other than himself when he writes for the synagogue. There is nothing assumed, nothing pseudo-Jewish.... He simply approaches his task as a composer who uses musical ideas--and he has many--to build musical structures. It is cause for rejoicing that this brilliant young American composer has written an impressive work of lasting value for the contemporary synagogue.

One of the most interesting and inventive movements is the concluding hymn, adon olam, where a quickly memorable but original tune is repeated for each strophe in a different key over a samba-type rhythm on the organ, almost giving the piece a Latin American flavor.

MASADA

In the popular imagination of the 20th and 21st centuries, the very name Masada has become a dramatic, unorthodox, or even ironic symbol for Jewish national defiance in the face of overwhelming enemy military superiority and even inevitable defeat. The most commonly accepted narrative account of the national as well as human tragedy believed to have occurred there in 73 C.E.--whether embellished narrative, accumulated myth, faithful chronicle, or a bit of each--has also come to serve as an important political and historical anchor of collective memory for both renewed Jewish national consciousness and, more directly, for the modern State of Israel and its sense of historical continuity and national roots.

The actual site of Masada was identified geographically for the first time in 1838 by two American explorers, followed by investigations, visits, and surveys by others in succeeding decades and into the first half of the 20th century.

Their interest, however, lay more in Roman than in Jewish history, and in archaeology per se rather than in historical-political issues of Jewish sovereignty and its roots in antiquity. Israeli archaeologists began work in the 1950s and arrived at some important findings, but these became preliminary stages to the highly publicized watershed excavation and reconstruction conducted in 1963--65 by Israeli archaeologist Yigal Yadin. That expedition involved, in addition to a team of professional archaeologists, thousands of volunteers from many countries, which lent an ideological and even idealistic air to the project and ultimately helped reinforce Masada's position in Jewish national--hence Israeli--history as a symbol of defiance and patriotic continuity. The expedition and its results, followed by widespread attention, international traveling exhibitions, and extensive new media coverage, firmly established and reconfirmed Masada not only as a significant pilgrimage point--a function it had already begun to serve for dedicated Zionists and youth movements since the waning days of the Ottoman Empire, and for Israelis even before the Yadin excavation--but now as a major international tourist attraction. Thereafter Masada inspired artistic creations, historical and photographic books, novels, films, television programs, documentaries, and musical works. Especially in the euphoric post-1967 days following the Six Day War and during the early 1970s, it was an obvious subject for any composer seeking to address an Israel-related topic. Notwithstanding several other worthy compositions based on this story, Levy's cantata and the opera Masada by Israeli composer Joseph Tal probably stand as the two most sophisticated musical treatments to date.

Levy's cantata both commemorates the heroic parameters of Jewish defiance and mourns the tragedy of the communal deaths with its recitation of the "mourners' kaddish." Yet his overall conception seems to emphasize the former over the latter, Jewish strength over weakness, especially in the dramatic final pronouncement by the chorus: "Never again l"

Levy's Masada was originally commissioned by the National Symphony Orchestra as a musical-dramatic work expressly for the legendary American tenor Richard Tucker. Like most American Jews at that time, Levy was not yet familiar with the Masada episode or its place in Jewish history, and the 1963--65 dig in Israel had just begun to generate substantial general public awareness and interest. While searching for a subject for the commissioned work, he coincidentally saw the traveling exhibition of Yadin's archaeological excavation and reconstruction, then on tour at the Jewish Museum in New York. Instantly impressed by the dramatic possibilities of the Masada story, Levy determined to base his new piece on it as a full-length oratorio with a narrative speaking role as well.

Levy's original version of Masada received its premiere in 1973 at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., with Tucker in the tenor role and George London narrating, and the National Symphony Orchestra and the University of Maryland Chorus directed by Antal Dorati. Levy subsequently revised the work for a performance in 1987 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Margaret Hillis. This recording represents yet a third version of the work, which Levy rewrote for the Milken Archive - this time as a shorter cantata without a speaking part.� It contains both new texts and fresh musical material.

�- Neil Levin

Disc 1

Canto de los Marranos (Song of the Crypto Jews)

(more info)

Performed by: Barcelona Symphony and Catalonia National Orchestra
Composed by: Marvin David Levy
Conducted by: Jorge Mester
Ana Maria Martinez, soprano

Canto de los Marranos (Song of the Crypto Jews) - 21:14

Shir Shel Moshe (Song of Moses)

(more info)

Composed by: Marvin David Levy
Conducted by: Kenneth Kiesler
Vale Rideout, tenor

Shiru Ladonai - 4:04
Mi Khamokha - 0:56
V'sham'ru - 0:48
May the Words - 3:30
Kiddush - 1:50
Adon Olam - 1:30

Masada

(more info)

Performed by: Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra
Composed by: Marvin David Levy
Conducted by: Yoel Levi
Richard Troxell, tenor

Masada: Part I - 15:25
Masada: Part II - 21:41

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Flash 9 required. Click to download.

Composer(s):
Levy, Marvin David

Conductor(s):
Kiesler, Kenneth; Levi, Yoel; Mester, Jorge

Orchestra(s):
Barcelona Symphony and Catalonia National Orchestra; Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra

Artist(s):
Martinez, Ana Maria; Rideout, Vale; Troxell, Richard

Label: Naxos Milken Archives/American
UPC: 636943942727
Item Number: 8559427
Release Date: Feb 1, 2004

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Levy: Masada / Canto De Los Marranos

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