The Jewish Experience in Classical Music : Shostakovich and Asia [1 ed.] 9781443858724, 9781443854672

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The Jewish Experience in Classical Music

The Jewish Experience in Classical Music: Shostakovich and Asia

Edited by

Alexander Tentser

The Arizona Center for Judaic Studies Publication Series 1

The Jewish Experience in Classical Music: Shostakovich and Asia, Edited by Alexander Tentser This book first published 2014 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2014 by Alexander Tentser and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-5467-0, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-5467-2

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface ....................................................................................................... vii Alexander Tentser Acknowledgements .................................................................................... xi Introduction .............................................................................................. xiii A Legacy of Honor and Risk in Jewish Music Janet Sturman Part I: Shostakovich Dmitri Shostakovich and Jewish Music: The Voice of an Oppressed People .......................................................................................................... 3 Alexander Tentser Self-Imagery and Resilience: Hermeneutics of Jewish Sound in Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 2 ..................................................... 35 Christopher Booth Shostakovich in America: 1973 ................................................................. 61 Alexander Dunkel Part II: Asia Breath in a Ram’s Horn: Judaism and Classical Music ............................. 77 Daniel Asia Sacred and Profane in the Music of Daniel Asia ....................................... 81 Aryeh Tepper On Daniel Asia’s Symphonies ................................................................... 89 Jan Swafford

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Ear to Ear: A Conversation with Composer Daniel Asia .......................... 95 Jan Swafford Contributors ............................................................................................. 109

PREFACE

The Jewish Experience in Classical Music: Shostakovich and Asia is a collaboration among musicologists, composers, and performers who are interested in exploring and preserving Jewish culture and music. It focuses on the work of two composers, a Russian composer whose life coincided with the development of a totalitarian regime in the former Soviet Union and a contemporary American composer whose work reflects current American and Jewish culture. This combination of composers allows us to explore the different ways Jewish elements may be incorporated in music. It also allows us to delve into the roots of Jewish culture and examine its interaction with various national schools of music, in particular Eastern European and American. In the music of Shostakovich, Jewish elements are magnified to the point where they become universal symbols of protest against genocide and racial discrimination. In this respect, Shostakovich exemplifies the great Russian intellectual, humanitarian tradition described by Dostoevsky as the tendency “to become brother to all men, uniman, if you will.”1 Asia’s music, in contrast, incorporates the Jewish philosophical, religious, and intellectual traditions in pursuit of a deeper understanding of the relationship between the sacred and the profane. This relationship is explored in his Symphony No. 2, as presented in the broader context of his total symphonic output, and in his approach to issues of text and sacred moments, as presented in his 5th symphony. Some chapters in the book are dedicated to specific works of Shostakovich and Asia: the Second Piano Trio, the Song Cycle From Jewish Folk Poetry, and Symphony #13, “Babi Yar,” by Shostakovich; and Symphony No. 5: Of Songs and Psalms by Asia. Other chapters deal with the sources of Jewish folk music in Russia, the philosophical and intellectual traditions of Judaism in the arts, and the historically valuable personal recollections of Dmitri Shostakovich’s interpreter concerning the composer’s last visit to the United States in 1973. The book also includes an in-depth interview with Asia about his music and the roles of Jewish thought and culture in his work. The book can be read both as a narrative of the Jewish musical 1

Fyodor Dostoevsky, Pushkin Memorial Speech, 1880, in Solomon Volkov, St Petersburg: A Cultural History (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997), 126.

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tradition and as an introduction to the contemporary treatment of Jewish elements in music. So, how shall we define the sound of Jewish music? In general, listeners find a huge variety of meaning in music, particularly the “serious” or classical kind. Music triggers memories, stimulates our intellectual activity, and transmits a great deal of information; in short, it functions on many different levels. And, of course, good music expresses human emotions more fully than does any other form of art. In spite of all these properties, or perhaps because of them, we are able to define the distinctive sounds of the music of different peoples. So what is the sound of Jewish music? In the following collection you will encounter the expression “laughter through tears” several times. It is descriptive of the sound of the Eastern European Jewish folk music that profoundly influenced Dmitri Shostakovich, the twentieth-century Soviet composer. To fully understand this expression we would have to traverse the entire history of the Jewish people, from their origin to their diaspora and assimilation into foreign lands. That would, of course, be beyond the scope of this book. But the reader will definitely be able to see how the Jewish people have contributed musically to other cultures, specifically Russian and American, and how the distinct sound of their music has evolved in the twenty-first century. It is a very strong sound, having formed over centuries and carrying all the encoded information of a people’s suffering and their rejuvenation in modern times. We believe it is important to study the sound of this people; moreover, it is the only way to truly comprehend their achievement of new cultural heights. We hope that this book will be viewed as contributing to the study of the Jewish cultural heritage and that it will perhaps stimulate more studies on this important subject. The Jewish Experience in Classical Music: Shostakovich and Asia was presented by The Arizona Center for Judaic Studies as the Shaol and Louis Pozez Memorial Fine Arts Symposium at The University of Arizona on January 13, 2013. It was sponsored by the Pozez families and The Pozez Family Fund at the Jewish Community Foundation of Southern Arizona, the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona, The University of Arizona School of Music, The Arizona Center for Judaic Studies, the Marriott University Park Hotel, and the Center for the Study of American Ideals and Culture. The chapters of the following volume were originally presented by guest speakers in the afternoon symposium session. Following the presentations, a performance was given of two movements of Shostakovich’s Symphony #13, “Babi Yar,” and his Piano Trio #2, and

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of Asia’s Amichai Songs from Symphony #5, Of Songs and Psalms, and his Piano Trio.

ACK KNOWLED DGEMENT TS

Our thannks to the Pozez families and a The Pozeez Family Fu und at the Jewish Com mmunity Founddation of Soutthern Arizona,, the Jewish Federation F of Southernn Arizona, Thhe University of Arizona S School of Mu usic, The Arizona Cennter for Judaicc Studies, the Marriott Univversity Park Hotel, H and the Center ffor the Study of American Ideals and Cuulture for theiir support of the originnal symposium m. My thannks also to the t other mem mbers of thee Steering Co ommittee, Daniel Asia and J. Edwarrd Wright, forr their supportt and assistancce both in the original project and in i the preparaation of this vvolume for pu ublication, and to thee contributorss for their efforts in coonverting pap pers and presentationns into the articles found herre. I would like to express my deep graatitude to Curttis and Margaaret Smith for their invaluable help in editing this manuscript. Alexander Teentser, Novem mber 2013

INTRODUCTION A LEGACY OF HONOR AND RISK IN JEWISH MUSIC JANET STURMAN

Introduction It is my pleasure and honor to introduce the topic of this volume, the examination of the Jewish Experience in Classical Music, part of the Shaol Pozez Memorial Lecture Series, co-sponsored by The Arizona Center for Judaic Studies and The University of Arizona School of Music. This broad theme permits us to explore, discuss, and exchange, focusing on different individuals and circumstances. Our specific case studies are the composer Dmitri Shostakovich, who lived from 1906 to 1975, and the American composer Daniel Asia, born in 1953.1 One is a Jew, the other was not, but both men find common cause with Jewish concerns and perspectives, and include in their own compositions sounds rooted in Jewish religious and secular practice.

Connections and Comparisons One purpose of this volume is to identify connections and points of comparison between Shostakovich and Asia. Mr. Asia tells me that he was never particularly influenced by the music of Shostakovich and the two never met. However, as our contributors will reveal, certain sensibilities still connect them. In particular, each composer in his own way addressed the dynamics of honor and risk that define Jewish experience.

1

Daniel Asia was present at the symposium held on January 13, 2013, at The University of Arizona School of Music.

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Historical Background and Paradoxical Positions It seems appropriate to begin with a brief review of historical circumstance, beginning in pre-Soviet Russia, so that we may better appreciate how Jews recognized their own history, how they responded to persecution and prejudicial treatment, and how that influenced their music and cultural status in Russia and beyond. In the first decade of the twentieth century, when Shostakovich was born, Russia was the site of virulent anti-Semitism but paradoxically it was also the site for a new movement of Jewish nationalism and one of the most important centers for the rise of Zionism. The spirit of nationalism burgeoned in Europe during the nineteenth century, spurred by factors too numerous to explore here, but which include political realignments, urban and industrial development, and the general belief that urban cosmopolitanism, along with the invention of new technologies that facilitated research, travel and communication, would eclipse the practice of traditional culture. Ironically, these same travel and communication advances facilitated the formal study of traditional culture and led to the advance of the ethnological sciences. Thus, by the end of the century, nationalist aims were evident in music, the arts, and the sciences. The rise of the academic disciplines of anthropology and ethnology in European and American universities in the twentieth century was related to the interest in defining national culture in a broadly comparative frame. Russia was not exempt from the thrall of nationalism. Mikhail Glinka (1804-1857) developed an interest in the elements of peasant song and in Russian themes, and he may be credited with initiating Russia’s national music movement. His aims were further advanced by a group of composers labeled the “Mighty Five”: Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Cui, Borodin, and Balakirev. All of them worked to create a distinctly Russian school of musical composition. It is Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908) who is often credited with prompting Russian-Jewish composers to integrate folk music into concert art music. A famous story recounts his pleasure in hearing an arrangement of a Jewish folk song created by Efraim Shlikar, one of his students at the conservatory. “I am very glad to see that you are writing a composition of the Jewish variety,” Rimsky-Korsakov told Shlikar. He continued: “How

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strange that my Jewish students occupy themselves so little with their music. Jewish music exists; it is wonderful music, and it awaits its Glinka.”2 This comment reveals the double edge of honor and risk associated with Jewish culture in Russia. By praising and encouraging attention to Jewish music, Rimsky-Korsakov was also implying that it was music distinct from true Russian music. Non-Jewish composers risked being aligned with a shunned population if they openly embraced Jewish forms in non-satiric fashion. For centuries, the majority of Jews in Russia were forced to live apart from the rest of the population. The only place in the country where Jews were allowed to settle permanently was the Pale of Settlement in the western region of Russia, established by Tsarina Catherine II in 1791 (see Figure 1). By 1885 more than 4 million Jews lived in this region. The Pale operated as a ghetto until 1917, when the tsarist government was removed from power. It was not a safe haven for Jews, as they remained subject to extra taxes, restrictions on employment opportunities, and governmentsanctioned pogroms, which increased in the 1880s and led to massive Jewish migration to America.3 Isolation in the Pale meant that identifying as a Jew, or with Jews in general, posed significant social and political risk in Russia. Changing political winds after the 1905 Revolution brought the creation of the first Russian Duma (or Parliament), and Jewish intellectuals and regional leaders began to feel that their rights might be recognized by the new government and that they might have a chance to be part of the whole. However, in 1907 their political aspirations were crushed with the imposition of tsarist controls upon the third Duma and the scapegoating of Jews as rebels in order to appease the general public. In response to these see-sawing politics, Jews turned their energies towards the work of cultural nationalism, a view of group identity shaped by cultural traditions that superseded ethnic or civic affiliations.4

2

Loeffler, The Most Musical Nation: Jews and Culture in the Late Russian Empire, 106. 3 Details of the massive migration of Jews to the United States from 1880-1920 have been compiled by Perlmann, “The Local Geographic Origins of RussianJewish Immigrants, Circa 1900.” 4 Aberbach, Jewish Cultural Nationalism: Origins and Influences.

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Fig. 1. The Pale of Settlement in 1825. Source: Doyle Klier, Russia Gathers Her Jews: The Origins of the Jewish Questions in Russia, 1772-1825 (De Kalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1986).

In 1908 a group of young composers at the St. Petersburg Conservatory formed the Society for Jewish Folk Music (see Figure 2). The organization sponsored the collection and documentation of Jewish music, the publication of folk songs, and the creation of new compositions based on folk song. The society hosted concerts and promoted fieldwork expeditions in the Pale of Settlement. Branches of the Society for Jewish Folk Music were established in Moscow and Odessa. The society ceased operation in 1917 when, during the tumult of the revolutionary period, many of the original Petersburg members immigrated to Palestine or the United States. In 1923 several of the remaining members formed a new Society for Jewish Music in Moscow, this time dedicated principally to the promotion of Jewish art music. The movement continued to have strong Zionist connections and spread into Europe and the United States with important branches in Vienna and New York.5

5

Loeffler, “Society for Jewish Folk Music.” YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe.

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Fig. 2. Program for a Concert by the Society for Jewish Folk Music, Kharkov, 1913. Source: Archive of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.

What is Jewish Folk Music? The formation of the St. Petersburg Society for Jewish Folk Music raised the question, what comprises Jewish folk music? Not surprisingly, there were conflicting answers to that question. One group, represented by Jewish composers such as Joel Engel (1868-1927) and the ethnologist Zinoviy Kiselgof (1878-1934), favored granting such status to the music of daily life: lullabies, love songs, topical Yiddish songs. Another group,

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represented by Abraham Idelsohn (1882-1938) and Lazare Saminsky (1882-1959), argued that the underlying nature of Jewish music derived from its diasporic liturgical foundations, and therefore it could not be considered ethnic music. In short, the common understanding of folk song as linked to a single nation or ethnicity proves complicated with the Jews. Idelsohn argued that the Jews carried their spiritual nationality with them wherever they moved and this became the thesis of his classic book, Jewish Music: Its Historical Development, written in 1929.6 In it Idelsohn links synagogue song to all other Jewish music. He draws his readers’ attention to the distinctive strength of the Eastern cantorial tradition, particularly in the southern regions of the Ukraine, where the singers from Volhynia, Bessarabia, and Podolia were recognized as more creative than their northern counterparts (see Figure 3).

Fig. 3. Eastern Provinces of the Ukraine. Source: Wikimedia.

Idelsohn does not consider Jewish political song in Jewish Music: Its Historical Development, but a contemporary of his, the ethnomusicologist Moshe Beregovsky (1892-1961, also spelled Beregovski), placed great 6

Idelsohn, Jewish Music: Its Historical Development, 357-358.

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value on Jewish political song.7 Beregovsky compiled an anthology of songs of the Jewish worker, organizing them into five categories: 1) songs of work, exploitation, and poverty, 2) songs about strikes, 3) songs about victims of struggle, 4) revolutionary hymns, and 5) musical settings of old revolutionary poetry. The songs, many in Yiddish, were also an inspiration to Jews in the United States, particularly those associated with Yiddish theater and the American labor movements. In the 1940s, Beregovsky came to study at the Moscow Conservatory, where Shostakovich was teaching. The two became friends and exchanged material, including Beregovsky’s later collections of klezmer music.8 Alexander Tentser refers to this relationship in his exploration of the Jewish influences in Shostakovich’s music. Some folk music collectors rejected popular and political song as not authentically Jewish because of the frequent incorporation of foreign and local styles, particularly Ukrainian folk song. Nonetheless, exchange across stylistic and regional boundaries can be credited with sustaining the Jewish tradition. In his book Tenement Songs, a study of the music of Russian-Jewish immigrants to America at the turn of the century, Mark Slobin opens with a tale from the stories of Yiddish playwright I.L. Peretz, who grew up in Russian-ruled Poland (see Figure 4). This tale, “A gilgul fun a nigun,” has been recently staged for performance in Paris, New York, and Montreal as “The Metamorphosis of a Melody,” with Rafael Goldwasser as the protagonist, Chaim.9 In the story, the Ukrainian-Jewish fiddler Chaim is sent by wealthy patrons to find a tune for their daughter’s wedding, ideally an El Maleh Rachamim, a prayer for the dead that forms part of the traditional wedding ritual.10 But when Chaim arrives in the city, 7

Beregovski, Old Jewish Folk Music. Kuhn, “Laughter through Tears: Shostakovich and Jewish Music,” 6-8. 9 An introduction to the show appears in Ted Merwin, “I.L. Peretz, Melody Maker,” The Jewish Week (Nov. 9, 2010), http://www.thejewishweek.com/arts/theater/il_peretz_melody_maker. Since that publication, Goldwasser has performed the show in Montreal, Paris, and other cities. 10 Transliterations for this Hebrew prayer vary, hence the title of this song appears in variant spellings in different publications: El Maleh Rachamim, El Mole Rachamim, E-el Malei Rachamim are but a few common spellings. Presented as El Moleh Rakhamim, the prayer, performed by Shalom Katz, can be heard on the recording Prima Voce: Legendary Cantors (Nimbus Records, 2006). His obituary reports that during World War II he was captured by the Nazis and sent to a concentration camp where he was forced to dig his own grave. He asked to be able to sing the El Moleh Rakhamim one last time, and his rendition so moved the Nazi 8

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the master cantor he has traveled to meet has left. He happens to hear another of the master’s tunes being performed on the street by a group of itinerant musicians, accompanying the lowly procession of a poor orphan girl’s wedding, and he takes the melody back to Kiev.11 There the guests at the wedding transform it into a lively dance tune, and it later finds life as a sinful love song in the Yiddish theater. Years pass, and the theater song is picked up by a young woman kidnapped from her wealthy family, who was forced to sing with a group of circus performers. Continuing the melodrama, the woman contracts typhus and is left to fend for herself as a blind beggar on the street, where a rabbinic scholar hears her singing the itinerant tune. It stays in his mind and he sings it as a z’mirot (table song) after Shabbat dinner, thus re-sanctifying it. The scholar tries to help the blind daughter find her parents and discovers that she is related to the original patrons, the mother, who has died, and the father, who has immigrated to the United States. And thus, Slobin concludes, the song lives in both worlds, old and new. Slobin makes us aware of the complexity of the Jewish world in Old Russia. It was not all Fiddler on the Roof. Liturgical musicians in Russian cities like St. Petersburg and Kiev mingled with Jewish entertainers from Germany and elsewhere in Europe, and the Yiddish theater, while regularly banned in Russia after 1883, became an important voice for Jewish enlightenment and strength in the secular world.12 Emerging media, particularly film, provided additional opportunities for blending perspectives, as did the experimental theatre of FEKS (the Factory of the Eccentric Actor). Shostakovich’s collaboration with FEKS brought him into contact with the Jewish film director Leonid Trauberg (1902-1990) and the work of director Vsevolod Meyerhold (1874-1940), whose productions mimicked the pace and zaniness of the circus, vaudeville, and American film.13

guard that he was allowed to escape. JTA- Jewish News Archive. “Cantor Sholem Katz dead at 67,” (February 26, 1982), http://archive.jta.org/article/1982/02/26/2992779/cantor-sholom-katz-dead-at-67. 11 Music for seating of the Bride, the Kale Basetzen, can be heard on several contemporary recording collections, notably Oytsres (Treasures): History of Klezmer Music 1908-1996 (Wergo, 2000) and The Joel Rubin Klezmer Band Brave Old World (Global Village Music, 1995). Both renditions make evident the mournful and prayerful quality that crosses over from liturgical song. 12 Slobin, Tenement Songs. 13 Ross, The Rest is Noise, 224.

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Fig. 4. Photo of Yiddish author I.L. Peretz from a postcard c. 1910. Source: Wikimedia.

Composers, as well as songs, travel and transform. The influence of travel on Shostakovitch and Asia is an important theme in the contributions to this volume. Shostakovich traveled to the United States, and Alexander Dunkel, who accompanied him as a translator, expounds on the experience and their exchanges. Klezmer music rooted in cantorial song seems a likely source for the “sad Jewish melodies with the lively rhythm” mentioned by Shostakovich in relationship to his own song cycle, From Jewish Folk Poetry, composed in 1948.14 Jewish melodic and rhythmic elements appear in other compositions as well, including some of his string quartets and symphonies. Details regarding Shostakovich’s intentions and motivations with his musical settings of Jewish folk poetry and the controversial responses they generated are addressed more thoroughly by Christopher Booth and Alexander Tentser in their contributions to this book. 14 Kuhn, “Laughter Through Tears,” 7; Sheinberg, Irony, Satire, Parody, and the Grotesque in the Music of Shostakovich: A Theory of Musical Incongruities, 318.

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We may surmise, however, that not only was Shostakovich honoring the Jews for their courage and dignity in the face of persecution and peril, and speaking out against anti-Semitism, but that also he found common cause with their courage and perspective on life. The musicologist Esti Sheinberg argues that in the Soviet world of “enforced optimism,” Shostakovich was drawn to the Jewish recognition of existential irony and the Jewish understanding of joy and sorrow as conjoined experiences.15 This paradoxical perspective I also perceive in much of Daniel Asia’s music, particularly in his song settings, and in his Symphony No. 5. The analytical contributions of Jan Swafford and Aryeh Tepper to this volume examine Asia’s own musical explorations of existential irony and his essential bond with the spiritual tradition that grounds Jewish cultural nationalism.

Conclusion In his collection of essays, The Danger of Music and Other AntiUtopian Essays, musicologist Richard Taruskin rails against utopian musical projects, mentioning Shostakovich as being on the side of resistance.16 We could add Daniel Asia as well. And while both composers address political concerns, they also illustrate Taruskin’s claim of a link between the world of political utopianism and the utopian aspirations in musical performance that, Taruskin claims, “infest” the world of classical music, beset by an obsession with autonomy, authenticity, and correctness.17 After engaging in further reflection on the subjects of this volume, we may perhaps conclude that the future of classical music is indeed indebted to Jewish influence. A larger lesson for artistic survival lies in the legacy of Jewish musicians, whose respect and honor for a spiritual legacy anchored in liturgical song has so often been matched by a readiness to take risks with new musical forms required for life in the present.

15

Kuhn, “Laughter Through Tears,” 8. In one instance Taruskin directs attention to Shostakovich's Five Satires, op. 109 (1960), and his setting of the poem “Descendants” by Sasha Cherny, which examines the folly of the Soviet order. He notes the composer's apparent “unwillingness to sacrifice pleasure in the present while awaiting perfection, evident in the lines 'I want a little light/for myself, while I am alive.'“ Taruskin, The Danger of Music and Other Anti-Utopian Essays, xiv. 17 Ibid., xii-xv. 16

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Bibliography Aberbach, David. Jewish Cultural Nationalism: Origins and Influences. New York: Routledge, 2007. Beregovski, Moshe. Old Jewish Folk Music. Ed. and transcribed by Mark Slobin. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982. Bohlman, Phillip. Jewish Music and Modernity. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Feldman, Walter. 1994. “Bulgåreascå/Bulgarish/Bulgar: The Transformation of a Klezmer Dance Genre,” Ethnomusicology 38 (1994): 1-35 Idelsohn, Abraham. Jewish Music: Its Historical Development. (Reprint of the 1929 edition.) Mineola, NY: Dover Editions, 1992. Kuhn, Judith. “Laughter through Tears: Shostakovich and Jewish Music.” Writing About Shostakovich. DSCH Journal, No. 33 (July 2010): 6-8.

Loeffler, James Benjamin. The Most Musical Nation: Jews and Culture in the Late Russian Empire. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010. —. “Society for Jewish Folk Music.” YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, 19 October 2010, 3 March 2013. . Merwin, Ted. “I.L. Peretz, Melody Maker,” The Jewish Week (Nov. 9, 2010). . Miller, Jack. Jews in Soviet Culture. London: Institute of Jewish Affairs, 1984. Perlman, Joseph. “The Local Geographic Origins of Russian-Jewish Immigrants, Circa 1900,” Working Paper No. 465. Simons Rock, New York: The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, 2006. Ross, Alex. The Rest is Noise. New York: Macmillan, 2007. Sheinberg, Esti. Irony, Satire, Parody, and the Grotesque in the Music of Shostakovich: A Theory of Musical Incongruities. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000. Slobin, Mark, ed. American Klezmer: Its Roots and Offshoots. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. —. Tenement Songs, The Popular Music of the Jewish Immigrants. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982. Sapoznik, Henry. Klezmer! Jewish Music from Old World to Our World. New York: Schirmer Books, 1999. Strom, Yale. The Book of Klezmer: the History, the Music, the Folklore.

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Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2011. Taruskin, Richard. The Danger of Music and Other Anti-Utopian Essays. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008. —. Defining Russia Musically: Historical and Hermeneutical Essays. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997. —. On Russian Music. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008.

PART I: SHOSTAKOVICH

DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH AND JEWISH MUSIC: THE VOICE OF AN OPPRESSED PEOPLE ALEXANDER TENTSER

“From art will come a new life and the salvation of humanity”1

Beginning in the 19th century, Russian artists were always sensitive and responsive to the socio-political situation in the country. The great writers such as Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy were worshipped by their readers even during their lives almost as prophets. Literary critics such as Belinsky and Chernyshevsky were also held in incredible respect by the reading public. Their reviews in the newspapers of the day were highly anticipated and debated with emotional intensity. Gogol, who at the end of his life felt himself almost a preacher, wrote, “The sermon will pierce the soul and will not fall on barren soil. Like an angel’s grief, our poetry will flare up and strike all the strings that there may be in the Russian person, bringing holiness into the most coarsened souls.”2 Russian artists were very conscious of their special place in the society. When the first Russian revolution broke out in 1905, the general unrest and anxiety which had caused it was mirrored in artistic circles. Dmitri Dmitrievich Shostakovich was born in the midst of this tumultuous time period, in 1906. Shostakovich’s family had a longstanding democratic tradition. Most notably his paternal grandfather, Boleslav Shostakovich, was a Polish revolutionary who had participated in the January Uprising of 1863-64 and been exiled to Narym, a town near Tomsk, in Siberia in 1866 by the 1 2

Volkov, St. Petersburg: A Cultural History, 272. Volkov, Romanov Riches: Russian Writers and Artists Under the Tsars , 136.

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Dmitrii Shostakovich and Jewish Muusic

Russian Tsaar Alexander II. Boleslav was associatted with the infamous Polish rebell, General Yarroslav Dombrrowsky, and hhad helped him escape from prisonn. The compooser’s father, Dmitri Boles lavovich, wass born in exile, but haad managed too acquire a veery good educcation at St. Petersburg P University and had become an engineer. The composer’s maternal grandfather also came to the capital fro om Siberia. Thhere is no queestion that young Shostakovich’s eaarly upbringing was liberal and democraatic; these traditions weere very muchh alive in his family. f The Russsian version of o the democrratic traditionn was internatiional, the idealistic belief being thatt in a new, upcoming era alll nations wou uld live as one peacefuul, freedom-looving people. In this milieuu, a number of o leading revolutionarries were of Jewish J origin n, including leeaders of thee October Revolution of 1917 likee Trotsky, Sverdlov, Kam menev, Zinov viev, and others. Som me of the Jewissh population supported thiis revolution, seeing in it the hope oof being freedd from the con nfinement of the Pale of Settlement imposed by the Tsarist regime. r At thee time, the Paale incorporatted about 20% of Euuropean Russiian territory: the countrie s known currrently as Lithuania, P Poland, Moldoova, Belorusssia, and Ukraiine as well ass parts of Western Ruussia. The majjority of the Jews J were proohibited from living in large cities such as St. Petersburg, Moscow, or Kiev, and th he living conditions iin provincial towns, or shtetls, s wheree the populaation was centered, w were very pooor. Nevertheeless, every JJewish villag ge had a yeshiva, or rreligious schoool, and the ed ducation level was much higher than in many othher parts of the t Russian Empire. E Somee Jews were, however, allowed to llive in larger cities c if they were w acceptedd as students, or if they were highlyy regarded proofessional speecialists (docttors and engiineers) or successful m merchants orr bankers. The T student ppopulation att the St. Petersburg Conservatoryy—in keepin ng with the Russian deemocratic tradition—w was very inteernational. Th he conservattory’s most important i Russian teaacher, the great composerr Rimsky-Koorsakov, had attracted many talenteed young studdents from vaarious distant regions of thee Russian Empire, am mong them a number of Jewish J studennts. Rimsky-K Korsakov knew Jewishh music and liked it. He is famously quuoted as asserting that “Jewish muusic exists – thhis is beautifu ul music and it awaits its Glinka.”3 His Jewish pupils were instrumental i in i creating Thhe Jewish Fo olk Music Society in St. Petersburg in 1908. It is gennerally acknoowledged and d well descriibed in musiicological literature thhat Shostakoviich learned th he Jewish idiiomatic style of music 3

Braun, Jewss and Jewish Ellements in Sovieet Music, 37.

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from several sources dating from 1936 and later. He very much liked the unfinished opera Rothschild’s Violin, which his favorite composition student, Venyamin Fleishman (drafted into the army and tragically killed during the beginning of the war in 1941), had based on a Chekhov story. Shostakovich completed and orchestrated it. Shostakovich was also familiar with the collection of Jewish songs and instrumental pieces published by Moisei Beregovsky, the Ukrainian musicologist from Kiev who was defending his dissertation on Jewish folk music at Moscow Conservatory in 1944. A letter from Shostakovich to his friend Atovmian referring to Beregovsky and his wife indicates that the composer knew them personally. Russian musicologists think that Shostakovich helped obtain Beregovsky’s rehabilitation from prison, to which he had been consigned during the last wave of Stalinist purges from 1948 to 1953. Perhaps it is no coincidence that Shostakovich was working on his Piano Trio, one of his most important works where Jewish elements are used, in 1943-44. Beregovsky’s collection contained unique material gathered before the Second World War on field trips to Jewish communities that were to be completely annihilated during the Holocaust. Furthermore, we know full well that Shostakovich was very friendly with Mieczyslaw (Moisei) Weinberg, the Polish composer of Jewish origin who lost his family in the Holocaust and escaped to Russia, where he survived in exile. Shostakovich thought highly of Weinberg’s talent and helped him settle in Moscow. Weinberg, although much younger than Shostakovich, was wellversed in Jewish tradition and by then had already created several works on Jewish themes. Their friendship undoubtedly inspired Shostakovich. Weinberg would remain a most dedicated friend of Shostakovich’s to the very end. But quite probably Shostakovich’s knowledge of Jewish life and folklore originated much earlier. Between 1881 and 1917, as Tsarist rule was coming to an end, there were a series of anti-Jewish pogroms, many unleashed by the Tsarist regime itself. They particularly intensified during the revolution of 1905 as the population searched for a scapegoat to blame for life’s difficulties. Inevitably, intelligent families such as Shostakovich’s would be aware of these atrocities and would discuss them. One antiSemitic ultra-nationalist group, the Union of the Russian People, better known as the “Black Hundred,” was particularly brutal. Shostakovich portrayed a pogrom unleashed by this group in the first movement of his Symphony #13, “Babi Yar,” composed years later in 1962 and based on

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Yevgeny Yevtushenko’s poem. In the movement, he symbolically used a Russian song, “Akh vy seni, moi seni,”4 often associated with this group. Shostakovich lost many friends to war and repression, but his friendship with Lev Arnshtam (1905-1979), son of a well-known St. Petersburg doctor, who entered the St. Petersburg Conservatory in the same year as young Dmitri, survived over time. Arnshtam became a prominent Soviet film director. Among his films is the 1946 biography of Mikhail Glinka, the “father of Russian music.” Shostakovich wrote music for the following Arnshtam films: The Girl Friends (1936), Friends (1938), Zoya (1944), Five Days, Five Nights (1960), and Sofiya Perovskaya (1967). Arnshtam remembers that one of Shostakovich’s main personality traits was his limitless kindness to all the people he met during his life. He could not stand to see anyone humiliated and was a true humanitarian.5 Sofia Khentova, Shostakovich’s official Soviet biographer, tells us that also among Shostakovich's friends at that time were Solomon Gershov and Boris Erbstein, talented young painters who had been brought up in the Jewish cultural tradition and knew Jewish music and folklore.6 Shostakovich's composition teacher at the St Petersburg Conservatory was Maximilian Shteinberg, who had come out of the Vilno (Vilnius) Jewish community. Shteinberg became Rimsky-Korsakov's son-in-law and was completely embraced by the Rimsky-Korsakov family. So it is obvious that Shostakovich's friendships with Jewish artists and musicians were lifelong and originated in his youth, and we can safely infer that his respect for and interest in Jewish music and culture originated very early, during his student years. We do not know much of Shostakovich's strong folkloric interests, either Russian or Jewish, during this period. In his works he always tended to avoid directly quoting Russian or Jewish songs, instead forging his own unique musical language. There are several exceptions, of course. One is in the first movement of the 13th Symphony, and another is in his 8th String Quartet, with its very important quotes from an old Russian political prisoners’ song, “Tormented by Grievous Bondage.” In spite of his fragile health, Shostakovich displayed a confident, somewhat ironic personality in his youth, undoubtedly inspired by his 4

[Hey There, My New Porch], for translation, see McBurney, “Fried Chicken in the Bird-Cherry Trees,” 250. 5 Arnshtahm, “Bessmertie” [Immortality], 113. 6 Khentova, “Udivitel’nyi Shostakovich” [Amazing Shostakovich], 36.

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early artistic success. With time, however, the composer's personality underwent an important change, in large part due to events in 1936. In 1934, Shostakovich had completed the opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsenk, based on a story by the 19th century Russian writer Leskov. The opera was produced in Leningrad and Moscow with tremendous success, numbering almost 200 performances in just two years. It was also staged in London and New York (under Artur Rodzinski). However, on January 28, 1936, the principal Soviet newspaper Pravda [The Truth] published a scathing editorial, “Muddle Instead of Music,” directed against Shostakovich. The article was sanctioned by Josef Stalin, the Soviet dictator, who aspired to being regarded as cultured, and who often visited Moscow's main stages, although preferring to remain unseen by audiences. According to the recollections of Stalin’s daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva in Twenty Letters to a Friend, her father was fond of movies and theater. As she remembers: The ones we went to most often were the Moscow Art Theater, the Maly, the Bolshoi and the Vakhtangov. We saw The Hot Heart, Yegor Bulychov, Lyubov Yarovaya and Platon Krechet. And we heard Boris Godunov, Sadko and Ivan Susanin at the opera. My father went to the theater a good deal before the war. Usually we went in a group. They’d put me in the front row of the box. My father would sit somewhere way in back. [She also explains how the new movies came to be censored.] In those days, before the war, it wasn’t yet the custom for the Party to criticize films and insist that they be remade. They were seen, approved and then released for public distribution. Even if something wasn’t quite right, nothing happened to the movie or those who had made it. It was only after the war that it became customary to denounce nearly every new film that was made.7

It is noteworthy that Stalin liked to be personally involved with Soviet artists and sometimes directly influenced their creative process. Even though not ethnically Russian, he obviously wanted to absorb Russian culture. In his writings and speeches Stalin tended toward short and concise sentences that somehow riveted his audiences in spite of his Georgian voice. He formed personal relationships with Mikhail Bulgakov and Boris Pasternak. In fact, he attended Bulgakov’s play Dni Turbinykh [Days of Turbins] based on Belaya Gvardiya [The White Guard] no fewer than sixteen times. When politics jeopardized Bulgakov’s career, Stalin decided in person to reinstate him. Stalin also personally telephoned Shostakovich after the war. He greatly admired Shostakovich’s movie 7

Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters to a Friend, 144.

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music. With respect to culture, he stood in great contrast to the later Party leader Nikita Khruschev, who mostly relied on his secretaries in matters of art. Even the first Bolshevist leader, Lenin, although well educated, believed that opera and theater were not essential to a good Bolshevik education and could be dispensed with. Stalin personally supervised the creation of the Soviet National Anthem, listening for hours to hundreds of entries, including ones by Shostakovich and Khachaturian. He finally chose a song by Aleksandrov. Stalin’s musical tastes were simple. In movies in particular he preferred, for propaganda purposes, easily recognized patriotic melodies. Accordingly, the most decorated composer of the time was Isaak Dunayevsky, creator of the first incredibly popular musical comedy Vesyolye Rebyata [Merry Fellows] on screen. In spite of his tastes, however, we cannot ignore the fact that Stalin was interested in the arts. As a child he had himself dabbled in writing poetry. It is interesting to note that Hitler, another totalitarian ruler, aspired as well to being an artist in his youth. Stalin had attended a Moscow performance of Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtensk and left in disgust without giving his customary greeting to the composer. It is widely assumed among members of the musical community that it was Stalin himself who later vilified the opera’s music in the aforementioned Pravda editorial, “Muddle Instead of Music.” “From the very first moment of the opera the listener is flabbergasted by the deliberately dissonant, muddled stream of sounds. Snatches of melody, embryos of a musical phrase drown, struggle free and disappear again in the din, the grinding, the squealing. To follow this ‘music’ is difficult, to remember it is impossible…”8 At the time, Shostakovich was under the influence of the leading Western Modernists, in particular Alban Berg, whose opera Wozzek had been performed in the Soviet Union during an earlier, more culturally liberal time. Shostakovich's opera, in addition to being modernist, contained open sexual references that could not have gone unnoticed by Stalin and his associates. Stalin’s criticism was almost tantamount to declaring Shostakovich an “enemy of the people,” then the gravest of political accusations in Russia. Politics and culture had become completely intertwined at that point in Russian history, and there was no escape for any Soviet artist. Moreover, Stalin and his associates selected, in particular, major artists for pointed criticism, making a propaganda show and offering a lesson to be learned by other, less prominent artists, who therefore fell into line. Shostakovich bore his burden in silence. While his colleagues, in order to save their lives and careers, denounced 8

Fay, Shostakovich: A Life, 84.

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him publicly, he told his friend and secretary Isaak Glikman privately, “Even if they cut off both my hands and I have to hold the pen in my teeth, I shall still go on writing music.” On the recommendation of administrative officials, Shostakovich decided to withdraw his completed Fourth Symphony from performance, fearing that its enormous size, thick orchestration, and complex musical language—due in some part to Shostakovich's lifelong love of Mahler's Symphonies—would provoke further recriminations. The Fourth Symphony was already rehearsed and attracting attention from several important conductors, including Otto Klemperer. However, it was not to be heard until the 1960s. According to his friends, Shostakovich's personality was different after these events. He became more withdrawn, and his predilection for humor and irony gradually changed into a more grotesque and often bitter form of expression. It is also at this point that we can trace the beginnings in his works of a more complex symbolic musical language. On the one hand, Shostakovich had to please the leaders of his country with a more accessible form of expression, yet on the other, his inner creative impulse was strong enough to transform that expression into something completely unique in the history of music—a language that is still, many years after his death, interpreted in several different ways and remains to be completely decoded. Shostakovich's musical language gradually evolved into a unique expressive medium evoking all the human emotional states. From the beginning capable of irony, parody, and satire, with time it also acquired the elements of grotesqueness, and even bitterness and grief. Other creative figures of that time also had to evolve a complex ambiguous language to avoid being persecuted as anti-communists. In certain literary works this would occur through the allegorical language of fairy tales. An example is found in the plays of Yevgeni Shvarts, (18971958). Harold Segel, in his Twentieth-Century Russian Drama, writes: Shvarts could not have been unaware of the dangerous terrain he was entering and to spare himself an endless tug of war with the censors – and possibly worse – he had recourse to the “Aesopian language” long used by writers whenever stringent literary controls have made it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to deal with “sensitive” topics. In an East European and Russian context Aesopian writing has meant, above all, historical fiction and fantasy. In view of Shvarts’ long involvement with children’s fiction the latter alternative was the most natural. So it is, then, that Shvarts’ most political and philosophical plays are at the same time his most Aesopian…Generally speaking, the satire is concentrated against two targets: authoritarian political rule and those areas of the human psyche which either quest for power or readily submit to tyranny. The evils for

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Dmitri Shostakovich and Jewish Music which authoritarianism is chastised are manifold: corruption reaching up to the highest levels of government, militarism, indifference to the needs and aspirations of the populace, and the vanity of rulers.9

As we can surmise, creativity under the totalitarian regime would not stop completely, rather it would evolve into unexpected and sometimes even phantasmagoric shapes. Mikhail Bulgakov, in his final masterpiece, The Master and Margarita, created very complex and even surreal images inspired by the times. He obviously had absorbed the absurdity of political slogans and the double-meaning of communicative means. In this visionary work, published posthumously, Bulgakov places the poet Bezdomny (whose name means “homeless” in Russian) in a mental institution where he encounters another writer, the Master, probably a prototype of Bulgakov himself. The implication is that Russian artists are homeless, and they are considered mad by the authorities if they are truthful. Considering the tragic end of so many of the great Russian poets—Mayakovsky, Yesenin, Tsvetaeva, and Mandelstam—this rings sadly true. Bulgakov creates another personage, Voland, no less than the Devil himself, who visits Moscow with his suite of phantasmagoric characters. In the opening scene Voland foretells the sudden death of Mikhail Berlioz, the president of the Moscow Literary Association. In hindsight we can interpret Berlioz’ demise as one of the completely “unexpected” deaths or disappearances so often associated with Stalin’s arrests and exiles. In reality, in spite of the happy peasants’ and workers’ faces displayed in propaganda films, the whole country was gripped by fear of the regime’s terror, which was completely random and unpredictable. Shostakovich’s music from that time expresses an anguish in response to this “satanic” repression of progress, in particular the First Violin Concerto, the Second Piano Trio, and his Quartet #8. If we are to believe the composer Venyamin Basner’s assertion that Shostakovich was questioned and nearly arrested for his association with Marshal Tukhachevsky, who was shot as a “German spy” in 1937, then we can truly imagine the magnitude of Shostakovich’s predicament.10 Marshal Tukhachevsky, the hero of the Civil War, was one of the most talented Soviet commanders. He was also a music lover who played violin and made string instruments. He greatly respected Shostakovich and they had spent some time together. Tukhachevsky’s execution must have had a 9

Segel, Twentieth-Century Russian Drama, 282. Basner, Interview with Elizabeth Wilson, Shostakovich: A Life Remembered, 123-125.

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shattering effect on the composer, who had a family and young children. If we accept that Shostakovich was close to being arrested, we can easily imagine his troubled mental state at this time. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, in The Gulag Archipelago, describes this powerless feeling: The Universe has as many different centers as there are living beings in it. Each of us is a center of the Universe, and that Universe is shattered when they hiss at you: “You are under arrest.” If you are arrested, can anything else remain unshattered by this cataclysm? But the darkened mind is incapable of embracing these displacements in our universe, and both the most sophisticated and the veriest simpleton among us, drawing on all life’s experience, can gasp out only: “Me? What for?” And this is a question which, though repeated millions and millions of times before, has yet to receive an answer. Arrest is an instantaneous, shattering thrust, 11 expulsion, somersault from one state into another.

We can only surmise that this situation profoundly affected such a sensitive individual as Shostakovich. According to his friends, even his appearance and bodily expression changed. He became more nervous and agitated. Quite possibly, constant fear shaped Shostakovich’s personality throughout the years of the Stalinist purges. And he was not alone. Thousands of people lived in permanent anticipation of arrest and exile. Some even feared members of their immediate family. This fear may also explain why Shostakovich signed articles against such progressive activists as Andrei Sakharov, and why he made speeches that in retrospect he considered shameful. Even as Shostakovich was being criticized for his “formalist and decadent tendencies, ignoring the Russian folk heritage,” he was showing an interest in the musical language of other cultures populating the Soviet Union. His compositional language includes many altered scale degrees. David Haas, in his article “Shostakovich and Wozzeck’s Secret: Toward the Formation of a ‘Shostakovich Mode,’” writes: In 1946, Alexander Dolzhansky used the Passacaglia Theme from Act II of Lady Macbeth to launch a decades-long search for a special mode (lad) unique to Shostakovich. In her lucid comparative study, Ellon Carpenter created a table juxtaposing two seven-note, five eight-note, and five nine-

11

Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, 3.

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Dmitri Shostakovich and Jewish Music note attempts by Dolzhansky and other Soviet theorists to fix and label the 12 “Shostakovich mode.”

Soviet musicologist Viktor Vinogradov (1899-1992) elaborates: Musicologists A. Dolzhansky, L. Danilevich, V. Bobrovsky, M. Sabinina, L. Mazel and others who wrote on Shostakovich came to the same conclusion that Shostakovich clearly tended to the flattened scale degrees. A. Dolzhansky distinguished as the most characteristic [the] “flat eighth scale degree” or “diminished octave.” Dolzhansky summarized that the tendency to flatten the scale degrees, getting closer to the lower tonic and getting farther from the upper tonic, is the main structural principle of these modes. But [Vinogradov makes the important additional point] flattening the scale degrees is common to many particularly Eastern traditional national musical cultures. When we read the work of U. Gadjibekov, The Principles of Azerbaijani Folk Music (Osnovy Azerbaidjanskoy Narodnoy Muzyki, Baku, 1945), we cannot miss the number of flattened scale degrees which are very common for many, and first of all, principal modes of Azerbaijani music...used in works based on these modes including a diminished 13 octave.

Vinogradov also refers us to an interesting article in Samarkand’s newspaper Leninsky Put’ [Lenin's Way], published in 1983, entitled “Opera, Kotoroi ne Bylo” [The Opera That Did Not Happen]. The article cites Shostakovich's intention to create an opera based on Eastern cultural material. Other musicologists speak of a minor article published in 1938 in the newspaper Turkmenskaya Iskra [Turkmen's Sparkle] describing Shostakovich's prospective opera on the history of the national fight for independence, featuring as its main character the classical Turkmen writer, Seidi. Shostakovich approved the libretto, but implementation was delayed by film projects, and then the war interrupted all plans. Even though the opera was never realized, Shostakovich had planned a trip to Central Asia in 1938 to study folk sources for it, and it is apparent that in spite of his Russian-Polish heritage, the Eastern idiom was not foreign to his personality. In fact, he exercised an immense influence in general on many Soviet composers from the southern republics (now independent states), and in particular on his talented student from Baku, Kara Karayev, who became the most important 20th century Azerbaijani composer.

12

Haas, “Shostakovich and Wozzeck’s Secret: Toward the Formation of a ‘Shostakovich Mode,’” 344. 13 Vinogradov, “Vstrechi i razmyshleniya [Meetings and Thoughts], 75-76.

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Judith Kuhn in her book Shostakovich in Dialogue writes, “Joachim Braun, the scholar writing most extensively on Shostakovich’s ‘Jewish’ inflections, has outlined twelve works where he finds Jewish subject matter, Jewish musical inflections, or both.”14 However, Braun himself, in his groundbreaking work Jews and Jewish Elements in Soviet Music, actually mentions only six works containing Jewish elements: 1. Piano Trio, op. 67 (1944) 2. Violin Concerto, op. 77 (1947-1948) 3. From Jewish Folk Poetry, Vocal cycle for Soprano, Contralto, Tenor and Piano, op. 79 (1948) 4. String Quartet #4, op. 83 (1949) 5. 24 Preludes and Fugues for Piano, op. 87 (1950-1951) 6. String Quartet #8, op. 110 (1960)15 Symphony #13, “Babi Yar,” for Bass, Male Chorus and Orchestra, op. 113, composed in 1962, does not contain Jewish idiomatic musical elements but is extremely important because of its subject matter. Also, Shostakovich edited and wrote a preface to New Jewish Songs, a collection of songs by fourteen Soviet composers based on folk elements, compiled by Kompaneyets and published by the Soviet Composer in 1970. Kuhn further informs us that Braun and Beregovsky have identified several features that make Shostakovich’s music sound “Jewish”: 1. Modality: the “altered Phrygian” scale, a Phrygian scale with a raised third, producing an augmented second between the second and third steps; the “altered Dorian” or “Ukrainian Dorian,” a natural minor scale with a raised fourth, creating an augmented second between the third and fourth steps. 2. Iambic primes: a melodic device that alters pitches on weak beats and then repeats them on strong beats. 3. A dance-style accompaniment, which Braun calls “um-pa,” and which often occurs over a pedal bass. 4. Musicalized speech…in works such as From Jewish Folk Poetry, recalling Jewish cantillation, which renders liturgical texts in an un-

14 15

Kuhn, Shostakovich in Dialogue, 50. Braun, Jews and Jewish Elements, 150.

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metered, improvisatory form, so that its rhythms are dependent upon the rhythms of speech. 5. Incongruity between form and inflection. Jewish instrumental music is predominantly in sad-seeming minor-inflected modes. The combination of these modes with the dance forms most typical of klezmer music creates a kind of emotional incongruity, frequently referred to as “laughter through tears.” Sometimes the incongruity becomes extreme, resulting in the juxtaposition of horror and hilarity, which, Esti Sheinberg suggested, creates a vivid sense of the grotesque.16 Michael Mishra, in A Shostakovich Companion, writes that “…the border between Jewish modes and Shostakovich’s own characteristic modal preferences is remarkably fluid…” Mishra observes the following traits in Shostakovich’s music: 1. Pure Jewish modes are rare, but can be found in “Lullaby,” From Jewish Folk Poetry, and in the end of the Fourth Quartet. 2. Mixed Jewish modes. The introduction of an altered Dorian element (raised fourth) into a freygish melody. Such mixtures are often found in authentic klezmer music. 3. [The] introduction of Jewish elements into Western modes. 4. Western modes mixed with Shostakovich-style modal alterations, creating pseudo-Jewish colorings. Particularly prevalent is the Phrygian mode colored with Shostakovich’s beloved lowered fourth, where the Jewishness arises from the augmented second between the fourth and fifth degrees. 5. Harmonic alterations. For example [the] oscillating major/minor third in the accompaniment at the start of “Lullaby,” From Jewish Folk Poetry.17 As we can see, these findings are somewhat similar to A. Dolzhansky’s melodic language analysis. So it is clear that Shostakovich fully adopted elements indicative of Jewish music in his compositional language, and as we listen to his works we find that those elements mix organically with his own idiosyncratic style. His unique intuition and complete ability to synthesize a cultural

16 17

Kuhn, Shostakovich in Dialogue, 50, 52. Mishra, A Shostakovich Companion, 182-183.

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product out of those difficult times in the history of Russian Jewry made him the voice of an entire people. A Russian composer, Shostakovich nevertheless was interested in the music of other cultures. As early as 1928-32 he composed his Six Romances on Texts by Japanese Poets for Tenor and Orchestra, op. 21; in 1939 he compiled his Seven Arrangements of Finnish Folk Songs for Soprano, Tenor, and Chamber Ensemble; in 1942 he created his Six Romances on Verses by English Poets for Bass and Piano, op. 62; in 1952–53 he wrote his Greek Songs for Voice and Piano; and finally he produced, among his last compositions, his Suite on Verses of Michelangelo Buonarroti for Bass and Piano, op. 145, which he composed in 1974 and arranged for Bass and Orchestra in 1975 as op. 145a. Shostakovich was a true internationalist at a time when official Soviet ideology was characterized by duplicity: dogma and reality were at complete odds. What kind of emotional suffering must he have endured seeing the results of that duplicitous ideology in practice all around him. He must have experienced severe internal conflict. Some writers picture him as a dissident whereas others point out his obedience to the Soviet authorities. Shostakovich never expressed a desire to leave the Soviet Union. His stance towards the Western world is difficult to assess objectively because his statements were either made under pressure by the Party or, as was often the case, written for him to be read publicly. He remained rather reticent in his old age and often declined interviews in the West, his retiring personality being alien to Western sensationalism and newspaper headlines. He was, of course, well fed out of the Party’s hand since he was considered one of the premier Soviet composers (a group also including Prokofiev and Khachaturian). This judgment was rendered mostly because of his masterful film scoring. Stalin valued Shostakovich’s melodic gift and considered such scoring an ideological tool in his campaign for total control over the production of mass media. We should not conclude that Shostakovich was after wealth and fame (there were some Soviet artists who used any means to achieve success, including reporting on colleagues); he emerges through his correspondence and the recollections of his contemporaries as an honest artist and faithful friend. Stalin’s practice of controlling and manipulating artists using monetary rewards and other perks—spacious apartments, dachas, and personal cars (things which were absolutely unattainable for the majority of the population)—had been developed even before the Second World War (known as the Great Patriotic War in Russia). A number of artists and other professionals had, in fact, been lured back from the West by offers of

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incredible generosity and complete forgiveness. Almost all of them were either repressed to the point of creative annihilation or silenced completely. Shostakovich’s life, his works, and his social activity, therefore, need to be understood in the context of his time, of the Soviet social and cultural policies under Stalin and later under Khrushchev and Brezhnev. Vladimir Lenin, Communist Party leader during the October Revolution of 1917, organized the Political Bureau of the Communist Party to lead the revolution. This was the most powerful organization in the country during the revolution and throughout the period of “military communism” initiated by the civil war that almost wrecked the entire country. Using its authority, Lenin and his associates, men such as Trotsky, Kamenev and Bukharin, created a new state, the Soviet Union, and named Lenin its first official leader. Lenin was the first to use repressive measures and mass executions of those opposed to Bolshevist rule. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, newly released archival documents proved that on his and Sverdlov’s (another Soviet leader at that time) orders, the Tsar and his entire family—Nikolas II, his wife Alexandra, their children, including a teenage Alexei, successor to the throne, and the family doctor and servants—were brutally executed in Yekaterinburg. Full totalitarian control in the Soviet Union was achieved by Josef Stalin by the end of the 1920s. After Lenin’s death in 1924, Stalin became General Secretary of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and, after eliminating all opposing leaders, elevated this position to one of absolute power in the Soviet Union. His eventual successor, Nikita Khrushchev, combined this position, now called First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, with the Chairman of the Council of Ministers position, thus consolidating control over all branches of Soviet political and governmental institutions. Art under this totalitarian rule was a fragile flower susceptible to any pressure from above. Shostakovich’s situation, therefore, can be fully understood only from the perspective of the constrictions under which he lived and worked. His choice of Jewish culture and music was conscious, not an accident or a search for exoticism. Indeed, Shostakovich was drawn to foreign cultures and derived inspiration from them, but the Jewish elements in his music have much more symbolic significance, as we shall see later. Shostakovich was at the peak of his popularity during the Second World War due to the massive success of his Seventh “Leningrad” Symphony, which had come to be seen as a symbol of universal protest and resistance in the fight against Nazi Germany. This was a time of

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unprecedented loss of human life that touched almost every Russian. Shostakovich completed his Second Piano Trio, op. 67, in August of 1944. It was a very personal work. Even though the tide of war had turned with the Battle of Stalingrad, the composer was still deeply affected by the loss of several very close friends and pupils. Among them were Leonid Nikolayev, his piano professor at the St Petersburg Conservatory, to whom Shostakovich dedicated his Second Piano Sonata; musicologist Boleslav Yavorsky, who had greatly influenced the young Shostakovich’s creativity; and Venyamin Fleishman, Shostakovich’s favorite composition student. As Shostakovich was beginning to work on the trio he received news of the untimely death of his closest friend and mentor, musicologist Ivan Sollertinsky. Called “the troubadour of modernism” by Soviet officialdom, Sollertinsky was a true inspiration for Shostakovich, and his work on Mahler and Schoenberg had deeply influenced the composer’s development. Sollertinsky possessed a phenomenal memory and knew a number of languages, including some “dead” ones. In 1965 Shostakovich wrote of him, “I remember Ivan Ivanovich Sollertinsky with gratitude. He was a man of enormous erudition, a brilliant music critic. He was literally jubilant when a new talented work came out. He always helped everything new and hated banality, bad taste, routine, and mediocrity. His most outstanding quality was the absence of indifference.”18 His death was a tremendous loss for the composer. Shostakovich dedicated the completed trio to the memory of Sollertinsky, following the historical tradition of Russian composers Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff, who had previously dedicated their piano trios to former mentors. The trio is a monumental and tragic work, but because of its compactness and solidity of form it is not overbearing. At this time the composer had reached the height of his creative maturity, and his blending in the trio of “old” contrapuntal technique with cyclic forms proves to be very effective. In the slow introductory movement, cello and violin, playing harmonics in a very high register and creating an unusual “other worldly” effect, introduce a theme that will be used again in the last movement, demonstrating an emotional cycle and the completion of a journey. Curiously, according to Dmitri Tsyganov (first violinist of the Beethoven String Quartet, who was often the first to perform one of Shostakovich’s chamber works), Sollertinsky had the habit of whistling musical tunes while listening to a conversation. Shostakovich’s “other 18

Shostakovich, “Kak rozhdayetsya muzyka [How Music Is Born],“ 39.

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Dmitri Shostakovich and Jewish Music

worldly” effect sounds very much like a quiet whistle. The movement proceeds slowly and introspectively, then accelerates into a more animated secondary theme in G Major almost as if in a classical sonata form. Shostakovich’s use of the remote key of B-flat minor at the distance of a tritone from the tonic appears for the first time in this movement as another very important key central to the entire trio. The trio’s second movement, a scherzo in the also remote key of F-sharp Major, is very quick and bright. Some saw in it a portrait of the mercurial Sollertinsky, whereas others interpreted it as having a secondary layer of menacing, almost aggressive energy. Since Shostakovich had already developed a highly symbolic language, his music by this time very often has multiple layers of meaning and can be interpreted in several different ways. The third movement, set in B-flat minor, is a slow passacaglia in which eight measures of piano chords provide the harmonic basis for variations. We interpret this movement as a memorial to the friends Shostakovich lost in the war, but we can also interpret it as a memorial to the victims of Stalin’s repressions. The fourth movement openly introduces, for the first time in Shostakovich’s works, a pair of themes which contain Jewish musical elements. In his youth, Shostakovich’s friend Sollertinsky had lived in Vitebsk, where before the war there existed a large Jewish community. Sofia Khentova, Shostakovich’s official Soviet biographer, able in 1993 to write openly in her book Udivitel’nyi Shostakovich [Amazing Shostakovich], tells us the Jewish tune that became the primary of the two themes in the trio’s last movement was sung to Shostakovich by the Vitebsk painter and pupil of Mark Chagall, Solomon Gershov.19 Although Shostakovich rarely used Jewish modes in pure form, these themes contain several very clear features of klezmer (Jewish folk) music: specific modes, dance rhythms, and typical accompaniment patterns. In 1965, in his book Kamernyie Instrumental’nyie Proizvedeniya D. Shostakovicha [Chamber Music Works by D. Shostakovich], A. Dolzhansky—still under censorship at the time—wrote of this movement: “Dance rhythms become foundations for melodies full of grief and suffering…based on the intonations of Jewish folk music.”20 Listening to the movement, we are left with an overall impression of grotesqueness since these klezmer features are exaggerated by tonal and rhythmic displacements. We can not 19

Khentova, [Amazing Shostakovich], 39. Dolzhansky, Alexander, Kamernyie Instrumental’nyie Proizvedeniya D. Shostakovicha [Chamber Music Works by D. Shostakovich], 21. 20

Alexander Tentser

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shake the feeling of a “dance macabre” or “dance of death” (see Figures 1 and 2). Figure 1

PIANO TRIO NO 2 IN E MINOR, OP. 67 By Dmitri Shostakovich Copyright © 1945 (Renewed) by G. Schirmer, Inc. (ASCAP) International Copyright Secured. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission.

20 Figure 2

Dmitri Shostakovich and Jewish Music

Alexander Tentser

21

PIANO TRIO NO 2 IN E MINOR, OP. 67 By Dmitri Shostakovich Copyright © 1945 (Renewed) by G. Schirmer, Inc. (ASCAP) International Copyright Secured. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission. Shostakovich had various Jewish friends, teachers, and pupils throughout his life and at some point, perhaps under the influence of the atrocities perpetrated by both Hitler and Stalin, he began to associate Jewish persecution with the persecution of all liberal thought and social progress in life. Dramatically incorporating this association with the Jewish motifs and making them the cornerstone of the entire work,

22

Dmitrii Shostakovich and Jewish Muusic

Shostakovicch elevates thhe music to become thee voice of th he entire oppressed Jeewish people suffering durring the war. It is importan nt to note here that durring Shostakoovich’s life ev ven his opponeents agreed hee was one of the great 20th century artists a capablee of expressing ng the essence of “evil” in his art. H He was roundlly criticized fo or this by Sovviet musicolog gists who wanted to seee more “posiitive” statemeents in his mussic. Toward th he end of the fourth m movement of his trio Shosstakovich reitterates the paassacaglia theme and tthe first them me of the slow w first movem ment. The pieece closes with arpegggiated chords in E Major as, a after an em motional cath harsis, the journey of hhuman sufferinng has finally come to a peaaceful end. Shostakoovich was not n an outspo oken dissidennt. Under Sttalin any expression, even veiled inn the form of art, a that veereed from the Co ommunist orthodoxy oor criticized thhe governmen nt was considdered a politiccal crime and was punnished by a heavy h labor sentence in thee concentratio on camps (Gulags) or by death. Osiip Mandelstam m, one of the greatest Russsian poets of the 20th ccentury, was put p in a concen ntration campp for writing a poem in which he portrayed Staliin critically in a disguisedd form. He eventually e perished theere in the midddle of his creaative life. Shosstakovich becaame what we would ccall an “inneer immigrant,”” a term useed to describee Eastern European inntellectuals unable u to ex xpress their dissent open nly under totalitarian rregimes. Michael Mishra tellss us, “The First F Violin C Concerto (194 47-1948), From Jewissh Folk Poetrry (1948), and d the Fourth Quartet (1949) would make the peeriod betweenn late 1947 and 1949 the m most musically y ‘Jewish’ period in Shhostakovich’ss career.”21 However, Shosstakovich con ntinued to use Jewish eelements laterr on. He used them even ass late as 1950--51 in his monumentall cycle of 24 Preludes and d Fugues, op . 87. In particular, his “Prelude andd Fugue in F-sharp Minor” demonstratess a unique com mbination of Jewish foolk music andd his typically y complex moodal languagee. Delson describes thhe Prelude as “the only onee in this cyclee composed strictly s in two voices.. It is writteen in the sp pirit of pianoo pieces in which a semanticallyy rich, penetraating melody is based alm most entirely on o spoken intonations and a dancee-like accomp paniment, botth painted by y Eastern color and the features of Jewish J folklorre.”22

21

Mishra, A SShostakovich Companion, C 183. V. Delsonn, Fortepiannoiie Tvorchestvo D.D. Shostakoovicha [Piano Works by D.D. Shostakkovich], 200. 22

Alexander Tentser

23

The F-sharp Minor Fugue is a truly tragic composition. Both Delson and Dolzhansky confirm this in their analysis of the Preludes and Fugues. In his book, Delson quotes Dolzhansky’s analysis as found in the latter’s essay “24 Preludes and Fugues by D. Shostakovich.” The theme sounds like a recitation from a liturgical service; it is very austere in its concentrated expression. Delson likens the Fugue to ancient Eastern music. He points out that Shostakovich flattens the seventh scale degree (equivalent to the sharpened sixth scale degree in Dorian mode), and later he flattens the second and the fifth scale degrees as well. The whole atmosphere of the Fugue is tense, gloomy, and dark. Its intensity is achieved through the use of short repeated notes on the upbeat and leaping intervals to higher and longer notes on the downbeat, creating the effect of supplication as in a Jewish liturgical service. Delson concludes his analysis of this piece with the following question: “Is it possible that in the subtext of the Preludes and Fugues, if we are to view them as a whole, are hidden the tragic images of those condemned to death in the ghetto? Or must Tolstoy’s question from his story ‘What For?’ remain unanswered?”23 What definitely remains to be examined is how the composer approached these compositions and what circumstances influenced their creation. At war’s end, Shostakovich was repeatedly criticized for not being able to write an apotheosis to Stalin and the Communist Party—the winners of the war. He was further accused in February 1948 of embodying in his works, the “formalist distortions and anti-democratic tendencies which are alien to the Soviet people and its artistic taste.”24 The accusation was obviously an attempt by the Communist Party to reestablish complete control over the arts. Once again, Shostakovich (along with Prokofiev and Khachaturian) was being singled out for brutal criticism as a didactic lesson to encourage “Party morale.” This was the most difficult time in the composer’s life. Dismissed from his teaching position and left virtually without any source of income, Shostakovich was deeply depressed and his health declined rapidly. Then suddenly, in an extraordinary gesture, Stalin personally called on Shostakovich to lead the Russian delegation at the First World Peace Congress in New York in March 1949. Once again his life and career veered like a rollercoaster, suddenly changing course. This was a turbulent time marred by Stalin’s anti-Semitic campaign— which had begun during the war—when leading artists and administrators of the major symphony orchestras and opera theaters who were of Jewish 23 24

Ibid. Schwarz, Boris, Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia, 219.

24

Dmitri Shostakovich and Jewish Music

origin were fired for no particular reason. On January 12, 1948, Solomon Mikhoels, the great Jewish-Russian actor and director of the Moscow Jewish Theater, was killed in a car accident in Minsk. His greatest role, which influenced several generations of actors, was Shakespeare’s King Lear. Mikhoels was also the head of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAC). The JAC had been organized in 1942 to raise funds for the war struggle, but later it gradually became a Jewish rights organization with a strong unifying effect on Russian Jews. In 1948, Russian Jewry greeted the creation of the State of Israel with tremendous enthusiasm, much to the chagrin of Stalin, who was deeply suspicious and annoyed by these Jewish “national” tendencies. He saw in Jewish organizations the “agents of Western capitalism.”25 On November 20, 1948, the Communist Party dissolved the JAC and initiated the arrest of many of its members and of many Jewish writers. Thus began another anti-cosmopolitan wave of repressions against Soviet artists including Jews. After Stalin’s death it was discovered that he had directly ordered Mikhoels’ murder. So we now know that these anti-Jewish purges were sanctioned and conducted under the direction of Stalin and his associates. As Judith Kuhn informs us, “In February of 1949, an article by Tiknon Khrennikov and Vladimir Zakharov, top officials of the Union of Soviet Composers, denounced Daniel Zhitomirsky, Lev Mazel, Semyon Shlifsteyn, Alexey Ogolevets, Igor Belza, Mikhail Pekelis and Semyon Ginzburg.”26 Zhitomirsky and Mazel, prominent Soviet musicologists, had written extensively on Shostakovich and were closely associated with him. At the time, Shostakovich was preparing his vocal cycle From Jewish Folk Poetry for performance. The musicians were rehearsing their parts and the composer was actively engaged in concert plans. But it now became apparent that to perform the work in such a horrid environment would be very dangerous, so this vocal cycle, a creation of the compassionate and honest artist, became one of Shostakovich’s numerous pieces “composed for his desk.” It is the most “Jewish” of all his works, showing his absorption of Jewish folklore. In fact it was to become a model for younger composers writing “nationally colored” pieces in later years. Khentova considers this cycle to be a requiem for Mikhoels. Shostakovich himself carefully selected the poems, reworked their text, and named each piece. Of the eleven songs, the majority are set in Tsarist 25

This was a common expression applied by the NKVD (predecessor of the KGB) to dissident organizations suspected of connections to the West. Stalin thought of the JAC as one such organization. 26 Kuhn, Shostakovich in Dialogue, 138-139.

Alexander Tentser

25

ng with a moree positively en nvisioned Russia, withh only the finaal three dealin Soviet periood. Although Shostakovich h obviously tried to be politically p correct in ccomparing thhese two con ntrasting epocchs, all eleveen songs resonate wiith the painfuulness of Jew wish life undder the Soviett regime. Khentova likens Shosstakovich’s meticulous m ddescriptive skills s to Mussorgskyy’s, and his compassionaate treatmentt of simple folks to Dostoevsky’s.27 Another important pieece, one of Sh hostakovich’s great masterw works, the First Violinn Concerto, which w he dediccated to Daviid Oistrach, his h friend and a favoriite violinist, shared s the sam me fate. The somber atmosphere of the Nocturnee, the doom of the Passacag glia, the sufferring and angu uish of the solo violin cadenza and the obvious Jewish them me in the Scherzo (see Figure 3) coould have proovoked angerr among the Soviet authorrities and perhaps cauused repercusssions. Michaell Mishra makees the interestting point that the com mposer incorpoorated the Jew wish theme froom the Scherzo into the cadenza onlly after learniing of Mikhoels’ death.28 T This is possib ble, since they knew each other very v well. Mikhoels, M the father–in-law w of the composer M Mieczyslaw (M Moisei) Wein nberg, Shostaakovich’s close friend and colleaguue, respected Shostakovich h greatly andd in an articlee in 1944 had named hhim one of thee greatest 20th century compposers.29 Figure 3

VIOLIN CO ONCERTO NO N 1 IN A MINOR, M OP. 999 By Dmitri S Shostakovich Copyright © 1956 (Renew wed) by G. Scchirmer, Inc. ((ASCAP) Internationaal Copyright Secured. S All Rights R Reserveed. Used by Perrmission

27

Khentova, [Amazing Shosstakovich], 41. Mishra, A SShostakovich Companion, C 184. 29 Mikhoels, ““Shostakovich,” 66. 28

26

Dmitri Shostakovich and Jewish Music

So why did Shostakovich turn to Jewish folk poetry and music for inspiration? Soviet musicologists tried to explain this phenomenon by comparing it to the Russian literary tradition of portraying the plight of the “little man,” particularly in the works of Gogol and Dostoevsky. But here the question of nationality arises because both Gogol and Dostoevsky not only wanted to be but were celebrated as “quintessentially Russian” writers. Furthermore, in the case of Dostoevsky, his anti-Semitism and monarchism were well known. The question can not be answered simply. Nothing in Shostakovich’s letters about his interest in Jewish music fully explains his near obsession with this subject between 1948 and 1951. Why did Shostakovich encode his famous monogram “DSCH,” translated into the pitches of D, E-flat, C, and B, next to the impassioned Jewish theme in the Scherzo of the Violin Concerto? Should we read between the lines that he symbolically identified himself with the fate of the Jews? A very interesting interpretation of this phenomenon is found in Timothy L. Jackson’s article “Dmitri Shostakovich: The Composer as Jew.” Jackson proposes that “the Jewish element is nothing less than the Rosetta Stone to intertextuality in Shostakovich.” He continues: Once one fully recognizes the deep-rootedness of the composer’s “Jewishness,” one can understand why Yevtushenko’s original text for Babi Yar so fired Shostakovich’s imagination: it clearly and unequivocally articulated his own feelings: Now I seem to be a Jew (Jackson’s emphasis). Here I plod through ancient Egypt. Here I perish crucified on the cross. And to this day I bear the scars of nails. I seem to be Dreyfus… Shostakovich’s identification of Jesus as the quintessential persecuted Jew – and of himself as “a Jew crucified by the authorities” – dates back at least to the Fifth Symphony (1937). Perhaps nowhere is this self-portrait of the composer as Christ-like Jew drawn more clearly than in the “autobiographical” Eighth String Quartet. Although the Jewish element dominates the quartet in the climax of the terrifying second movement, where Shostakovich combined his anagram D-Es-C-H (D-E flat-C-B) with the “Jewish” theme from his Second Piano Trio, there are, of course, many 30 other references as well.

30

Jackson, “Dmitri Shostakovich: The Composer as Jew,” 600-601.

Alexander Tentser

27

Jackson quotes Shostakovich’s letter to his friend and secretary Isaak Glikman, who was very close to him and became one of his trusted confidants. In their correspondence they used coded language in order to escape censorship. Shostakovich writes: When I die, it’s hardly likely that someone will write a quartet dedicated to my memory. So I decided to write it myself. One could write on the frontispiece, “Dedicated to the author of this quartet.” The main theme is the monogram D, Es, C, H – that is, my initials. The quartet makes use of themes from my works and the revolutionary song “Tormented by Grievous Bondage.” My own themes are the following: from the First Symphony, The Eighth Symphony, The Piano Trio, The First Cello Concerto and Lady Macbeth. Wagner’s Funeral March from Gotterdammerung and the second theme from the first movement of Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony are also hinted at. And I forgot – there’s also a theme from my Tenth Symphony. Quite something – this little miscellany! The pseudo-tragedy of the quartet is so great that, while composing it, my tears flowed as abundantly as urine after downing half a dozen beers. On arrival home, I have tried playing it twice, and have shed tears again. This time not because of the pseudo-tragedy, but because of 31 my own wonder at the marvelous unity of form.

Jackson himself sees in the Allegro Molto of the quartet “the hysterical industrial death machinery of the Holocaust.” Developing this idea further: “Ostinato-like motivic figures become the inexorable wheels of the Nazi death-factory grinding up the Christ-like protagonist Shostakovich-as-Jew (represented by the ‘signature’ combined with the ‘Jewish’ motive from the Piano Trio).”32 Ultimately, it would be in his Symphony #13, “Babi Yar,” that Shostakovich was to make his most profound statement on anti-Semitism and all racial genocide. The symphony was completed in July of 1962. After Stalin’s death, Nikita Khrushchev, the Communist Party’s new leader, had made a famous “secret” speech at the 20th Soviet Communist Party Congress (in 1956) exposing Stalin’s “cult of personality” and repression. This initiated the period which became known in Russian history as “Khrushchev’s Thaw,” and Soviet artists hoped to be able to express themselves more openly and freely. Unfortunately, Khrushchev would eventually show himself to be a rather uneducated, erratic man in matters of modern art and unable to understand it. At this time 31 32

Ibid., 601. Ibid., 602.

Dmitri Shostakovich and Jewish Music

28

Shostakovich was under tremendous pressure to join the Party. Unable to resist, he eventually did so reluctantly, although—according to his close friends and reliable witnesses—he deeply regretted his decision and felt enormous guilt to the end of his life. His personal struggle also caused ambivalence among some of his colleagues. Although admiring the composer’s creative genius, they were not able to come to grips with his “official” behavior. Later, during the Brezhnev era, Shostakovich’s signature was to appear on an infamous denouncement of the academician Andrei Sakharov for his human rights activities. Some of the composer’s friends supposed that he was at that time in a position to firmly and openly stand up for his beliefs without the fear of imminent imprisonment so prevalent during Stalin’s times. But it appears his will had been permanently broken, and his only wish was to be left alone to compose. In fact Shostakovich’s obituary speaks of him in the following terms: A loyal son of the Communist Party, a prominent public figure and statesman, the artist-citizen D. D. Shostakovich devoted his entire life to the development of Soviet music, to the affirmation of the ideals of social humanism and internationalism, to the struggle for peace and friendship among nations.33

Concurrent with his joining the Party, Shostakovich may have felt more creative freedom to compose, and when he read the young Yevgeny Yevtushenko’s poem “Babi Yar,” published in Literaturnaya gazetta in September of 1961, he was inspired to create a vocal-symphonic poem set to its lines. It was indeed a bold decision as the poem openly attacked antiSemitism not just in general but specifically in Russia, and it lamented the absence of a monument to the victims of the Babi Yar. Because of the subject’s sensitivity Shostakovich’s creation would experience a tremendously difficult gestation. He decided to set four more poems by Yevtushenko to music, creating a five movement vocal-symphonic work for bass, male choir, and orchestra. The names of the five poems and their corresponding movements are: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

33

Babi Yar Humor In the Store Fears A Career

Fay, Shostakovich: A Life, 285.

Alexander Tentser

29

o ravine in Kiev, the Ukkrainian capitaal. There, The Babbi Yar is an old during the N Nazi occupatioon, on Septem mber 29–30 of 1941 at the tim me of the Jewish religgious holidayys, 33,771 Jew ws remainingg in the city after the Soviet armyy had retreated were killed d. It is considdered the largeest single massacre inn the historry of the Holocaust. H Ruussian writerr Anatoli Kuznetsov, hhowever, has written: In the twoo years that folllowed, Russian ns, Ukrainians, Gypsies, and people p of all natiionalities were murdered in Baabyn Yar. The bbelief that Baby yn Yar is an excclusively Jewissh grave is wrrong... It is ann international grave. Nobody w will ever determ mine how man ny and what naationalities are buried there, beccause 90% of the corpses weere burned, theeir ashes scatteered in ravines annd fields.34

Two proominent singgers refused to t perform tthe symphony y on the grounds of iits controversiial subject and d their fear off retribution. The T great Russian connductor Yevgeeny Mravinsk ky, who had ppreviously preemiered a number of Shostakovicch’s symphon nies, also sttepped down n, deeply wounding tthe composerr. Finally thee completely unknown un nderstudy vocalist, Vittaly Gromadssky, and the young y but enoormously taleented and bold conducctor, Kirill Koondrashin, steepped in to leead the premiier of the 13th Symphhony. After tw wo overcrowd ded performaances, which were not televised annd for which no printed teext of the pooems was allo owed, the symphony was bannedd pending reevisions to the text. Ev ventually, Yevtushenko had to revisse the text of his h poem, Babbi Yar, generaalizing the tragedy by eemphasizing its i international nature, thuss minimizing its actual focus on antti-Semitism. The sym mphony’s firsst movement, Babi Yar, nnarrates an ey yewitness story of the times, in whiich the soloistt impersonatess the Jewish characters c of a wanderrer in Egypt, the t crucified Christ, Dreyffus, a boy in Belostok, B and Anne Frrank. Khentovva asserts that the Anne Fraank episode is based on a theme rem miniscent of the song “Beefore a Long Parting” in the cycle From Jewishh Folk Poetryy. She also thin nks that anothher variant of the t theme appears in the F-sharp Minor Fugu ue from 24 P Preludes and d Fugues composed iin 1950.35 Shhostakovich uses u his extraaordinary orch hestration skills to porrtray these diifferent charaacters and theeir circumstan nces. The movement also containss a chilling musical desccription of a pogrom perpetrated bby the Union of the Russian n People, or thhe “Black Hun ndred” as 34 35

Kuznetsov,, letter to Yury Shapoval. Khentova, [Amazing Shosstakovich], 53.

30

Dmitrii Shostakovich and Jewish Muusic

they were kknown. The theme t of inteernationalism is symbolizeed by the fragments off the Marseilles incorporateed into the endd of the movement. The lastt movement of the symp phony, “A C Career,” opens with a transparent melody playyed by flutes and a seconnd melody played p by strings. Therre follows a playful, p almostt grotesque m motif played by y bassoon before the vvocal entrance. The poem th his movementt is based on deals d with the phenom menon of confformity. It sp peaks of Galilleo’s unwillin ngness to compromisee and compaares his position to a feellow scientisst’s who, although in possession off the truth, waas willing to bbetray it for th he sake of career prom motion. The pooem elevates Shakespeare, Pasteur, New wton, and Tolstoy for their unwillinngness to com mpromise and ttheir lack of interest i in a conventioonal career. Itt ends with th he words “I make a careeer by not ook Irony, Saatire, Parodyy and the making it.” Esti Sheinbeerg, in her bo akovich, indiccates her beelief that Grotesque in the Musiic of Shosta Shostakovicch has placedd an instrumental fugue iin the middle of this movement aas a symbol of his trade.36 Interestinggly, Shostakov vich uses tubular bellss in the beginnning and at th he end of the symphony, perhaps p to signify the m memorial natuure of the pieece. We also hhear the eerily y distinct sound of thee celesta at thee end of this monumental m w work. Kirill Kondraashin, the Accordinng to the sym mphony’s first conductor, K singer Grom madsky askedd Shostakovicch, “Dmitri D Dmitrievich, don’t d you think that we might get g into trouble with thhe first mov vement?” Shostakovicch answered, “What “ sort off trouble do yoou mean? After all, we are talking aabout things which w exist.” Gromadsky rreplied, “But where is the anti-Sem mitism in our country? c Therre isn’t any,” tto which Shosstakovich responded vvehemently, “Yes, “ there iss. And we mu must put an en nd to it!” Kondrashin was stunneed by Shostaakovich’s reaaction; the composer c literally blew w up, and the conductor reaalized that thiis was a sensittive issue for him. Konndrashin goess on to state: Jewish m melodies occur inn many of his works. w Personallly, there was nothing n Jewish abbout Shostakovvich, as regard ds nationality, culture, or terrms of upbringinng. But I see in his Jewissh motifs a m manifestation of o his subconsciious, or perhapps even conscio ous, protest. Hiis Jewish songss were written att the height off the anti-Jewissh campaign inn the late 1940 0s. His

36

Sheinbergg, Irony, Satirre, Parody an nd the Groteesque in the Music of Shostakovich, 197.

Alexander Tentser

31

First Violin Concerto, which also contains vivid Jewish intonations, was 37 written in 1947 and denied publication until 1955.

The prominent Shostakovich expert Joachim Braun reinforces and expands Kondrashin’s assessment in the following statement: “The Jewish idiom in [his] vocal-instrumental works indicates a hidden declaration of resistance. Where the idea of dissidence is evident in the text – as in the Thirteenth Symphony - there is no need for Jewish musical symbols.”38 Yevgeny Yevtushenko, in his interview with Greg Sandow for The Wall Street Journal, tells of a conversation with Shostakovich: “God will forgive me,” Shostakovich told him, “because I don’t lie in music, only in words.”39 Shostakovich, being an honest Russian artist, took a firm stand on antiSemitism in his Symphony #13, and although aware of possible retributions, he was unwilling to rewrite it or to withdraw it from performance. Choosing to remain faithful to the democratic ideals of his art, he took this stand at great personal risk because he deeply sympathized with the plight of Jewish people in the 20th century. It is an issue which remains relevant in our modern world. We are still waiting for full recognition by the Ukrainian people of the tragic events that occurred in their country during the Second World War as they are ushered into the era of independence.

37

Kondrashin, “Talking About Shostakovich,” 514. Braun, Jews and Jewish Elements, 163. 39 Sandow, interview with Yevgeny Yevtushenko. 38

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Dmitri Shostakovich and Jewish Music

Bibliography Alliluyeva, Svetlana. Twenty Letters to a Friend. New York and Evanston: Harper and Row, 1967. Arnshtam, Lev. “Bessmertie in D. Shostakovich” [Immortality in D. Shostakovich]. Stat’i i Materialy [Articles and Materials]. Translated by A. Tentser. Moscow: Sovetskii Kompozitor, 1976. Braun, Joachim. Jews and Jewish Elements in Soviet Music. Tel Aviv: Israeli Music Publications, 1978. Delson, V. Fortepiannoie Tvorchestvo D.D. Shostakovicha [Piano Works by D.D. Shostakovich]. Translated by A. Tentser. Moscow: Sovetskii Kompozitor, 1971. Dolzhansky, Alexander. Kamernyie Instrumental’nyie Proizvedeniya D. Shostakovicha [Chamber Music Works by D. Shostakovich]. Moscow: Sovetskii Kompozitor, 1965. Fay, Laurel. Shostakovich: A Life. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Glikman, Isaak. Story of a Friendship: The Letters of Dmitry Shostakovich to Isaak Glikman 1941-1975. London: Faber and Faber, 2001. Haas, David. “Shostakovich and Wozzeck’s Secret: Towards the Formation of a ‘Shostakovich Mode.’” In A Shostakovich Companion, edited by Michael Mishra. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2008. Jackson, Timothy. “Dmitri Shostakovich: The Composer as Jew.” In Shostakovich Reconsidered. Allan Ho and Dmitry Feofanov. London: Toccata Press, 1998. Khentova, Sofia. Udivitel’nyi Shostakovich [Amazing Shostakovich]. Translated by A. Tentser. Moscow: Sovetskii Kompozitor, 1993. Kondrashin, Kirill. Interview. “Talking About Shostakovich.” In Shostakovich Reconsidered. Allan Ho and Dmitry Feofanov. London: Toccata Press, 1998. Kuhn, Judith. Shostakovich in Dialogue. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010. Kuznetsov, Anatoly. Letter to Yury Shapoval. “The Defection of Anatoly Kuznetsov.” The Day, January 18, 2005. Maximenkov, Leonid. “Stalin and Shostakovich: Letters to a “Friend.” In Shostakovich and His World, edited by Laurel E. Fay. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2004. McBurney, Gerard. “Fried Chicken in the Bird-Cherry Trees.” In Shostakovich and His World, edited by Laurel E. Fay. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2004.

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Mikhoels, Solomon. “Shostakovich.” In Dmitri Shostakovich, a collection of articles compiled by G.S. Ordzhonikidze. Translated by A. Tentser. Moscow: Sovetskii Kompozitor, 1967. Mishra, Michael. A Shostakovich Companion. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2008. Ordzhonikidze, G.S., compiler. Dmitri Shostakovich [Dmitri Shostakovich]. A collection of articles by Shostakovich, his contemporaries about him, and studies of his work. Moscow: Sovetskii Kompozitor, 1967. Radzinsky, Edvard. The Last Tsar. Translated by Marian Schwartz. New York: Doubleday, 1992. Sandow, Greg. Interview with Yevgeny Yevtushenko. The Wall Street Journal, October 31, 2000. Schwarz, Boris. Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia, 1927-1970. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1973. Segel, Harold. Twentieth-Century Russian Drama. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993. Sheinberg, Esti. Irony, Satire, Parody and the Grotesque in the Music of Shostakovich. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000. Shostakovich, Dmiti. “Kak rozhdayetsya muzyka [How Music Is Born]. In Dmitri Shostakovich [Dmitri Shostakovich], compiled by G.S. Ordzhonikidze. Moscow: Sovetskii Kompozitor, 1967. Solzhenitsyn, Alexander. The Gulag Archipelago. Translated by Thomas Whitney. New York, Evanston, San Francisco, London: Harper and Row, 1973. Vinogradov, Viktor. “Vstrechi i razmyshleniya” [Meetings and Thoughts]. In Shostakovich—Urtext. Translated by A. Tentser. Moscow: State Central Museum of Musical Culture, 2006. Volkov, Solomon. Romanov Riches: Russian Writers and Artists Under the Tsars. Translated by Antonina W. Bouis. New York: Knopf, 2011. —. St. Petersburg: A Cultural History. Translated by Antonina W. Bouis. New York: Free Press Paperbacks, 1995. Wilson, Elizabeth. Shostakovich: A Life Remembered. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994.

SELF-IMAGERY AND RESILIENCE: HERMENEUTICS OF JEWISH SOUND IN SHOSTAKOVICH’S STRING QUARTET NO. 2 CHRISTOPHER BOOTH

In Joachim Braun’s seminal 1985 essay, “The Double Meaning of Jewish Elements in Dmitri Shostakovich’s Music,” Braun curiously ignores the String Quartet No. 2, Op. 68. Other scholars, such as Judith Kuhn, have mentioned that the quartet does include Jewish musical traits, but the question remains why Braun’s thorough research did not include this work, which was written the same year as the much discussed Piano Trio No. 2, Op. 67. I will demonstrate here how Jewish musical traits are embedded in the framework of the second quartet, and perhaps more importantly, what these features may tell us regarding the composer’s intent behind their inclusion. Wendy Lesser, in her book Music for Silenced Voices, argues that the motivation for the second quartet was not the dedicatee, Vissarion Shebalin, but that “the piece is really about [Ivan] Sollertinsky.”1 The famous second piano trio, frequently noted for its overt Jewish musical features, again, written concurrently with the quartet, is in fact dedicated to Sollertinsky. Her claim regarding the quartet is somewhat unsubstantiated, though I contend that the importance of Sollertinsky can be justified to some degree by studying the Jewish elements in the work. Furthermore, I will argue that the intentionality of these elements, as well as the meticulous manner in which they are imbedded into the quartet’s language, points to a shift in Shostakovich’s style that can be traced to events surrounding the composition and also demonstrates a development that can be perceived in the composer’s subsequent chamber works. Moreover, I will point out how this paradigm shift unearths something of the composer’s self-identification, in which he likens himself to displaced Jews.

 1

Lesser, Wendy, Music for Silenced Voices, 60.

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I will begin by describing the context in which Shostakovich composed the second quartet, as well as the second piano trio; then I will discuss the importance of Jewish musical features from a hermeneutical standpoint; and lastly I will demonstrate the concentration of such features within the quartet itself. On June 22, 1941, the Nazis attacked Shostakovich’s beloved hometown of Leningrad in a campaign called Operation Barbarossa. The composer’s affection for Leningrad could be surmised from his actions that immediately followed. After assisting with trench digging and making two failed attempts to join the armed forces, he became a firefighter who extinguished incendiary bombs. He composed songs and romances for the Red Army troops and arranged performances to bolster their morale. 2 In a radio address three months after the beginning of the attack, Shostakovich claimed that he would continue composing to demonstrate the resilience of this community. He said: Leningrad is my country. It is my native city and my home. Many thousands of other people from Leningrad know this same feeling of infinite love of our native town, for its wonderful, spacious streets, its incomparably beautiful squares and buildings. When I walk through our city a feeling of deep conviction grows within me that Leningrad will always stand, grand and beautiful, on the banks of the Neva, that it will always be a bastion of my country, that it will always be there to enrich the fruits of culture.3

After the address, Shostakovich finished what would be called his “Leningrad” Symphony, his seventh. Most scholars agree that the music of the seventh symphony describes events at that time in Leningrad. Dmitri Sollertinsky (not to be confused with Ivan Sollertinsky) describes a scene in which a group of musicians, gathered at Shostakovich’s house, heard the composer play selections from the symphony on his piano. He states: Being professionals, they immediately comprehended the unusual conception of the first movement: the absence of the usual juxtaposition of contrasted themes in the sonata-form exposition, and the sharp conflict between the exposition and the development, in which appeared an image

 2

Sollertinsky and Sollertinsky, Pages from the Life of Dmitri Shostakovich, 97100. 3 Ibid., 101-102.

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of menace, of an alien force swelling into something enormous, inhuman, and destructive.4

In the composer’s own words, “this music is about terror, slavery, the bondage of spirit.”5 The symphony earned international success, especially in the United Kingdom and the United States, where it was viewed as representative of shared anti-fascist ideals. Shortly after, Shostakovich was forced to travel to Moscow to protect his family, and after several failed attempts, he remained unable to return to Leningrad. At this time he composed his eighth symphony, which is also emblematic of wartime tragedy. Dmitri Sollertinsky claims that of the five tragic movements therein “not one brings relief.”6 The eighth symphony premiered on the 50th anniversary of Tchaikovsky’s death, and Shostakovich’s close friend, musicologist Ivan Sollertinsky, gave the address in tribute. Ivan Sollertinsky died on February 11, 1944. Shostakovich dedicated his second piano trio to his friend, following a recent Russian musical tradition in which Tchaikovsky had dedicated a trio to the memory of Nikolai Rubinstein, and Sergei Rachmaninov had dedicated a trio to Tchaikovsky. But Dmitri Sollertinsky claims that “Shostakovich was not thinking of Sollertinsky alone when he wrote [the trio]. He was probably remembering others who had died before their time, the tens and hundreds of thousands who had suffered at the hands of Hitler’s forces at Auschwitz and Maidanek, Treblinka, and Buchenwald.”7 If we take these deaths into consideration, we can see how the resulting inclusion of Jewish musical features in the trio comes as no surprise. Esti Sheinberg likens the finale of the trio to the mob scene in Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, which also incorporates Jewish musical elements. She states that the finale “provide[s] many instances [of]... violent purport of the music”8 indicative of what she calls “grotesque,” or “unresolvable ironic utterance, a hybrid that combines the ludicrous with the horrifying.”9Such irony is demonstrated

 4

Sollertinsky and Sollertinsky, Pages, 102. Ho and Feofanov, Shostakovich Reconsidered, 488. 6 Sollertinsky and Sollertinsky, Pages, 114. 7 Ibid., 118. 8 Sheinberg, Irony, Satire, Parody and the Grotesque in the Music of Shostakovich, 238. 9 Ibid., 207. 5

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by “continuous alternation between the terrifying insanity of... emotional peaks and the apparently folk-dance idiom.”10 This apparent incongruity is probably best described as “laughter through tears,” a phrase possibly coined by Jewish composer Mikhail Gnessin. Shostakovich himself used this term frequently while describing Jewish elements in his music. In Testimony,11 problematic as it is, Volkov writes the following (assuming Shostakovich’s voice): If we speak of musical impressions, the Jewish folk music has made a most powerful impression on me. I never tire of delighting in it, it’s multifaceted [sic], it can appear to be happy while it’s tragic. It’s almost always laughter through tears. This quality of Jewish folk music is close to my ideas of what music should be. There should always be two layers in music. Jews were tormented for so long that they learned to hide their despair. They 12 express despair in dance music.

Shostakovich’s appropriation of the term “laughter through tears” implies not only that his use of Jewish musical features was a musical effect, but that the composer aligned himself on some level with the plight of persecuted Jews, at least during the time in which he composed the second piano trio and second quartet. Also, as is well known, Lady Macbeth had suffered significant disrepute, and according to Lesser, Shostakovich’s widow, Irina, said that “Sollertinsky and [Shostakovich] both felt that the persecution of Lady Macbeth was a ‘pogrom’–that was the word they used in describing it.”13 Finally, the notion that Shostakovich identified with Jewish victims of the Nazi regime is apparent in the context of later quartets, specifically the fourth and eighth, each of which demonstrates Jewish musical features similar to the second’s. The fourth quartet, like the second piano trio, is

 10

Ibid., 276. Solomon Volkov's famous 1979 book is the subject of intense debate and conjecture throughout the musicological world. I will cite the work briefly, and since it is clear that at least some of the narrative account is suspect, I will eschew any section that seems to cause the most dissent. The inclusion of "laughter through tears" can be supposed as accurate, as there is no reason to assume Volkov would have supplanted Gnessin’s words with those of Shostakovich. Furthermore, additional occurrences of the phrase appear in other sources. See also Kuhn, "The String Quartets: in Dialogue With Form and Tradition." 12 Volkov, Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich, 156. 13 Lesser, Music, 59. 11

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dedicated to the memory of another close friend of the composer, in this case the artist Pyotr Vilyams. Unlike the fourth with its specific dedicatee, the eighth quartet is dedicated to “the victims of fascism and war,” though the memoriam is obviously just as valid, if not more. The autobiographical nature of the eighth quartet, which explicitly emphasizes the famed DSCH motif, demonstrates what Sheinberg calls “a new system of signs, according to which Shostakovich is not only likened to, but actually becomes identified with, the figure of the persecuted Jew.” 14 Elizabeth Wilson states that the dedication to all such victims “disguise[d] his intentions, although, as he considered himself a victim of a fascist regime, the dedication was apt.”15 Connections between the latter quartet and the second are not entirely new. Lesser describes the third movement of the eighth as a “creepy, dissonant waltz that Shostakovich had used as far back as the Quartet No. 2.”16 She also notes that the fourth movement quotes the tune from the Russian Revolutionary song “Tormented from Grievous Bondage” as well as the aria from Lady Macbeth, “Seryozha, My Love.” Such connections between Shostakovich’s admittedly autobiographical, most successful quartet and earlier music that is clearly emblematic of persecution by a tyrannical regime provide further evidence not only of the composer’s empathy with victims, but also of the role of chamber music in Shostakovich’s output. In Lesser’s words, “Shostakovich’s own voice is most clearly audible in his fifteen string quartets.”17 As both Kuhn and Jada Watson have borrowed from Braun’s essay when describing Jewish musical attributes within Shostakovich’s compositional style, I will only briefly describe the elements that Braun points out as Jewish, as well as his method of identification of these attributes. Braun claims that Shostakovich’s first encounter with a Jewish musical idiom came from his affinity for the work of Venyamin Fleishman,18 one of his students, who had been killed during the Nazi siege of Leningrad. Fleishman’s unfinished opera Rothschild’s Violin was orchestrated by

 14

Sheinberg, Irony, 276. Wilson, Shostakovich: A Life Remembered, 340. 16 Lesser, Music, 155. 17 Ibid., 3. 18 Braun, “The Double Meaning of Jewish Elements in Dmitri Shostakovich’s Music,” 69. 15

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Shostakovich, who claimed that the Jewish vocal melodies were entirely composed by Fleishman, leaving only instrumentation to be completed.19 The resulting inclusion of overt Jewish musical features in the second trio and similar (though more concentrated) features in the second quartet may thus be seen both as a response to the loss of Fleishman and as affinity for other victims of the Nazi regime, especially considering that news of a holocaust was reaching the Soviet Union at this time.20 In Braun’s words, each Jewish musical element appears as “a musical idiom which shows modal, metro-rhythmical, and structural affiliation to East European Jewish folk music and is commonly accepted as Jewish by the Soviet listener, both professional and nonprofessional.” 21 I will concentrate on three specific features that Braun mentions: first, “iambic primes,” or series of two-note groups in which notes are repeated on strong beats and new notes introduced on weak beats; second, altered Phrygian, Dorian, and Aeolian modes; and third, a klezmer-style rhythmic accompaniment, often called an “um-pa,” which usually includes a pedal point and bitonality.22 In Example 1, taken from the first movement of the quartet, note the iambic primes in the first violin (shown in brackets). These are typical examples, though not all instances in the quartet include accents on the strong beat. The iambic prime is the most frequently used Jewish musical feature in the second quartet. Its use is also common within many of the other quartets, such as the fourth and eighth quartets, both of which are noted for their Jewish traits. Example 2 shows an altered Phrygian scale used throughout the quartet’s second movement. When altered modes appear, they often include at least one chromatic alteration, such as the raised 3rd (A‫ )ڸ‬and 6th (D‫ )ڸ‬in this F Phrygian scale. During this section, marked as a recitative, both of these notes appear in both diatonic and altered forms (note even in this scale the presence of both A‫ ڸ‬and Ab). Shostakovich uses these chromatic enhancements as audible signifiers of Jewish folk melodies, not to mention as structural devices.

 19

Lesser, Music, 309. Braun, “Double Meaning,” 72. 21 Ibid., 69. 22 Ibid., 72. 20

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Example 1: Iaambic Primes inn String Quarteet No. 2, Overtuure, mm. 50-52

STRING QU UARTET NO O. 2 IN A MAJJOR, OP. 68 By Dmitri S Shostakovich,, Copyright © 1945 (Reneewed) by G. Schirmer, S Inc. (ASCA AP) Internatioonal Copyright Secured. All Rights Reserved. R Reprinted byy Permission. Example 2: F Phrygian Scalee with Chromattic Alteration frrom String Quaartet No. 2, Recitative andd Romance

To demoonstrate the klezmer k acco ompaniment, I should ackn nowledge that a mere “um-pa” accoompanimental pattern is nott necessarily indicative i of Jewish innfluence. Braaun’s claim iss that when tthis accompan niment is coupled withh pedal harmoony, it createss a “bitonal efffect.”23 Such resulting bitonality caan be traced evven to 16th ceentury lutenistt Hans Neusid dler’s Der Juden Tanz,24 as seen in Example E 3.

 23 24

Ibid. Ibid.

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S Self-Imagery an nd Resilience

Example 3: Hans Neusidller, Der Juden n Tanz for lutee (ca. 1536)

Neusidleer’s dance, which w Archibaald Davison ccalls “one of the most remarkable specimens off sixteenth-cen ntury music,””25 contains a stunning and likely unprecedenteed bitonality.. Davison cllaims that th he dance “produce[s] an extremelyy realistic pictu ure, not lackinng a touch off satire.”26 Note the biitonality of thhe first six measures, m in w which an uncclear key (possibly wiith a D# tonal center) hoverrs above an E--pedal point. Also A note the use of iambic prim mes and augm mented secondds, which arre typical derivations ffrom chromatically altered modes. Shostakoovich’s approppriation of the klezmer acccompanimentaal feature is obviouslyy less overt inn terms of bito onality. In Exxample 4 we can see a manifestatioon from the quuartet’s second d movement.

 25 26

Davison annd Appel, Historical Anthologyy of Music, Vol.. 1, 227. Ibid.

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Example 4: “Um-pa” Stylee Klezmer Acccompaniment iin String Quartet No. 2, Waltz, mm. 139-144

STRING QU UARTET NO O. 2 IN A MAJJOR, OP. 68 By Dmitri S Shostakovich,, Copyright © 1945 (Reneewed) by G. Schirmer, S Inc. (ASCA AP) Internatioonal Copyright Secured. All Rights Reserved. R Reprinted byy Permission. The threee musical attrributes I have described, thhough quite co ommon in the second ttrio, are subtleer and more co oncentrated w within the textu ure of the second quarrtet. That saidd, Shostakovicch’s musical llanguage in th he quartet generates a type of affiiliation with the ironic quualities of Jew wish and klezmer music as seen in the example by b Neusidler. Though Brau un clearly made a consscious effort to t ground the musical featuures he describ bed in the perception oof one group,, “the Soviet listener,” the availability of o aurally perceived Jeewish featuress for the non-S Soviet listenerr must be conssidered as well. Esti Sheiinberg, in herr book Irony, Satire, S Parodyy and the Gro otesque in the Music off Shostakovichh, describes th he referential nnature of mussic, that is the manner in which muusical elementts behave as signifiers, in terms of “cultural unnits that repressent reality.”277 The cultural units to be co onsidered in this case are musical conventions of o Eastern Euuropean Jewissh culture and Soviet cculture in thee mid-twentietth century. A non-Soviet listener l is able to perceive both layeers of cultural reference, orr what Sheinb berg calls 28 “multi-layerred musical discourse,” d by b noting the incongruities between them. Sincee the musical material in th he second quaartet contains interplay between Ruussian and Jeewish musical language, tthe listener iss able to perceive botth based on hiis/her familiarrity with each . Only by traccing these incongruitiees as signifierrs can the lisstener become me aware of a specific

 27 28

Sheinberg, Irony, 9. Ibid., 61.

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cultural reference. Conversely, Sheinberg states, “[quite] often musical incongruities in themselves, without relying on overt referential context, are interpreted as irony.”29 Thus both aural options for musical incongruities are available to the listener: the signification of cultural unit and the perception of irony, the latter not being my focus here. In regards to cultural signification, Laurel Fay describes how Shostakovich was “attracted by the ambiguities in Jewish music [and] its ability to project radically different emotions simultaneously.” 30 Such duality, described by the composer using Gnessin’s term, “laughter through tears,” is an important component of both Shostakovich’s style and his penchant for Jewish musical ideas. Fay also mentions that Jewish musical idiosyncrasies naturally correspond to Shostakovich’s own compositional style, with his “gravitation toward modes with flattened scale degrees.”31 Examples of Shostakovich’s use of modes abound, but my emphasis is on the specific musical traits pointed out by Braun et al., which are likely to be perceived either as ironic or as signifying a separate cultural context. The manner in which Shostakovich began appropriating these altered modes, using them as signifiers of duality of emotion, gives rise to the notion of a paradigm shift in the composer’s personal style and, more importantly, his identity as seen in that style.

Klezmer Rhythms in the Overture and Waltz The second quartet opens with a skewed downbeat (see Example 5). The first violin presents the melody in what appears initially to be an anacrusis, but the meter established by the other voices grounds the first gesture to beat one. The result is a strong beat two, which is a common feature throughout the quartet. The dyadic system that we hear and often

 29

Ibid., 59. Fay, Shostakovich: A Life 169. 31 Ibid. Fay mentions "flattened" scale degrees here, but my description of Jewish sound in relation to modal scale employs both lowered and augmented scale degrees. I believe we are actually referring to the same thing, as the most important modes in my analysis are Dorian and Phrygian, both of which contain flattened notes from the Major scale. Fay is describing Shostakovich's gravitation towards these "flat" modes (Dorian's lowered 7th, Phrygian's lowered 2nd, etc.); I am extending her comment to Shostakovich's predilection for selecting these modes and then chromatically altering them. The specific use of lowered and raised tones within modes will be discussed later, with references to Watson's thesis. 30

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describe as “um-pa” is usually u presented as an acccompanimentaal pattern, as is typical in the Jewishh folk tradition n, but in this ccase the comp poser uses it both struccturally and melodically. m Th he opening meelody of the fiirst violin actually proovides the listener’s only rhythmic matterial, while the other voices merely provide thee downbeat.32 Example 5: S String Quartet No. N 2, Overture,, mm. 1-9

STRING QU UARTET NO O. 2 IN A MAJJOR, OP. 68 By Dmitri S Shostakovich,, Copyright © 1945 (Reneewed) by G. Schirmer, S Inc. (ASCA AP) Internatioonal Copyright Secured. All Rights Reserved. R Reprinted byy Permission. The stroong beat two continues th hroughout thee opening secction (83 measures), 33 and eventuaally all voices employ the oopening dyad as both a melodic annd rhythmic element. Thee next sectioon (mm. 84--207, see Example 6)) develops this t melodic--rhythmic iddea by unfollding the klezmer-typpe organizationn in two ways. First, the uuse of pizzicatto quarter notes in the second violinn and viola provides a protootypical secon nd half of the “um-pa”” structure, thhough this occcurs on the doownbeat, with h the first half in the cello on each preceding p beatt. Second, thee emergence of o the first violin in meeasure 85 realligns the perceived beat to a strong beatt one; the result is the opposite in the t accompaniment parts. B Beat one in th he second violin and vviola can be perceived as th he first half off the “um-pa,” and the first note off the cello ostinnato, on beat two, can be pperceived as th he second half. Furtherrmore, the ceello ostinato ittself seems too be a develo opment of

 32

Actually, thhis downbeat iss presented onlly on alternatinng measures, wh hich could cause the listeener to hear a long l 6/4 instead d of two 3/4 unnits. The effect, however, is the same. 33 An argumeent can certainnly be made fo or the Overturee movement ass a sonata form. As I aam not emphassizing this, I merely m includee "opening secttion" as a generic marker for everythinng up to the seccond ending affter the repeat. One could certainly call this an "exposiition," however.

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the first viollin’s initial geesture from meeasure 1, and the first violin melody here seems tto be an elonggated form of the t same dyadd. Example 6: S String Quartet No. N 2, Overture,, mm. 84-92

STRING QU UARTET NO O. 2 IN A MAJJOR, OP. 68 By Dmitri S Shostakovich,, Copyright © 1945 (Reneewed) by G. Schirmer, S Inc. (ASCA AP) Internatioonal Copyright Secured. All Rights Reserved. R Reprinted byy Permission. This dyaad not only is fundamental in establishinng the klezmeer rhythm in this way,, but also actss as the germiinal material for the use off “iambic primes” throoughout the enntire work (seee Example 1)). The two-eig ghth-note melodic uniit is slurred together, t but the slur doees not continu ue to the following nnote, which is even appro oached by a greater interval. This structure cann be found inn virtually ev very structurallly significantt melodic theme in thhe quartet; however, h it iss less apparen ent in the Th heme and Variations. A similaar metrical skkew begins th he third movvement of thee quartet, marked Walltz.34 The second violin an nd viola preseent a pair of notes on beats two annd three, and the rest on beat b one obfusscates, for thee listener, where the ddownbeat actuually falls (seee Example 7) . These note pairs can be perceivedd as both halvves of the klezzmer “um-pa,,” up until thee entrance of the cello at measure 3,, which realigns the upper pparts to the laatter beats of the typiical waltz “uum-pa-pa” paattern; a simiilar such reaalignment occurred in measure 86 in the Overture (see Exaample 6). Th he cello’s

 34

Though it sseems true thatt the structure of o any waltz likkens itself to th he usage of an accompaniimental patternn recognized as an "um-pa" orgganization, the manner in which Shostaakovich skews the meter and uses textural ffeatures (e.g. in nner voice pizzicato) acccentuates the klezmer material.

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dotted half-notes appear simultaneoussly as melodyy, harmony (d due to its completion of the now-rooot position Eb b minor triad in measure 3)), and the first half off the “um-pa” structure, no ow realigned tto beat one. The T cello part developps into a stricttly melodic feature, which I will discuss later, but the klezmer accompanimeent is already established att this point. Example 7: S String Quartet No. N 2, Waltz, mm m. 1-15

UARTET NO O. 2 IN A MAJJOR, OP. 68 STRING QU By Dmitri S Shostakovich,, Copyright © 1945 (Reneewed) by G. Schirmer, S Inc. (ASCA AP) Internatioonal Copyright Secured. All Rights Reserved. R Reprinted byy Permission. The textture is inverteed at measuree 69, at whicch time the first violin takes on thee cello’s role of o melody and d the first halff of the “um-pa” group. The same iss true in the new n melodic th heme found iin measures 87-97 (see develops thee melodic maaterial by Example 8)), but here Shostakovich S increasing thhe use of iambbic primes. Note N especiallyy those found when the violin is unaaccompanied (mm. 90 and 96). Here thee composer acccentuates the dramaticc nature of thhe iambic prim mes and simuultaneously intterpolates both klezmeer rhythms (“uum-pa” and the iambic prim mes themselvess).

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S Self-Imagery an nd Resilience

String Quartet No. N 2, Waltz, mm m. 87-98 Example 8: S

STRING QU UARTET NO O. 2 IN A MAJJOR, OP. 68 By Dmitri S Shostakovich,, Copyright © 1945 (Reneewed) by G. Schirmer, S Inc. (ASCA AP) Internatioonal Copyright Secured. All Rights Reserved. R Reprinted byy Permission.

Iam mbic Primess and the Altered A Phrrygian Mod de in thee Recitative and Roman nce The seccond movemeent, titled Reecitative and Romance, seemingly s indicative off vocal music, is in a vaguee ABA form, m moving from recitative (solo) to Roomance (polypphonic), and finally fi to recitaative again. Within W the B section (ppolyphonic), the t subdominaant minor inteerrupts the ton nic at the ostensible cclimax of thee movement (m. 85). How wever, this essentially staggers thee harmonic rellationship witth the form, siince it occurss after the interruption of the recitaative by the Romance R at m measure 11. A similar harmonic ddelay occurs in the final recitative section. Shosstakovich withholds thhe return to toonic until measure 114, thouugh the recitative itself returns at m measure 105.. The musicaal elements oof the movem ment are connected oon two distincct levels: the melodic and motivic use of o iambic primes, andd the systemaatic inclusion of chromaticc alterations in modal

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melodies. Table 1 demonstrates melodic groupings compared with key areas and textures.35 Table 1: String Quartet No. 2, Recitative and Romance, Form Outline

Iambic primes, a central feature in the analyses of Braun and Kuhn, are more numerous in this movement than in any other of the quartet. The recitative sections, being irregular in length and range, evoke the vocal utterance that they are clearly designed to intimate. However disparate they remain, all are grounded by the use of the recurrent strong- to weakbeat dyad. Example 9 demonstrates the prevalence of iambic primes within the A section of the movement (mm. 1-10), though their use continues throughout the subsequent (B) and final (A) sections as well. Shostakovich’s use of iambic primes demonstrates the organic quality of the movement on the smallest level. However, a larger level organization becomes visible when one observes the recurring movement from individual recitative melody to harmonic motion in the other voices. Each section of recitative behaves as an interrupting utterance amidst what appears to be a chorale-like harmonic structure. Table 2 describes the harmonic motion and modal interruptions. By isolating the modal and harmonic relationships of the chorale structure, we can observe a distinct pattern that elucidates the role of each alteration of the Phrygian mode as it relates to the harmony beneath it. The first section of recitatives (mm. 1-10) contains two phrase pairs, each of which begins with a third-inversion dominant harmony. The key area is Bb throughout. A similar grouping exists in the second section of recitatives (mm. 105-123), and the harmonic organization is identical, at least in relationship to the tonic, which is either Eb or Bb, as demonstrated in Table 2. The augmented modal structure of each interrupting recitative melody relates to the double periods contained within these two sections, as each is grounded to the harmony that supports its initial pitch. As each

 35

Blocks in the "Measure" row contain phrase groupings in the recitative sections. Missing measure numbers indicate measures of rest (see Example 9). Measure row blocks in the Romance section merely indicate the place where the key shifts from Bb to Eb.

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Table 2: String Quartet No. 2, Recitative and Romance, Harmonic Outline

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Example 9: S String Quartet No. N 2, Recitativee and Romance,, mm. 1-10, (firrst violin)

STRING QU UARTET NO O. 2 IN A MAJJOR, OP. 68 By Dmitri S Shostakovich,, Copyright © 1945 (Reneewed) by G. Schirmer, S Inc. (ASCA AP) Internatioonal Copyright Secured. All Rights Reserved. R Reprinted byy Permission. melody thenn evolves, thhe mode beco omes apparent nt but is chro omatically altered in eaach case. The alterations theemselves form m a pattern thaat mimics the harmonic relationshipps between thee two periods. Considerr the structuree of the first period (mm. 1--10), without recitative melodies, ass seen in Exaample 10. Thee first melodicc notes of eacch phrase are includedd, followed byy the smaller notes which indicate thatt phrase’s chromatic allteration. The general schem me of tension and resolution n is clear, as the third--inversion 7thh harmony resolves to majjor, first to th he second scale degree (C), then to the tonic (Bb). A moodified Phrygian scale accompanies each harmoonic unit,36 and d each scale iis based on th he root of the accompaanying harmonny. The first scale s (m. 1), a variant of F Phrygian, P contains a rraised 6th (D D‫ ;)ڸ‬the secon nd scale (mm m. 3-4), a variiant of C Phrygian, ccontains a raiised 3rd (E‫)ڸ‬. ) Notice the pattern of chromatic c alteration rissing toward the t tonic foun nd in the finall melody of th he period (mm. 9-10).. The pattern continues in the third scaale, again a form f of F

 36

These "harrmonic units" are a shown as measures m separaated by dashed d bar lines. This is not intended to impply any rhythm mic properties, but merely to o view the harmonic relaationships moree closely together than they cann be seen in thee score.

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Phrygian, thhough in this case c containin ng raised 3rd (A‫)ڸ‬, which forms f the leading tonee to that tonic. Example 10: String Quartet No. N 2, Recitativve and Romancce, mm. 1-10 (Harmonic Reeduction) 37

Now connsider the struucture of the second period,, displayed sim milarly in Example 111. The same tension t and reesolution scheeme is presen nt, and all harmonic reegions corresppond to those found in the first period. However, H the melodiess in this case are chromaticcally altered m more intensely y towards the climax oof the chorale (mm. 114-11 18), where thee harmonic rhy ythm and the distance from the tonic are at the most m intense leevels. This also occurs when the suubdominant keey area of Eb minor is relinnquished and the tonic of Bb is resstored. Note that t the aforem mentioned cliimax of the movement m (m. 85) is w where the subddominant of Eb b minor is inittially establish hed. Example 11:: String Quarttet No. 2, Reecitative and R Romance, mm. 105-123 (Harmonic Reeduction)

 37

This is not intended to be similar to a Sh henkerian graphh or reduction in n any way. v and cello are present here re as they are in n the score. All notes in ssecond violin, viola, The only notees removed are the recitative melodies, m after tthe first note off each.

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The first scale (mm. 105-108), a variant of Bb Phrygian, contains a raised 4th (E‫)ڸ‬, and the second scale (mm. 110-113), a variant of F Phrygian, contains a raised 6th (D‫)ڸ‬. The reverse procedure to that which occurred in the first period can be seen by these alterations, this time in the form of a downward tendency. The final such alteration occurs in the third scale (mm. 119-121), a variant of F Phrygian that contains a lowered 5th (Cb), the chromatic neighbor of the Bb tonic on the opposite side to the leading tone (A‫ )ڸ‬found in the corresponding section of the first period. This cross relation of upward and downward chromatic alterations demonstrates an essential component of Shostakovich’s intentionality. At the smallest level, melody and motive, the movement is connected throughout by the constant use of iambic primes. At this larger level, the cross relation of mode alterations demonstrates the organic scheme of the movement as it relates to the key areas in the chorale. Thus Shostakovich grounds the Jewish musical features in a comprehensive manner that organizes the movement and the work as a whole.

Altered Modes in the Waltz and Theme and Variations Watson’s thesis, which describes Jewish melodic material in the fourth quartet, notes alterations to the Phrygian mode similar to the ones I have described in the Recitative and Romance; however, her examination is less concerned with the structural level. Her emphasis on melody, nonetheless, is particularly useful for understanding the final two movements of the second quartet. She describes a fusion of two altered modes, the Dorian and Phrygian, both of which are rooted in the melodic language of Jewish folk music. This fusion presents an opportunity to interpret Shostakovich’s multivalent melodic vocabulary, because a given melody may relate to several things: the specific mode used, altered or otherwise; the relationship between both modes, since Shostakovich’s melodies in several cases combine elements of both; and the manner in which the fused modes provide intervals that would be otherwise unavailable, such as the augmented 2nd followed by several half-steps (see Example 12). The following is Watson’s example of the fused Dorian and Phrygian, located at the tonal center of C.

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Example 12: Watson’s Fusion of Dorian and Phrygian Modes38

Watson describes the function of chromatic alteration within the fused modes in the following way Shostakovich fused [these] Jewish altered modes in a way that retained the lowered inflection, as well as the augmented second interval. The fused altered mode retains the lowered pitches from both the Dorian and PhÕygian modes (Db, Eb, Ab and Bb), as well as the F#, which creates an interval of an augmented second between the third and fourth scale degrees. In addition, the sixth scale degree (in this case, Ab) can be raised to a natural pitch in a melody, establishing the ambiguous nature of the mode through chromaticism.39

As I mentioned in the section on klezmer rhythms, the Waltz begins with metrical ambiguity. The same may be said of harmony, as the second violin and viola provide only the interval of a Major 3rd (Gb to Bb). When the cello enters at measure 3, the key of Eb minor appears. But this realization is also fleeting, as the melodic line exhibits chromatic alteration only two measures later. Consider the cello line itself. Table 3 shows the scale employed in this initial theme of the movement, as well as its intervallic content, compared with the fused Dorian and Phrygian example from Watson’s analysis of the fourth quartet. Note the similar intervals used by this scale, which is essentially the same as the one which Watson describes, though transposed here. The exceptions are noted as chromatic alterations. The first (A‫ )ڸ‬is the same raised 4th of the Phrygian scale that Shostakovich used in measures 105-108 of the Recitative and Romance movement. The second (D‫ )ڸ‬is a leading tone variant, similar to that used in the first recitative section of that movement, in measures 6-7. Furthermore, these alterations each create a manifestation of the augmented 2nd, which is central to the nature of Jewish characterization of the altered mode. As Watson states, “the presence of the augmented second between the third and fourth scale

 38

Watson, “Aspects of the ‘Jewish’ Folk Idiom in Dmitri Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 4, Op. 83 (1949),” 83. 39 Ibid.

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Table 3: Watson’s Scale / Cello Melody in String Quartet No. 2, Waltz, mm. 1-15

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degrees [is] the element thhat establishess the ‘Jewish’ sound.”40 The finaal movement of o the quartet,, a theme andd variations, iss the least chromaticallly intense movement, m at least as it cconcerns the melodic character off the theme itsself. After a brief introducti tion, the theme appears as a solo vioola line in meaasures 18-31 (see ( Example 13). Example 13: String Quartet No. N 2, Theme and a Variations, measures 18-31 (viola)

STRING QU UARTET NO O. 2 IN A MAJJOR, OP. 68 By Dmitri S Shostakovich,, Copyright © 1945 (Reneewed) by G. Schirmer, S Inc. (ASCA AP) Internatioonal Copyright Secured. All Rights Reserved. R Reprinted byy Permission. The mellody clearly presents p a slightly varied A-Aeolian sccale, with some chrom matic alteratioons in the forrm of lowereed 5ths (Eb) and 2nds (Bb); another, more enhanced alteratiion takes placce in measurees 28-29, when the m melody is interrupted with a phrase in tthe Eb Phrygiian mode (bracketed group abovee). The use of Fb in m measure 28, which is sequentiallyy replaced by its enharmon nic E‫ ڸ‬in meeasure 30, sug ggests an intentional shift in modde in this case. 41 Such ann interpolatio on of Eb Phrygian m mode within A Aeolian dramatically d exemplifies Watson’s description of the “lowerred inflection..”42 Accordingg to Niall O’L Loughlin, this type oof juxtaposittion became commonplacce in Shostaakovich’s harmonic voocabulary. In describing thee Theme and Variations movement, m

 40

Ibid., 84. Though thee performance of o Fb could be intentionally pllayed/sounded differently than the E‫ݠ‬, tthe listener wouuld most likely simply hear thee E, especially as it is the 5th scale deggree. The subsequent Eb raisess the question oof whether the Fb would be heard as a lowered 6th retroactively, bu ut a case couldd be made for [Fb -E-D#C#-B#] as weell. 42 The excepttion here is the absence of F#, which if presennt, would provide another clear example of a Phrygiaan/Dorian group ping. The dem marcation of thiis scale as Aeolian is neccessary since thhe 6th scale deg gree is never a M Major 6th from the tonic. 41

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he states that “the tonal polarity between A and E[b] gives a foretaste of what is to come, especially in the [Quartet] no. 10.”43 Though it would seem that Braun did, in fact, skip over a valid example of Jewish musical influence in a Shostakovich work, we can understand why he overlooked Jewish features in the second quartet. The sublime concentration of iambic primes within the melodic material, on the smaller level, and the comprehensive inclusion of altered modes and bitonality, on the larger level, are not as easily recognizable as are the more overt Jewish musical features found in the composer’s contemporaneous piano trio. However, since these features appear in each of the quartet’s four movements at melodic, harmonic, and structural levels, the intentionality of their usage is unequivocal. Shostakovich’s motivation and his developing self-imagery probably existed on several levels: loss, dislocation, and ultimately, resilience. The deaths of Fleishman and Sollertinsky, so close upon the occupation of Leningrad by the Nazis, no doubt contributed to the composer’s deep sense of loss. Furthermore, as I have mentioned, Shostakovich was unable to return to his beloved Leningrad. From early October of 1941 to the summer of 1942, he was forced to seek refuge first with his family in Moscow and then without them in the eastern cities of Kuibyshev and Novosibirsk, 44 which obviously resulted in a sense of dislocation from both family and home. Both circumstances likely contributed to the composer’s identification with persecuted Jews, which, as Sheinberg has noted, 45 became significantly palpable by the time of his autobiographical eighth quartet. But like the triumphant conclusion in the “Leningrad” symphony, the final moments of the second quartet involve the dissolution of the altered Aeolian scale giving way to a perfect cadence in A Major. Thus the fourth movement, and ultimately the quartet itself, can be perceived as emblematic of resilience: a positive force, regardless of outcome.

 43

O'Loughlin, “Shostakovich’s String Quartets,” 744. See also Sollertinsky and Sollertinsky, Pages, 97-118. 45 See note 14. 44

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Bibliography Braun, Joachim. “The Double Meaning of Jewish Elements in Dmitri Shostakovich’s Music.” The Musical Quarterly 71, no. 1 (1985): 6880. Brown, Stephen C. “IC1/IC5 Interaction in the Music of Shostakovich.” Music Analysis 28 (2009): 185-220. Castro, David Ralph. “Sonata Form in the Music of Dmitri Shostakovich.” Ph.D. diss., University of Oregon, 2005. Davison, Archibald T. and Willi Appel. Historical Anthology of Music, Vol. 1: Oriental, Medieval, and Renaissance Music, revised edition. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1949. Elshoff, Denise Louise. “Melody, Counterpoint, and Tonality in Shostakovich’s String Quartets nos. 1-8.” Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 2008. Fairclough, Pauline and David Fanning, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Shostakovich. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Fanning, David. Shostakovich: String Quartet no. 8. Ashgate: Aldershot, 2004. Fay, Laurel E. Shostakovich: A Life. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Fisher, John Frederic. “Cyclic Procedures in the String Quartet from Beethoven to Bartok.” Ph.D. diss., The University of Iowa, 1981. Ho, Allen B. and Dmitry Feofanov. Shostakovich Reconsidered. London: Toccata, 1998. Johnson, Lee. “The ‘Haunted’ Shostakovich and the Co-Presence of Bach.” Tempo 63 (2009): 41-50. Klefstad, Terry Wait. “The Reception in America of Dmitri Shostakovich, 1928-1946.” Ph.D. diss., The University of Texas at Austin, 2004. Keller, Hans. “Shostakovich’s Twelfth Quartet.” Tempo 94 (1970): 6-15. Kuhn, Judith. Shostakovich in Dialogue: Form, Imagery, and Ideas in Quartets 1-7. Surrey: Ashgate, 2010. —.”The String Quartets: in Dialogue With Form and Tradition,” in The Cambridge Companion to Shostakovich, ed. Pauline Fairclough, 38-69. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Lesser, Wendy. Music for Silenced Voices. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011. Norris, Christopher, ed. Shostakovich: The Man and His Music. Salem: Marion Boyars, 1982. O’Loughlin, Niall. “Shostakovich’s String Quartets.” The Musical Times 115 (1974): 744-746.

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Reichardt, Sarah. Composing the Modern Subject: Four String Quartets by Dmitri Shostakovich. Ashgate: Aldershot, 2008. —. “Composing the Modern Subject: Four String Quartets by Dmitri Shostakovich.” Ph.D. diss., The University of Texas at Austin, 2003 Rosenberry, Eric. Ideology, Style, Content, and Thematic Process in the Symphonies, Cello Concertos, and String Quartets of Shostakovich. New York: Garland, 1989. Sheinberg, Esti. Irony, Satire, Parody and the Grotesque in the Music of Shostakovich. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000. Shostakovich, Dmitri. String Quartets. London: Boosey and Hawkes, 1978. Sollertinsky, Dmitri and Ludmilla Sollertinsky. Pages from the Life of Dmitri Shostakovich, trans. Graham Hobbs and Charles Midgley. London: Harcourt Brace Janovich, 1980. Watson, Jada. “Aspects of the ‘Jewish’ Folk Idiom in Dmitri Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 4, Op. 83 (1949).” M.A. thesis, University of Ottawa, 2008. Wilson, Elizabeth. Shostakovich: A Life Remembered. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006. Volkov, Solomon. Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. —. Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich, Kindle/25th Anniversary Edition. New York: Limelight, 2004.



SHOSTAKOVICH IN AMERICA: 1973 ALEXANDER DUNKEL

I. Beginnings Acknowledgements I am deeply indebted to Professor Daniel Asia for his invitation to me to share my memories of Dmitri Shostakovich during his last visit to the United States in June of 1973. Although my observations do not specifically relate to Shostakovich’s music, hopefully they will add some dimension to a complex and conflicted artist. I am also deeply grateful to Professor Alexander Tentser for his organizational skill in arranging this publication.

A Personal Note On a sunny June day in 1973 I received a phone call from the U.S. State Department’s Languages Services Division in my then New York University office inquiring whether I was free from June eleventh to the twentieth in order to accompany a Soviet visitor. I was preparing to move to Arizona in less than a month and wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about accepting another ten-day assignment, having recently completed one. “Could you tell me the visitor’s name?” I asked. “It’s Shostakovich,” was the reply. “The composer?” “Yes.” “May I call you back tomorrow?” I responded. Needless to say, the next day I accepted the assignment.



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Organization As the U.S. State Department’s escort interpreter assigned to the composer and his wife for the duration of their ten-day visit, I accompanied them in New York City, and in the Chicago and Washington DC areas. It was the composer’s last encounter with America’s leading personalities in music, the arts, academia, and public affairs; and with institutions such as Lincoln Center, Northwestern University, and the National Institutes of Health. My responsibilities were two-fold though overlapping: establishing personal contact with the Shostakoviches’ interlocutors through “simultaneous” interpreting, and making last-minute travel arrangements and scheduling adjustments. In short, I was to be a Russian-speaking American personal assistant. Consequently, questions posed to me such as, “What was he like?” or, “What did you discuss with him?” can best be answered by recounting Dmitri Dmitrievich’s activities and personal interactions during the course of the visit.

Arrival On a hot, hazy, and humid morning, Monday, June eleventh, Dmitri Dmitrievich Shostakovich (b. 1906) sailed into New York harbor aboard the Soviet passenger liner, Mikhail Lermontov, with his wife Irina Antonovna (b. 1934). [The name and patronymic are the usual polite form of address in Russian.] This trip proved to be Shostakovich’s third and last trip to the United States, the primary purpose of which was to receive an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from Northwestern University, arranged by Professor Irwin Weil. The composer’s secondary purpose was, in his words, “to witness major musical performances, and to meet young American composers and listen to new American music.” An unstated goal of the trip, later expressed by Irina Antonovna, was to consult American specialists regarding the frail state of the composer’s health.

Previous Trips Shostakovich had visited the United States twice before—in 1949 and 1959. His first trip, in 1949, was made at the insistence of Joseph Stalin, as a delegate to the World Peace Congress; his second trip, in 1959, was as a member of a Soviet Composers’ Union delegation. The first trip was a



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highly traumatic and controversial exercise in extremes: the composer attacked in the American press as a tool of Communism on the one hand, and playing the piano version of the scherzo from his Fifth Symphony to an enthusiastic full house of many thousands in the old Madison Square Garden on the other. The second trip was less controversial and more expansive: from the East Coast’s cultural centers to the West Coast and Disneyland. One member of the delegation was Tikhon Khrennikov, the head of the Union of Soviet Composers, and the eminence grise of Soviet music.

Arrangements Usually a program officer is assigned by the State Department to a visiting group or prominent personality to oversee the scheduling and itinerary that are prepared for consultation upon the visitor’s arrival. The Shostakovich trip was not a usual one in several ways. The only fixed segment of the trip was to Chicago and the Northwestern graduation ceremony with its ancillary events. New York City offered a wide range of opportunities, some accepted (the Metropolitan Opera), others not (Columbia University’s Electronic Music Laboratory). To my knowledge, the Shostakoviches were scheduled to return to New York after Chicago. It was only on the next to last day in Chicago that the itinerary was changed to include the Washington DC area and the National Institutes of Health.

Health Many adjustments to Shostakovich’s schedule were necessary due to his frail health. I did know, prior to his arrival, that the composer had suffered two heart attacks; I therefore requested emergency medical information for each city to be visited. Upon his arrival, the frail state of Shostakovich’s health was confirmed first-hand. The composer had difficulty walking—or rather shuffling— more than a hundred feet without a significant rest. Both his hands shook with a palsied movement that, when they were resting on a table, became a tapping motion. He could only shake hands or use a fork by holding his right hand with his left. He traveled with a black doctor’s bag containing a variety of medicines the administering of which was overseen by Irina Antonovna.



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Interpreting The primary task of escort interpreters is to accurately convey speakers’ utterances. Some speakers prefer to make pauses between phrases in order to allow for sequential interpreting. Sequential interpreting permits note-taking since it allows for longer quotations with pauses in between. Other speakers prefer so-called “simultaneous” interpreting. The challenge for the interpreter is to lag no more than a phrase behind the speaker. For public appearances the interpreting is usually sequential; for personal conversations it is often “simultaneous” to allow for smoother communication. However, for the interpreter to retain the contents of a completely simultaneously interpreted speech is quite difficult; it’s reminiscent of the classic image of a medium in a séance, such is the concentrated focus on the speaker’s discourse by the interpreter. Daily telephone contact with Jerome Margolius, the supervising program officer in Washington DC, was necessary to monitor the visit’s logistics, the “escort” part of the job title.

II. Facts and Fiction Although space precludes an extensive discussion of factual errors that have found their way into accounts of Shostakovich’s 1973 American visit, I have included (in italics) corrections to a few misstatements that have appeared.

MoMA Although a visit to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) had been scheduled prior to the Shostakoviches’ arrival, Dmitri Dmitrievich wished to rest and remained in his St. Moritz Hotel suite. Only Irina Antonovna and Mr. Margolius were given a tour of the museum’s collection, contrary to the next day’s New York Times report. The Times stated that Dmitri Dmitrievich had also been present. When they returned to the twentiethfloor suite which faced high rises, Dmitri Dmitrievich was sitting facing the window reading a Chekhov short story. Later, in the summer of 1976, when I was director of a US-USSR program at Moscow State University, I learned from Irina Antonovna that Dmitri Dmitrievich had been thinking of writing an opera based on Chekhov’s short story, “The Black Monk,” a study in psychosis.



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The “Met” Opera The Shostakoviches were met by Mrs. Grace Belt, Director, U.S. Department of State Reception Center, to ascertain the maestro’s preferences during their New York stay. It was at this juncture that a visit to the Metropolitan Opera that evening was decided upon. “It Vas Premiere,” subtitled, “The Night Shostakovich Came to the Met” is a one-page article that deals not only with the composer’s visit to the Met, but also briefly recounts highlights of the remainder of the visit. Although based primarily on a two-hour phone interview with me, the article’s title comes from a fanciful recounting of the most egregious factual lapse by the Met’s then General Director, Schuyler Chapin, who insisted on giving Shostakovich an accent in the English he never spoke and in a statement, to the best of my knowledge, that he never made: “It vas premiere.” It should be noted that Opera News is published by the Metropolitan Opera Guild, Inc. Chapin’s claim that the entire orchestra joined the hornists to salute the composer’s presence is incorrect and contradicted by the hornists’ own statements.1 Regrettably, this account was later incorporated into the two-volume Soviet-era Shostakovich biography.2

Composers—Virtual and Real In lieu of visiting the Columbia University Electronic Laboratory, the Shostakoviches accepted an invitation from Mr. James Cohen of the Lincoln Center Music Library to listen to the recorded work of American composers. Professor Vladimir Ussachevsky of Columbia later joined the group. A taxi ride south to the midtown Century Club followed. There, at a square formed of tables, nearly two dozen prominent American composers (William Schumann, Otto Luening, George Crumb and Nicholas Nabokov, et al.) were seated to pay tribute to Dmitri Dmitrievich. On the taxi ride back to the St. Moritz, the Shostakoviches were accompanied by Alexander Tcherepnin.

 1 2



Baker, “It Vas Premiere,” Opera News, 17. Khentova, Shostakovich: Life and Works, 622.

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The “Rug” Concert Pierre Boulez, in order to attract a younger audience to New York Philharmonic concerts, had the seats removed on the orchestra level of Philharmonic [later, Avery Fisher] Hall and replaced by a wall-to-wall rug for concert-goers to sit on, picnic style. Dmitri Dmitrievich opted to sit in the balcony in a traditional seat. After the concert the composer went down to the Green Room to meet with Maestro Boulez. I’ve been asked on occasion whether it is true that Maestro Boulez in shaking the composer’s hand also kissed it. I don’t recall this to have occurred; however, in the attendant commotion my attention may well have been directed elsewhere at that moment. In a Soviet-era volume dedicated to Shostakovich interviews, this concert is inadvertently located in Carnegie rather than Philharmonic Hall.3

The Skyline Since a limousine rather than the previous night’s taxi was available, an impromptu side-trip to Brooklyn Heights via lower Manhattan was arranged, in order to view the Manhattan skyline from the Promenade that runs along the East River atop two tiers of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. From this vantage point, looking northwest one could see lights dotting the towers of Manhattan with the illuminated Empire State Building in the distance.

Interviews Dmitri Dmitrievich gave two interviews on his third day in New York, in the morning to Stephen Rubin of the New York Times, and in the afternoon to Royal Brown of High Fidelity magazine. Both interviews were subsequently published, Rubin’s on Sunday, June 24, and Brown’s in the October issue. Mr. Orlov acted as interpreter at both interviews. I was also contacted by Grace Glueck of the New York Times, who requested that Donal Henahan, a leading Times music critic, interview Shostakovich. Dmitri Dmitrievich, when asked, turned down the request.



3 Grigoryev and Platek, compilers, Dmitry Shostakovich: About Himself and His Times, 315.



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The “Otheer” Met In the aafternoon during Dmitri Dmitrievich’s D interview wiith Royal Brown for High Fidellity, I accom mpanied Irinaa Antonovnaa to the Metropolitann Museum of o Art—the “other” “ Met— —to view its Costume Institute. Att Irina Antonoovna’s requestt, I returned aalone to the Stt. Moritz, since she wiished to exploore on her own n.

To Chiicago Bags paacked, transportation arran nged, we arrrived at Penn nsylvania Station in tim me for a 4:45 departure to Chicago. C The Shostakovich hes retired to their suitee for dinner annd the night. Mr. M Orlov andd I ate in the dining car. Although sccheduled for a late morning g arrival, the train reached d Chicago in the earlyy afternoon. The T delay had d been causedd by a kitcheen fire on board the traain. The Shoostakoviches were met by b Professor Irwin Weil and an entourage ffrom Northw western Univeersity. After their arrivaal at the Orrington H Hotel in Evansston, directly north n of Chicaago and the lo ocation of the Northweestern main campus, c the Shostakoviche S es returned to Chicago for two intterviews, onee at the Norrthwestern Scchool of Law w on the Streetervillee Medical and Law Campuss and the other er at the classiccal music station, WFM MT, then locaated nearby on n North Michiigan Avenue.

Press Con nference The connference wass held in an n auditorium at the Nortthwestern University S School of Laaw with a dozzen or so meembers of thee press in attendance. One questionn remains cllear in my m memory. It dealt d with Shostakovicch’s reaction to t the Soviet organization o oof music, to which w the composer reesponded veryy positively. What I also recall is that after the conference was over, Dmitri D Dmittrievich, in a measured reaction, expressed diistaste at the question, the implication bbeing—what else e could he do but ddefend the Sooviet system? One of the “ground ruless” for all interviews w was that only questions q of a musical naturre be asked.

WFM MT This innterview withh Shostakoviich was connducted by Norman Pellegrini, W WFMT’s Genneral Managerr. Present wer ere Professor Weil and



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Professor Arrand Parsons, both of Northwestern—the latter, program annotator for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra programs—and Mr. Orlov. .

Mr. Pellegrini posed the questions, audible in English, while I interpreted sotto voce to Dmitri Dmitrievich in Russian, with Professor Weil interpreting Dmitri Dmitrievich’s responses audibly into English. Later, this interview became available as one of a set issued by the Soviet record firm, Melodiya. (I am grateful to Mr. Steve Robinson, WFMT Executive Vice President for Radio and Project Development, for providing a copy of this interview from the station’s archive.)

School of Music Reception In the evening a reception for the Shostakoviches was held at Dean Thomas Miller’s residence. Since receptions, by their nature, require a great deal of standing, it was necessary to adjust the event to Dmitri Dmitrievich’s needs: he had difficulty standing as well as moving any distance. Consequently, the guests were requested to sit and to casually wander over to the composer in small groups.

The Honorary Degree Dmitri Dmitrievich’s honorary doctorate was to be awarded in McGaw Hall, a structure capable of holding several thousand viewers—I was told that it was the location for indoor football practice! The original plan was to have Dmitri Dmitrievich enter the hall with the faculty, a march of several hundred feet to the stage. Needless to say, this was not possible; instead, a limousine with the composer’s party was driven to the hall’s side entrance, a short distance from the first row, where the composer sat until it was time to ascend the stage in the company of Professor Weil to the music of his “Festival Overture.” After the reading of Dmitri Dmitrievch’s award, Professor Weil assisted in the hooding of the composer. Upon leaving the hall to the limousine, the composer heard, in Russian, from a young man, “Ia ochen' liubliu Vashu muziku!”—“I love your music very much!”

Luncheon and Reception After a brief rest—another luncheon and reception. Much to the credit of Professor Weil, Mr. Littrell, and other Northwestern officials, the previously scheduled events had been adjusted to Dmitri Dmitrievich’s



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needs, yet as is the case with many individuals, he still did not wish to display his infirmity. Accordingly, a tall stool was placed behind the composer to help him rest. The “meet and greet’ was shortened from a scheduled two hours to under half an hour.

Group Sightseeing Later that evening the Shostakoviches were taken on a limousine tour of the parks along Lake Shore Drive and they got a view of Chicago’s “Gold Coast.” Among those accompanying them were Professor Weil and Wayne Littrell.

Composers and Sights Late the next morning, a Sunday, the Shostakoviches were driven to Irwin and Vivian Weil’s art nouveau residence in Evanston to meet with prominent American composers from the Chicago area, such as Easley Blackwood, Alan Stout, and John Downey. At Irina Antonovna’s request, she and I continued on to Chicago, to the John Hancock Building’s 94th floor Observatory and to the Art Institute of Chicago, whose twentiethcentury paintings particularly interested her. Dmitri Dmitrievich returned separately from the Weils’.

Rescheduling During one of my daily phone calls to Mr. Margolius, the Washington program officer, I was informed that the Shostakoviches wished to exchange their scheduled return from Chicago to New York for a return to Washington DC, and to change from train to plane travel, since Dmitri Dmitrievich had requested consultations at the National Institutes of Health, in Bethesda, Maryland, several miles outside of Washington. Mr. Orlov left the Shostakoviches before their departure from Chicago on official business.

To Washington From Chicago onward, boarding and deplaning of all flights was conducted by vehicle to the planes’ stairs; at the time jetways were not in universal use. The Bethesda Holiday Inn was selected not only for its proximity to the National Institutes of Health but also for the discretion of



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its front desk and service staff. An emphasis was placed on privacy in order that Dmitri Dmitrievich have the seclusion necessary for extensive medical examinations scheduled for the following day, Tuesday, June the nineteenth. Any press inquiries regarding the change in travel plans were to be explained by the couple’s desire to privately visit the sights of Washington DC. The afternoon concluded with a brief orientation visit to NIH for some preliminary tests.

The Kreeger Mansion After a room-service dinner (virtually all of the couple’s meals were taken this way throughout the entire visit) the couple was driven along with Program Officer Jerome Margolius and me to the David Kreeger mansion on Washington’s Foxhall Road. The mansion has since become, after Mr. Kreeger’s passing, a museum of architectural and artistic note. The structure, designed by the noted modern architect, Phillip Johnson, with its attractive travertine interior, is a striking background for Mr. Kreeger’s collection of Impressionist art. The visit was arranged through the offices of Mr. Irving Lowens, Washington music critic. After a tour of the mansion’s rooms, the group settled in Mr. Kreeger’s study, where we listened to recorded music by American composers. The evening concluded with Mr. Kreeger playing a Mozart string duet with Myran Kojian, Concertmaster of the Washington Symphony Orchestra.

At NIH From mid-morning to late afternoon—with a break for lunch in the company of several key NIH administrators—Dmitri Dmitrievich spent the day undergoing an X-ray, and a variety of tests and examinations, with Irina Antonovna in constant attendance. The results of the tests were to be sent to Dmitri Dmitrievich himself, to his Moscow physician, and to the U.S. Department of State.

Monuments Toward evening, after dinner, Irina Antonovna requested that I accompany her on an hour-and-a-half viewing of Washington’s sights by



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taxi. In thatt brief period she was able to view the Capitol, Whitte House, Washingtonn Monument, and a the Lincolln and Jeffersoon Memorialss.

Progn nosis During ttheir morningg visit to NIH H, one of thee attending physicians p spoke brieflly to the Shostakoviches. The T results of the examinatiions were not encouraaging: Shostaakovich was suffering s from m a nameless, slowly progressing nerve-fiber attrophy for which no treatmeent was possib ble.

To New York N York’s JJFK Airport an nd took a Finally, they returnedd by plane to New minent compoosers, perform mers, and limousine riide to a lunccheon with em musical nottables. It hadd been requeested that seeveral TV an nd media interviews bbe given at thhe restaurant prior p to the luuncheon, but they t were turned downn.

A Collegial Luncheon L This lunncheon, final in several waays, was heldd in one of th he private rooms at Lee Poullalier onn 65th Street neear Lincoln C Center. The do ozen or so guests, inclluding Mr. and a Mrs. Isaaac Stern, Aar aron Copland,, Eugene Ormandy, aand Morton Gould, G were all a seated in a row in an otherwise o vacant room m, perhaps to allow for meedia access, ggiving the onee existing photographeer, assigned by b ASCAP, plenty of room m to maneuveer. Dmitri Dmitrievichh was seated inn the center of o the row; I w was seated on his right. Eugene Orm mandy, seateed on my riight, expresssed his wish h for the Philadelphiaa Orchestra too premiere Dm mitri Dmitrievvich’s next sy ymphony. During a luull in the convversation with h his neighborrs, Dmitri Dm mitrievich turned to mee and expresseed his regret th hat his ailmennt was not treaatable.

Rest and Departure The nextt and last stopp in New Yorrk was at the East 67th Streeet Soviet Consulate tto the Unitedd Nations, wh here I left thhe Shostakov viches for several hourrs until it was time to travell to the Hudsoon River pier where w the Queen Elizaabeth 2 was moored. m I accompanied the ccouple to theirr recently upgraded staateroom in ordder to assist with w any last m minute questio ons before the QE2 sailled for Englannd.



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Retrospect So, “What was Shostakovich like?” and “What did you discuss with him?” are questions I have been asked frequently by, among others, people such as Alex Ross, music critic for The New Yorker. As can be gathered from the composer’s itinerary, his schedule in three major cities of America would have been daunting even for a healthy individual and it precluded any extended discussions on music or any other topic—his remarks survive in the interviews that were granted and in the memories of his interlocutors. Yet, Dmitri Dmitrievich was always thoughtful with his requests while firm in his desire for a minimum of interviews. Although physically frail, he was mentally alert, inquisitive, polite, and consumed with musical issues. To the best of my knowledge he did not know or use any English, Schuyler Chapin’s vaudevillian comments aside. Irina Antonovna’s tactful presence was essential for the successful completion of Dmitri Dmitrievich’s visit to the United States. Her extensive knowledge of the cultural scene and of American personalities, as well as her basic knowledge of English, was of invaluable assistance to Dmitri Dmitrievich and to his interlocutors. It was an honor and a privilege to have made the Shostakoviches’ acquaintance and to have been of whatever assistance that I could to them.



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Bibliography / Discography Baker, David J. “It Vas Premiere.” Opera News, December 10, 1994, 17. Grigoryev, L. and Ya. Platek, compilers. Dmitry Shostakovich: About Himself and His Times. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1985. Govorit Dmitri Shostakovich [Dmitry Shostakovich Speaks]. Melodiya Album, four discs. [4 (705-12)]. Moscow. No date. Khentova, Sofia. Shostakovich; zhizn' i tvorchestvo. Leningrad: Sovetskii kompozitor, 1985 [Khentova, Sofia. Shostakovich; Life and Works. Leningrad: Soviet Composer, 1985].



PART II: ASIA

BREATH IN A RAM’S HORN: JUDAISM AND CLASSICAL MUSIC DANIEL ASIA

It is not too long ago that it was customary for most Jewish homes to possess a grand piano. Whether that instrument was played or not was of little matter. Its bulky presence signified something of importance. It suggested that culture, and particularly classical musical culture, was important. It also suggested a similarity of perspective, of values, and of meaning that made for a natural commonality of Judaism and classical music. As the culture wars have left society bereft of any certainties regarding ultimate worth, this has been nowhere more true than in the realm of music. It is not uncommon to find Jews who are interested in high culture, in the areas of art, dance, theater, and literature, totally ignorant of the world of classical music. Partly as a result of this state of affairs, the world of classical music finds itself in the midst of these wars with a graying and declining audience, and what is tantamount to a crushing loss of faith in its continued existence. What seemed so natural and self-explanatory only twenty-five years ago perhaps now needs to be re-examined. Why is it that Jews, who by definition are engaged in the task of engaging the sacred, should also be interested in classical music? While Judaism is many things, including a peoplehood and a culture, it is most importantly a religion, a belief system. At the center of this belief system is the desire to approach the one God. Living with God is achieved through many avenues: first in belief, in the following of the mitzvot1, in the study of Torah in its largest sense, and certainly in praise of God. Like Judaism, classical music is a system that allows us to approach and praise God; perhaps it is one of the most important pathways to God. 1

The 613 commandments Jews are obligated to observe.

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Jews now approach God through the activity of prayer. But prayer wasn’t always the form in which praise occurred. In the times of the Temples, praise took the form of sacrifice and music. It is clear from many of the psalms that music was at the center of the Jews’ approach to God. Whether it took the form of ecstatic praise, as suggested in Psalm 150, or the simple but firm utterance of the shofar, music represented a simple and direct pathway to the Holy One. In more recent times, the Chassidic movement has used the niggun2 as another direct way to approach God. Perhaps music, the artful combination of sound and silence in time, is a form of prayer without words.

Judaism, Music, and the Universe An understanding of Jewish prayer suggests that at the center of this enterprise is a celebration of the mystery of the world and the universe. To approach God and God’s creation is, in Abraham Heschel’s famous phrase, to approach all that is with a sense of “radical amazement.” Music is surely one of the most direct means of approaching the universe on this basis. It, like prayer, leads us directly through and beyond our logical processes to an encounter with the ineffable. As noted composer Ralph Shapey has said, “A great work of Art is a work which transcends the immediate moment into a world of Infinity; complete and infinite within itself; of inevitability and of Oneness.” Shapey is suggesting that the musical work, as an object, tries to resemble, to imitate, the very nature of God. The result for Shapey is that music is a form of religious communication, “because for me, yes, great art is a miracle. I’m talking about an experience in which, for that moment, you are in a different time-element, a different sphere. You receive something so marvelous you can’t define it.” Therefore, both prayer and music allow us to enter into the realm of miracles, to approach the mystery of the universe. The requirements for both prayer and music, to paraphrase the Bal Shem Tov, are an open heart and mind. Study and learning are especially useful, but the success of these enterprises is surely predicated on the former condition.

2

Jewish religious song using a series of repeated syllables.

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Judaism, Music, and Time Both Judaism and music find space and things to be subservient to time. It is not that things are not important, nor that space is to be disparaged. What is at question is our sense of hierarchy in regards to these concepts. Abraham Heschel has written, “Judaism is a religion of time aiming at the sanctification of time. Judaism teaches us to be attached to holiness in time. The higher goal of spiritual living is not to amass a wealth of information, but to face sacred moments. In a religious experience, for example, it is not a thing that imposes itself on man but a spiritual presence. ...it is not a thing that lends significance to a moment; it is the moment that lends significance to things. Jewish ritual may be characterized as the art of significant forms of time, as architecture of time.” Music, in its essence, is the sculpting of time into significant forms, into grand architectural works of time. Its building blocks are sound and silence. Its reason for being is to provide us with sacred moments, inklings of the Other in what is, for the most part, a profane world. The fine performance of a great work is followed by a feeling of intense satisfaction, by an awareness that we have experienced a heightened sense of time, and by the realization of our special place in the realm of time. Therefore, like prayer, like the practice of the Shabbat, music allows us to find and experience sacred moments in time.

Judaism, Music and the Textual Tradition Both Judaism and Western art music are textual traditions. This simply means that they are based on texts considered to have varying degrees of sacredness. For Jews, the primary sacred text is the Tanach, the Jewish Bible. Other written texts, such as the Mishnah and Gemorrah, hold a secondary but important position, for these written-down oral traditions attempt to explain the seeming contradictions in the primary text as well as to understand its complexities in terms of our own lived experience. Modern commentaries continue the process. For musicians, it is that canon of musical scores, in which are contained seemingly never-ending moments of genius, that is most directly analogous to the Tanach. The best music of Mozart, Bach, Beethoven,

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Brahms, Mahler, Bernstein, Schoenberg, Webern, and the other great composers is in scores that musicians live with as if those scores were a living presence. Without suggesting idolatry, for musicians these are the sacred texts. In the same way that one converses with God via the Ramban or Rambam, through a study of their commentaries, so a musician lives with—and in the presence of—great composers, through the study and performance of their works. The performing tradition is analogous to the oral tradition. The performer receives various commentaries on a work via his teachers and the hearing of other performances, studies the various approaches, and ultimately settles on the approach that best suits his individual predilections. Each new performance is, therefore, a commentary on a divinely inspired text.

Judaism, Music, and the Creative Experience What is the relationship between revelation and imagination? One word, revelation, is used in a religious context, while the other, imagination, is used in a musical one. As Rabbi Ira Stone has written in his Seeking the Path to Life, “Imagination is the bridge between God and humans. It is not the locus of fiction, but the locus of truth. God speaks to us through the imagination.” If this is so, then surely God “speaks” to composers of great imagination. Surely, when artists are “in the zone,” they are somehow closer to the divine spirit. They are crossing that bridge that separates God and us humans. For anyone interested in engaging the sacred, it only makes sense to “listen” to what they have heard.

SACRED AND PROFANE IN THE MUSIC OF DANIEL ASIA ARYEH TEPPER

Daniel Asia is an award-winning, critically acclaimed, JewishAmerican composer of classical music. He is also a writer and lecturer deeply interested in the connections between music and culture. In particular, he is interested in the connection between classical music and the Jewish tradition. Asia articulates some of his thoughts regarding the connection between classical music and Judaism in his essay, “Breath in a Ram's Horn: Why Classical Music Is Like Jewish Prayer.” 1 One of the more intriguing claims that Asia advances is that classical music and Judaism both facilitate religious experience through a thoughtful shaping of time. Asia makes his case by comparing Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel's claim that Judaism is a religion that finds God in time to his (Asia’s) own understanding of classical music: Abraham Heschel has written, "Judaism is a religion of time aiming at the sanctification of time. Judaism teaches us to be attached to holiness in time. The higher goal of spiritual living is not to amass a wealth of information, but to face sacred moments. Jewish ritual may be characterized as the art of significant forms of time, as architecture of time." Music, and classical music in particular, is about the sculpting of time into significant forms, into grand architectural works extended in time. Its building blocks are sound and silence. Its reason for being is to provide us with sacred moments, inklings of the Other, in what is, for the most part, a profane world. Like prayer, like the practice of the Shabbat, music allows us to find, and experience, sacred moments in time.

 1

Note: This version of “Breath in a Ram’s Horn” appeared on the Huffington Post Blog, September 9, 2012.

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The passage quoted by Asia is from Heschel’s most famous work, The Sabbath, 2 and Asia not surprisingly uses the Sabbath as an example of “architecture of time”: each week there are six profane days of work and then the Sabbath, the sacred day of rest in which the miraculous act of creation is recalled, together with the Creator. The same can be said, writes Asia, of the three daily prayers: even our profane days have their sacred moments in which we can commune with the Divine. Most importantly, classical music, an art form that unfolds over time, can, like Judaism, be divided into the categories of sacred and profane. Classical music is composed of grand architectural time-structures of sound and silence in which the musical peaks allow us to “experience sacred moments in time.” Asia’s intriguing and highly suggestive theory regarding the connection between Judaism and classical music, if interpreted too strictly, can be casually dismissed. After all, there are many ways of interpreting Jewish experience and religious practice. There is a stream in the Jewish tradition that emphasizes the fundamental importance of the Land—the Land of Israel—and not time. Some claim that the fundamental intention of Judaism is avoda be’gashmiyut, the sanctification of the physical world, while others take a more philosophical approach according to which the goal of religious life is the knowledge of God which, in principle, is always and everywhere possible. And so on. But Asia didn’t intend to be interpreted so strictly, and I will rephrase his claim in a way that limits its scope but that, I believe, draws out Asia’s deep insight and intention. Here is Asia’s argument, slightly refined: there is a way, based upon Abraham Heschel’s interpretation of Judaism, that we can be open to, and experience, the religious dimension of classical music. How does it work? What is the character of this “way”? The special virtue of classical music is its capacity to tell a story over time. Time is divided into the sacred and profane, and at special sacred times, we encounter and experience “inklings of the Other,” God, in the music. In classical music, since the story unfolds over time, profane moments precede and follow the sacred peak moments, and yet instead of connecting to an easily accessible musical hook, as in pop music, classical music demands sustained attention from its listeners. Classical music does not offer an immediate hook, but well-earned, sacred highs.



2 Note: The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1951).

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That is, I believe, a powerful idea, and Asia’s Heschelian interpretation of classical music provides a compelling way of transforming the act of listening to classical music into a spiritual exercise. I will return to this point at the conclusion of this chapter. More immediately, however, Asia’s understanding of the connection between classical music and Judaism also provides a key for appreciating the music of one of the most important composers of classical music today, namely, Daniel Asia. I’ll start with Asia's 2003 abstract electro-acoustic music cycle, named, aptly enough, Sacred and Profane. The cycle features the sayings of Hasidic masters at the beginning, middle, and end of the music, “An Awesome Silent Fire,” “Like Smoke Towards Heaven,” and “Cry.” These pieces constitute the sacred elements of the music. In between the sacred parts, we get the profane elements, entitled “Mercury” and “Chromium,” respectively. Or take a close look at the interaction of Asia’s two 2002 song cycles, Breath in a Ram's Horn and Pines Songs (which appear together on the CD Breath in a Ram's Horn). These song cycles include ten poems written by Asia's long-time creative partner, the American-Jewish poet, Paul Pines. In this case too, the music should be divided into sacred and profane. The poems in Breath in a Ram’s Horn focus upon family and Judaism, the lyrics ranging from prayer shawls to high holidays to reflections on Job and King David. This is the sacred component. Pines Songs, however, treats what Asia calls, “man’s uneasy place in the universe.” It grapples with the humanly profane side of life. But in this context it is particularly rewarding to explore, in detail, Asia’s wonderful 5th Symphony, Of Songs and Psalms (2011), a fifteenmovement song cycle in which Asia symmetrically places the liturgical pieces at the beginning, middle, and end of the cycle, parallel to the structure of Sacred and Profane. Asia opens Of Songs and Psalms with Psalm 115, and he concludes it with "Barukh Adonai L'Olam,” a text from the morning prayer service. In the middle, Asia places the 23rd Psalm. Notably, these three liturgical pieces are all choral, while the remaining pieces, “profane” poems composed by Paul Pines and Yehuda Amichai, the iconic Israeli poet known for turning his mastery of the various registers of Hebrew— biblical, ancient, medieval, and modern—to earthly concerns, are sung by baritone and tenor soloists. Since the liturgical pieces are performed chorally while the profane poems are performed by individuals, it seems

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that Asia, in his 5th Symphony, identifies the sacred with community, while he leaves us to deal with the profane side of our lives on our own. It should also be noted that the opening and closing psalms are sung in Hebrew, while the remaining pieces are sung in English. That said, the poems composed by Pines and Amichai present a fascinating portrait of a secular transatlantic Jewish sensibility that ranges from Brooklyn to Jerusalem and that responds to "man's uneasy place in the universe" by engaging in a dialogue with the God whose existence it doubts. The poems include earthly ruminations on mortality, Brooklyn and Jerusalem, enemies, love, necessity, rebellion against and longing for God, fear, and exile. Asia alternates his use of poets—a poem by Pines is followed by a poem by Amichai, and so on—and this format allows each poem, in Asia’s words, "to comment on, or allude to, the other." It is noteworthy that Asia has artificially created, in miniature but on a high artistic level, a global Jewish conversation. Much ink has been spilled wondering about the character of the connection between American and Israeli Jews, and Asia’s 5th is a rich resource for those who would like to explore this connection as it is articulated in the arts. At this point we’ll stop to explore one particularly interesting section of the song cycle, pieces 7-9: Amichai’s, “Through Two Points Only,” Psalm No. 23, and then Pines’ poem, “I shall cook me bacon, Lord.” In Amichai’s poem there are five stanzas, each stanza ending with the line, “through two points only one straight line can pass.” Already, we know we’re in strange territory when a geometric theorem becomes the stuff of song. But the irresistible logic of the geometric theorem evokes the irresistible necessity that shapes so much of life in Israel, where the power of the past still speaks with a commanding voice, and military service is an obligation, and the imagination is constrained by what is, at times, a very harsh reality. Amichai’s imagination, too, is constrained, and to quote the final stanza: Our life of joy turns to a life of tears, our life eternal to a life of years. Our life of gold became a life of brass. Through two points only one straight line can pass.

What is the material of this stanza? Joy turned to pain. The knowledge of mortality, “Our life of joy turns to a life of tears / our life eternal to a life of years.” Note that the profane “life of years” takes the place of a

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sacred eternity, “life eternal.” And there is no escape, “Through two points only one straight line can pass.” Psalm 23, “The Lord is My Shepherd,” follows. Here: …though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me;

The main force in the Psalm is not natural necessity, as in Amichai’s poem, but Divine power. And it is a power that is stronger even than death, for, “though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death / I will fear no evil.” And so: Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the House of the Lord forever.

With Psalm 23, we overcome death. We, “dwell in the House of the Lord forever.” We live in the realm of the sacred, for the Lord is sacred: “I am the Lord your God; consecrate yourselves and be holy, because I am holy” (Leviticus 11:44). This piece, and peak, is then followed by the American-Jewish poet, Paul Pines, who brings us back to earth in wise-guy Brooklynese: I shall cook me bacon, Lord, where no one can find me I shall cook myself an omelette and think about my soul…

I skip: And my mind was a pigeon Grinding pebbles in its beak… But I shall pound my glass Into the bar and watch my image Fold in upon itself Before I become a leprechaun And reminisce

With Pines, we descend from the House of the Lord, where we dwell forever in holiness, to an American city, in which the individual is autonomous—I shall cook me bacon—and anonymous—where no one can find me—and the center of his own universe—I shall cook myself an

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omelette and think about my soul. Here, the imagination roams free—my mind was a pigeon—and a Jewish boy from Brooklyn can even imagine that he’s Irish—before I become a leprechaun. Asia handles the pieces wonderfully. “Through Two Points Only” is strophic—clear, measured, accessible, with a great brass sound and, to tell the truth, a little funky—while the melody of “I shall cook me bacon” skips and flits like a leprechaun. And Psalm 23? It’s performed by a chorus, a monumental sound that clocks in at six minutes (the other two are 2:38 and 1:22), with the sacred moment, the inkling of the Other, erupting at almost the three-minute mark, the geometric center of the entire song cycle, when God accompanies the Psalmist through the valley of the shadow of death. All in all it is a delightful treatment of the secular struggle with God, seen from Jerusalem on one end and Brooklyn on the other, held together by a psalmic sensibility. What can I say? If you haven't heard it already, you should. Asia’s use of Hebrew and English in his 5th Symphony, Of Songs and Psalms, deserves a few additional words. The question of the relationship between the sacred and the profane is fruitfully complicated by his use of Hebrew and English in this symphony. For it is strange for a Jew from Israel like myself to hear the Hebrew language restricted to religious texts while the profane is given over to English. This is, of course, the perspective, and effect, of exile. Because one of the goals of Zionism, which was as much a cultural as a political movement, was to take the Book of Psalms out of the hands of that pious and righteous woman, the Hebrew language, and to teach her how to buy vegetables in the market. In Asia’s 5th, she’s back in her traditional role. And then there’s Amichai in English. Hebrew readers know that Amichai's impact comes from his subtle subversion of Hebrew's religious power to make the language of the Bible illuminate a secular universe. Of course, Asia could not have successfully presented Amichai in Hebrew to an English-speaking audience, and this limitation makes one wonder how Asia's 5th Symphony would go over in Israel. Of Songs and Psalms was originally scheduled to be performed by the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra but the engagement didn't pan out. That's a shame, because Amichai in Hebrew would only deepen the ambivalent relationship with God and religion, the longing and the distance, that Asia's latest work so adeptly portrays.

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Finally, and as I touched upon previously, Asia’s understanding of the relationship between Judaism and classical music is not only a helpful way for understanding his music, it also offers us a helpful way, rooted in Jewish sources, for spiritually interpreting the experience of listening to classical music in general. Westerners live in an era that is characterized by a "regression of listening." It is increasingly difficult for many of us to concentrate for extended periods of time. In many ways, in many forms, there is an emphasis on what is happening now—from fast food, to Peace Now, to Mashiach (Messiah) Now—the immediate hook that animates so much of pop music and pop culture. There is a pervasive demand for immediate gratification. Hopefully we are all aware of this problem. As we all also know, however, life doesn't work like that. The best things are difficult, and they take time, and the process—the extended investment of time— can be dry. But we hope the results will come, whether we’re investing in a relationship, raising children, writing a book, or composing a symphony. We trust that there will be rewards down the line. Asia’s Heschelian way of listening to, and, in part, composing classical music, an understanding of classical music built upon the distinction between sacred and profane moments, attunes us to the music of time. It compels us to slow down and to take an expanded view of how stories, our stories, develop over time. It also invites us to approach the peak moments of those stories with awe and reverence. The best compliment I can give to Daniel Asia’s way in music is to echo what, in a very different context, Friedrich Nietzsche said about lifegiving art and philosophy. According to Nietzsche, life-giving art and philosophy often enliven culture by opposing the spirit of their time. Well, Daniel Asia has the virtue of being untimely!

ON DANIEL ASIA’S SYMPHONIES JAN SWAFFORD

Dan Asia and I have been friends, colleagues, and mutual admirers since—well, let’s not get into how long. We met as students at the Yale School of Music. Dan arrived there the year after I did, and I remember my first impressions: this kid had a sense of confidence about him, he was serious and ambitious, and he had an instinct for orchestration that most of us envied. When I was a teaching assistant I remember looking at Dan’s projects in a beginning electronic music course; for him they weren’t just didactic projects, but rather intense and purposeful pieces. Some of them have been issued on recordings since, along with other music from his student years. Dan and I fell into a graduate-student friendship, sitting around swapping recordings, running down the competition, and so on. For a while we had an ongoing discussion of how, in the modern world of composing, it is possible to write fast music. The question was perhaps abstract at the time, but that concern with rhythm had long implications in both our works. We were trying one thing and another, seeing what resonated with our hearts and minds and what didn’t. To know Dan was to know about his involvement with Judaism, in a conservatory atmosphere where on the whole religion appeared irrelevant. I don’t remember any discussions then about how one’s ethics and faith might inflect one’s music. We also talked little to not at all about emotion and expression. At Yale in those days, all those questions seemed off the map. We changed a lot in the next decades. Dan went to Manhattan and founded Musical Elements with our classmate Robert Beaser. In the next years he surveyed and performed the whole range of contemporary music, and in the process metamorphosed as a composer. We’ve never talked about this, but I suspect that besides Dan’s involvement with the contemporary repertoire and the ferment of new music in Manhattan, his

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On Daniel Asia’s Symphonies

deepening involvement with religion was a vital part of the mix that changed his music. Our changes were unique to ourselves and at the same time part of a zeitgeist. We had both started studying music when serialism and general intellectualism ruled the new-music landscape. Then we experienced the shake-up that the advent of Minimalism brought. In the mid-seventies our teacher Jacob Druckman named a burgeoning trend the New Romanticism. Between Dan’s curt and quirky String Quartet of 1975 and his expansive and beautiful Piano Concerto of 1994, there is a gigantic trajectory of style and expression that we can call emblematic of those decades in new music. It’s a trajectory tracing the decline of the old Modernism and avantgarde, the growing exhaustion of Postmodernism, and an abiding concern with the question, What next? That string quartet uses the gestural language of the midcentury avantgarde—the swoops and splutters, the silences punctuated by glassy whispers—but renews that language with gleeful, youthful bravura, “gleeful” and “youthful” being uncommon adjectives for the music of that time. By the Piano Concerto, Dan has settled into a personal territory that is neo-romantic here, neo-classic there, neo-minimal at times, yet always unmistakably his own. The orchestration has grown more expansive and voluptuous, the emotions up front, the music largely tonal with joyous jazzy rhythms and pithy melodic figures that for me, and I imagine for Dan, have a soulful, cantorial quality. To a degree, then, what’s happened to Dan Asia in the last thirty-five years is what’s happened to new music. There is a yearning for grander and more expressive canvases. There is a weaving-in of American jazz and popular elements, and at the same time a turning from the relentless redundancies of Minimalism toward richer content. There is above all a search for social and spiritual meaning in what we do. I imagine Dan and I agree that these are enormously important issues in our art. For music to endure and to thrive, it has to be renewed constantly, and it is the stream of new works that renews it, that keeps the repertoire fresh not only by adding new composers, but by putting old works against new ones, which gives fresh angles to both. As we matured I think both of us reached for a middle way between the often overintellectualized atmosphere we found at Yale, with dozens of petitrevolutionaries running around in the arts, and the kind of Minimalism that can slide into pandering. To find a voice and a philosophy that welcome an

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audience without pandering to it is to me a worthwhile path to take, and for me that is the path of Dan’s symphonies particularly. When I asked Dan to tell me why he wrote symphonies and how he related to the tradition, he said, “I write symphonies because I love them and see no reason why, as a formal concept, it applies any less to composers of today than it did to our predecessors.” Listening to his five symphonies, we sometimes hear echoes of the old formal outlines, sonata and rondo and scherzo, though never overt or uninflected. In a more fundamental way, in his symphonies we hear a tradition going back through Brahms and Beethoven to Mozart and Haydn, that a symphony is a more public, open, popularistic genre than chamber music. Traditionally symphonies are, in their style and their ethos, music for the multitude. I think Dan conforms to that tradition—as did Beethoven, as did Mozart. On the face of it, one might say that two of Dan’s five symphonies are Jewish in theme and the other three not, but I think that is the wrong conclusion. To my ear all of them are in some degree fundamentally Jewish, and at the same time personal and universal. Much of the time his symphonies are grand, extroverted, often celebratory, but the first and last of them, separated by nearly twenty years, are the most introverted. The fifth and last is at once the most intricately involved with Judaism in the world and the most intimate. I’ll come back to these issues below. And in general, I’d like to use each of Dan’s symphonies as an illustration of one or another larger aspect of his music. From the beginning of the First Symphony we hear an efflorescence of subtle orchestral color. This is going to be a piece full of scoring subtleties. Also from the beginning we hear an inward quality, an edge of tension that is going to mark the piece. So Dan’s first effort, from 1989, is in some ways his most intimate symphony. For me there’s a kind of brooding loneliness, call it an inner film noir. The style is in between Dan’s voice of the seventies and early eighties, much involved in color and texture, but with the more tonal and direct quality of his later music. In the end, for me the First is as fascinating and moving as any of his symphonies. No. 2, from 1992, is titled “Celebration Symphony.” It is an evocation, Dan writes, of “my deeply felt sense of Judaism, and what it means to be a Jew at the end of the twentieth century.” It is based on a piece written for a synagogue, and it echoes service music. Each movement has a Hebrew title, starting with Ma Tovu, which Dan calls a kind of warm-up to a prayer

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service. Here is where we first hear Dan’s more popularistic and tonal voice in the symphonies, a relatively direct and tonal style that includes grand, pealing orchestral perorations and a feeling of joyousness that I call his “hallelujah” voice. The second movement is a song of praise, Ashrenu, and the third movement, L’kha Adonai, a dancing and joyful movement that evokes the power and splendor of God, ending in one of Dan’s splendid, towering climaxes. The fifth and final movement is a prime example of Dan’s hallelujah style and, in fact, it’s titled “Hallelujah.” Coming back to these works all at once, I was struck for the first time by how distinctive in personality each one is. The Third Symphony, also from 1992, is an enormous piece in duration and in sound, all based on its opening theme, which introduces a work that is in many ways a simplification of material, making up long-gathering textures and climaxes that go on and on, in gorgeous harmonies. In part I see this piece as Dan’s distinctive response to the tradition of American Minimalism. Lying distantly in the background are perhaps Steve Reich and John Adams in particular. Its beginning has no stated Jewish background but still seems to me to resonate with the music of the synagogue, just as Aaron Copland’s music did when he was supposedly being high-American. The finale features massive, dancing, jazzy, slow-gathering stretches. The Third and in another way the Fourth bring up another aspect of Dan when he is writing nominally “abstract” pieces without a program, religious or otherwise: there is an overtone of the “Americana” style of Aaron Copland, and maybe a bit of George Gershwin as well. I cite those two and Steve Reich in particular as Jewish-American composers who managed a delicate balancing act of harmonizing those two aspects of their personalities in distinctive and memorable ways. Here in Dan’s work is a particular, personal balance of American and Jewish that flowers again in his most recent symphony. No. 4 comes from 1993, which means it is his fourth since 1989. He calls it “my most classical in structure and sound.” At once the style seems to me a distillation of the style of the Third, but in another way it is another new direction: more inward and succinct while the Third is extravagant and expansive. Like the Third, which has an elegiac middle movement, this one has a sadly lovely memorial to composer Stephen Albert. The rest of it, like the Third, is largely good-humored, celebratory, kaleidoscopic, full of delicious instrumental vignettes.

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Then for some fifteen years Dan took his music in other directions than the symphony, a good deal of it involving vocal and chamber music. He returned to the genre around 2008 with the Fifth Symphony, an enormous piece for orchestra, chorus, and soloists, largely made of miniatures—fifteen movements. This is another Jewish-themed work, in fact Dan’s most intricate and subtle meditation on the relationship in Jewish life of sacred and secular, this time in the twenty-first century. It is a symphony in the form of a song cycle that joins three familiar sacred texts to poetry of Yehuda Amichai—some of it set in Jerusalem—and to poetry of Dan’s long-time collaborator Paul Pines, who has been much involved in jazz, blues, and American urban life, and whose poetry echoes his own Jewish background. The Fifth is at once expansive and intimate. It returns to continuing themes in Dan’s work—the interaction of the abstract and expressive in musical terms, and the interaction of faith and secular life in musical and spiritual terms. In the Fifth the sacred and secular are not joined so much, I think, as the secular in its emotion and craziness and humor is seen through a sacred lens, represented by the sacred choral settings at beginning, middle, and end. The musical settings are centered on the words of the texts, surrounding them with a subtle and evocative orchestral atmosphere. The last movement, “Baruch Adonai L’Olam,” solemn and incantatory, looks back over the cavalcade of life evoked in the symphony and enfolds it into a spiritual vision. I think this is one of the most beautiful, moving, heartfelt movements in all Dan’s music. Distantly in the background I hear echoes of another beautiful and heartfelt religious work, Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms. This is but a brief tour of the symphonies of Dan Asia, which I believe are among the most important contributions to the genre in our day. I’d like to leave you with a final idea that applies to all Dan’s music, something he talked about in an interview we did a while ago. “Judaism talks about sacred time,” Dan said. “For me over the years, music has become an extension of that sense of sacred space and time. It’s an ephemeral experience that can lead us to a deeper understanding of ourselves and of the world.” I’ve always found that a beautiful and meaningful idea to contemplate: music as a sacred space that unites communities of people. That’s something coming out of Dan’s Jewish experience that speaks profoundly to the broadest human experience of life and music. His symphonies are an embodiment of that philosophy and that faith.



EAR TO EAR: A CONVERSATION WITH COMPOSER DANIEL ASIA JAN SWAFFORD

Between composer Daniel Asia’s curt and quirky String Quartet of 1975 and his expansive and beautiful Piano Concerto of 1994, there is a gigantic trajectory that we can call emblematic of the last quarter-century in new music, and to a degree in all the arts: a trajectory tracing the death of Modernism and the exhaustion of Postmodernism, and landing on the imperative question, What next? Both those works of Asia’s are successful and striking in their ways, but their ways diverge radically. The Quartet uses the gestural language of the midcentury avant-garde—the swoops and splutters, the silences punctuated by glassy whispers—but renews that language with gleeful, youthful bravura. (“Gleeful” and “youthful” are uncommon adjectives for the time.) By the Piano Concerto, Asia has settled into a personal territory that is neo-romantic here, neo-classic there, neo-minimal at times, yet always definably Asian. Stylistically, the two-decade journey between Quartet and Concerto constitutes an impressive body of work for a composer in his mid-40s. Stylistically it is filled in by methodical steps: at a point on the way the orchestration begins to grow more lush and sensual, then key signatures and tonal cadences appear, then jazzy rhythms and pithy melodic figures that gradually expand toward the long-breathed, soulful, cantorial melodies of the Piano Concerto. To a great degree, what's happened to new music in the last twenty years is illustrated by Dan Asia’s oeuvre. A yearning for grander and more expressive canvases has something to do with it, and a yearning for more people to hear, enjoy, even support those canvases. If there is a characteristic embrace of jazz and pop elements, there is also a turning from the relentless redundancies of Minimalism toward richer content.



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There is a drive to reconnect with an amputated tradition, a new search for social and spiritual meaning in what artists do. John Cage, one of the seminal voices of the midcentury avant-garde, proclaimed a Zen-like creed of meaninglessness in his music. But who has ever loved music for its meaninglessness? And in the terms of recent scholarly discourse, who has ever loved music because of what it reveals about the hegemony of Eurocentric white males? The point for “music lovers" is to love the stuff, isn’t it? I first saw Dan Asia from the audience of a graduate-composer concert at the Yale School of Music, as we old-hand students listened to him conduct a piece of his. We decreed it pretty decent work for a new kid; maybe too much like George Crumb, but expertly done. And where did he learn to orchestrate so well? As I was to find out, Dan was generally quiet and unpretentious, but when he stepped onto a podium there was a certain stiffening of the back, an air of confidence. When you got to know him, you found the same confidence hovering beneath the surface all the time. We became friends, talked women and jokes and art. We deplored nearly everybody else’s music, and weren’t so sure about our own either. I was down on the avant-garde; he was silent on the issue. How, we mused for a while, do you write fast music? It’s not the speed of the notes that makes something ritmico; a lot of atonal music is notes all over the place but sounds like featureless sludge. How do you write music that really cooks rhythmically? And so on. Twenty years after our graduate-student debates Dan and I had another long talk, this one beside his swimming pool in Tucson, with his son periodically splashing us. In the wake of a remarkably productive decade for him, this conversation was about Dan and his music. Swafford: When I was coming through school in the ‘60s and ‘70s, we were given to understand that music was an intellectual and technical game. You were supposed to get your theory and your theories in gear, and words like “expression" and “emotion” were verboten. Did you come to Yale with that kind of background? Asia: At Hampshire College, where I went in the early ‘70s, the approach was the opposite. The composers that I got interested in as an undergraduate were people like Lutoslawski, Penderecki, Berio, and Crumb, and we talked about expression all the time.



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Swafford: You went from Hampshire, one of the great touchy-feely colleges, to the venerable Yale School of Music. How did that place strike you? Asia: As quite open. There were several major figures—the late Jacob Druckman was there, and younger guys like Bruce Macombie and Alan Pollock, both of whom I studied with the first year. Swafford: It was a spectrum, all right. With Druckman, music was supposed to come out of your gut and flow onto the page. We had Robert Morris the serialist, Penderecki the tone-cluster-meister, Macombie the neo-Crumbian, and my teacher Dave Mott, who was writing out-there music based on his jazz background. Asia: The students covered a wide perspective too. Chet Biscardi used some serial approaches. Robert Beaser, who studied with Yehudi Wyner, was writing tough music but not in the serial/mathematical camp. In those days you were writing large textural pieces and electronic stuff. Richard Feit was doing Zen pieces. It was an interesting crowd. Swafford: Then you went with Jacob Druckman. Asia: I went with Jacob. I was really nervous, always concerned that I didn’t have enough music to show and everybody would think I was an idiot. Jacob tried to calm me down a little. He wasn’t doctrinaire. He'd look at my music and say, "That's interesting, but that combination of instruments isn’t going to work.” And I’d politely say, “No, I really want to write for this instrumentation,” and he’d say, “Proceed." Even if I was nervous, I was headstrong too. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I wanted to do it no matter what. I look back now and wish I’d decided that there were going to be a certain number of apprenticeship years. Instead I thought, “Oh boy, I’m here at Yale, and I better be writing good pieces." Which put a lot of pressure on me. All the same, I stand by those pieces, such as the String Quartet. Swafford: After Yale you went to New York. What did you have in mind? Going to the big city to find fame and fortune? Asia: Something like that. I didn’t know what a composer’s supposed to do. I’d come from a family of lawyers, who finished law school and got



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a job lawyering. So what does a composer do when you finish school? I decided to go to New York and see what was going on and try and get some work and figure out how to write music. Swafford: You were living with a bunch of Hampshire graduates. I liked to visit your place because it was a hell of a scene. Asia: It was on the upper West Side, a big seven-room apartment with five of us. This was before gentrification. Our street corner was the center for transvestite discussions between one and four o’clock in the morning. There was a very open social life, let’s put it that way. I’d gotten an NEA grant, so I had a year with some money coming in. I went to lots of concerts, and I realized I didn’t like what was going on. New York was actually a pretty parochial scene. It was all what we’d now call uptown music, with uptight performances. Very rationalized, clear, angular, and devoid of emotion. So I decided to start a new music group, which we called Musical Elements, and put on a series of concerts at the Truck and Warehouse Theater. In retrospect, we hit the scene like a bomb. Most groups did three or four concerts a year, but we started with a season of six concerts, from January to May. I figured, what the hell, you let people know you're around. It was something like one concert every three weeks. I was writing program notes, ordering the music, hustling money, scheduling the hall, renting instruments, getting players lined up. And trying to compose in the midst of all this. Musical Elements was a great education. It allowed me to perform music, see what worked and didn’t work. It also allowed me to explore music from all over the world. We did premieres of Berio and Ligeti that we were astonished hadn’t been done in New York. A lot of the stuff we did was first performances. Then the next year I got a grant to go study in Germany. And Bob Beaser came in to Musical Elements as Co-Director; he did the first concert and I came back for the second, and so on. Swafford: When were you at Tanglewood? Asia: It was the summer of ’79. I found it terribly intimidating and didn’t write any music. I worked with Gunther Schuller. He’d look at my pieces and say, “You don’t really hear these pieces; you need to write



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things you really hear." I was taken aback, though in some respects he was right. I was writing very thick, textural music. But I was certainly trying to hear the things. In this milieu every piece had to be great. Gunther believed, or so I thought, that you really did have the great masters looking over your shoulder. Which was enough to stop any young composer from putting a note on the page—at least it did me! At the same time, it was eye-opening to go to BSO rehearsals every day. Swafford: And then, to my considerable amazement, you started writing symphonies. Where did that come from? Asia: I wrote my first symphony in London, when I was there for a two-year stay courtesy of the Guggenheim Foundation and a UK Fulbright Arts Award Fellowship. I was working on a piano piece for Jonathan Shames when I received a commission from the American Composers Orchestra for a piece of about 12 minutes duration. Well, while I was writing the piece for Jonathan, which became Scherzo Sonata, I was already imagining it for orchestra. The piece ended up coming in at about 35 minutes and had a pretty complex structure. I decided to take out a selfcontained unit of two movements and orchestrate the other five. In the meantime I had gotten permission from Francis Thorne, the exec at the ACO, to write a somewhat longer piece. So I orchestrated away and had a great time doing so. When I finished the piece I looked at it and said to myself, gee, it looks like a symphony, might even sound like one—so maybe that is what I should call it! It clocked in at 22 minutes, not exactly the “somewhat longer” that Fran had meant or anticipated. My piece was supposed to be the opener, not the major work in the second half. So the ACO never did perform the piece, but fortunately Seattle and Cincinnati did. Those two movements I extracted became Black Light, which the ACO performed the following year, 1990 I believe, at Carnegie Hall. I wrote the Second Symphony here, commissioned and performed by the Tucson Symphony Orchestra. In the meantime, I had sent the Phoenix Symphony Black Light, and the music director, James Sedares, liked it and said he was going to do it. So then I asked them if they’d like to have a composer-in-residence. The result was that Bright Cheng and I got the last two Meet the Composer positions, he in Seattle and I in Phoenix, just as they were phasing out that ten-year program. Over three years Phoenix played Black Light and all my symphonic music. Part of the Meet the Composer program was to commission pieces, so that was my Third Symphony. Meanwhile I got an NEA grant that year.



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That was supposed to be a fiddle concerto but we couldn’t find a soloist, so I said, too bad, I’m going to write a fourth symphony. So from '88 to ’93 I wrote four symphonies and a Piano Concerto. Swafford: Whew. How do you go about it? Asia: First I want to know what size piece I’m writing. For the first two or three weeks, I contemplate suicide daily. I always wonder if I’m ever going to be able to get a note down again. Often I flip through other things I’ve written to remind myself that I actually managed to write them, so maybe I can do it again. I look for some rhythmic ideas, some pitch ideas that make sense. I always feel that I’m starting brand-new again, although I always end up gravitating to whatever framework I’ve been in for the last year or so. There are always certain motivic, pitch-cell, chordal ideas that have driven my music, even if they’ve metamorphosed over the years. Meanwhile my language over the last ten years has become progressively more tonal. Swafford: For you, is tonality a philosophical thing, or an ear thing, or a clarity thing? My music has become more tonal because of clarity. If you’re tonal you know when you’re departing from someplace and when you’ve arrived at someplace, and that helps to articulate the form. So with me it’s not ideological. Asia: It’s not ideological with me either. Some people say my music is in the neo-tonal camp or the neo-romantic camp. But for me, to say that negates my music of twenty years ago, which I’m unwilling to do. At the same time I've always been interested in the notion of recognition of the musical materials, so the listener has a clear sense of what the piece is about. It’s the old tonal idea of initiating something at the beginning, going on a journey, and arriving—not necessarily back where you started, but arriving someplace. A piece like Sand II, for example, has little to do with a systematic pitch language at all. It has rather to do with a particular kind of sonority that’s established at the very beginning of the piece and comes back at the end of the first movement, and then at the end of the piece. Something as simple as that, to let listeners know where they are. Swafford: You’re not so concerned about how coherence is achieved as long as it is achieved.



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Asia: Exactly. What I was rebelling against was all the music that I felt had no beginning, no end, no middle—you couldn’t tell where it was at any point. Swafford: Were you also trying to write more expressively? Asia: I was looking for that, and I was looking for the ability to control what I was doing better. As you’ve said, I wanted to make things count. There were many things around that were beautiful gestures, but if this or that note wasn’t there it wasn’t important. I want my notes to matter. My gestural language became less flamboyant, so everything the listener heard was clearer. Swafford: A lot of serial music is so intricately and imperceptibly structured that it sounds random: a barrage of notes coming at you, but your ears have no idea where they’re coming from. I call it the “notes from nowhere” syndrome. You and I began to try to make every note count, both as structure and as sonority. Of course, you never get to the end of that effort. Asia: Yes, I wish one could say one does, but really you never do make them all count. And you don’t necessarily want to tell people too much about where the mistakes are in your pieces. Swafford: Because they might not notice! Asia: Right. That's part of the enterprise. We write in bits and pieces, but the job is to put it together so it sounds unified and inevitable. Swafford: The continuity in your music is especially strong. You told me once that you tend to compose bits that you only think of putting into form later. Asia: I start with ideas that I put in the middle of the page, and then I write spokes of variations out from that hub. And from those varied motives I eventually discover how to work with the material that I think is the strongest. I write down lots of ideas, then look at them at the end of the day and say, that’s a good idea, this one stinks, that one doesn’t belong in this piece, and so on. Then I work with the ones that have the most potential for growth. Swafford: I used to think that a piece had a kind of Platonic existence—it was already out there and you just had to find it. But now I



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see composing as almost the opposite: making something solid and tangible out of what’s profoundly not there. We have the sounds and natures of instruments, we have traditions to guide us, we have our own style and technique. But the point of feeling like shooting yourself is when the piece still feels like nothing. For me it’s a painful struggle to make nothing start seeming like something. In your process of composing do you reach a certain density of ideas, when they start joining together? Asia: Exactly. Once I've worked with all the material and have accumulated a sheaf of pages, I look at the material more and more and it almost takes on a life of its own; the ideas swirl around until I begin to understand the logical continuity, the flow. Swafford: Do you have a story or an emotional idea in the background? Asia: Rarely, except when there’s a text. Or in a piece like the Piano Trio, which was an elegy for somebody. I knew it was going to be a slow, mournful movement, and I'd use the musical letters of her name. But I don’t think in programmatic ideas very often. Swafford: Me neither. If you’re sensitive to the language of music, you don’t need words. You respond to what the sounds feel like. Yet it's been a century when all kinds of artists have tried to explain and justify what they do in prose. Asia: I'm not happy about that. I don’t mind talking about music in general, but I don’t like talking about the artistic process. I’m not sure what it gets anybody, except that they're curious about how an artist functions. They’re always asking, “How do you write music?” as if it’s some terribly complicated, esoteric language. Swafford: For most people it is! Asia: That’s right. But for composers, even though it is fraught with difficulties, and we’re amazed that we do it too, there is certainly some analogy between music and prose language, where you learn letters and words and how to string them together. Swafford: But there’s no common musical language anymore. Every composer has to invent his own language. Asia: That’s a great difficulty for us.



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Swafford: How did the Piano Concerto come about? Asia: The pianist Andre-Michel Schub had been a regular and very popular guest with the Phoenix Symphony, and the orchestra decided to commission a piece for him. I came on soon after as composer-inresidence, but they weren’t talking about me to write the piece. And Andre, bless his soul, said, “You have a composer-in-residence and I should at least look at his music before I extend the net further.” So I sent him stuff and he said, “Wow, I like this, let's do it!" We got a Meet the Composer commission and I began working on it in January ’94, and finished it in October. It was shortly after my mother’s death, and I was trying to come to grips with that. So I started with the middle movement, which is long and slow, and composed it the way we just talked about. Really I had no idea what I was doing with the material. I was trying to figure out concerto form. Swafford: I suspect you’ve never had as a starting point traditional structural outlines, like classical concerto form. Asia: Correct. Nor had I ever written for a soloist and orchestra, other than in a song cycle where you're weaving the voice into the orchestra. And that was the tack I took with this concerto. One of the problems with the classical approach is that the soloist comes out, the piece starts, and except for the Beethoven Fourth, the soloist just sits there. He wipes his hands, listens, turns and nods to the first violinist while he's playing, stares out in the audience, looks at the instrument to make sure no strings have broken, and five or six minutes later he finally gets to play. Swafford: That sounds like something our Yale teacher Jacob Druckman would say. He made his students so aware of performance as a kind of theater. Asia: Right, it’s drama somehow. So in my concerto I concluded that I wouldn’t take a Romantic stance for the majority of it: soloist and orchestra as opponents in this grand struggle. Rather, the pianist would be playing most of the time, and the orchestra would provide commentary and support. That’s especially true in the second movement, which is a large, ruminative piece that goes through various stations, connected by their emotional content, and by certain ideas that you recognize only in retrospect. In general, I think the emotional center of my pieces over the



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last few years is in the slow movements. I guess I believe, with Mahler, that it's in slow music where truth most deeply resides. After writing the second movement I did the two outer movements, trying to balance this large inner movement. I thought that was about 3032 minutes long, but it ended up about 36 minutes. I’m pleased with the structure. The first movement is ebullient and straightforward, the second much more ruminative. The third movement takes the rhythmic vitality of the first with the harmonic vocabulary of the second, and melds those two together. So the third movement has the rhythmic vitality of the first, but the pitch material has some of the angularity and the tension of the second. Swafford: Interesting idea, to unify the rhythmic quality of one thing with the harmonic quality of another. That’s not a traditional kind of unity. Asia: Besides Stravinsky being an early influence on me, I’d also cite Bartók. In the Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta, the opening movement is chromatic, then the main theme comes back in the last movement in a modal framework. Mine goes the other way in some respects: it starts off bright and light, and ends up darker towards the end. Which some have criticized, by the way. Swafford: As too much of a downer? Asia: No, as too complicated, somehow too sophisticated for the closing gesture of the piece. Swafford: The last movements of concertos are traditionally the brightest and most ritmico. Asia: For me, the main repeated rhythmic section in the last movement provided that. But between those rondo reiterations are a set of variations, which are tonally more gnarly. Swafford: The rondo is a standard form for the last movement of a concerto. Have I caught you thinking in traditional forms? Asia: I wasn’t, but that’s the way it turned out. Swafford: Something that strikes me in a lot of your work is a sense of timbral development. An idea that not only undergoes the usual pitch and dramatic development but also a development in tone color. Are you conscious of that?



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Asia: I am. It’s definitely true in the Second Symphony, and some in the Concerto too. As I’ve gotten older I want to work with the material more and see where it goes, how it wants to move. And part of that is taking it through timbral variations. One can present something in a light framework or a dense framework, or a bright sonority or a dark sonority, and that in itself gives a different emotional content to the music. And I’m willing to make those kinds of repetitions more baldly and clearly than I was before. When we were growing up we were imbued with this sense of continuous variation; you had to keep moving. Now I'm much more content to say, screw it, I’m going to repeat something so you can really get to know it. But I don't want to repeat it verbatim. I don’t think any composer wants to do that. Swafford: The Minimalists sure do! Asia: Well, you’re right. But if you look at Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven, you realize that in the recapitulation section they didn’t just hit “copy” on their computer, they reworked the stuff. Swafford: How do you relate to Minimalism? It's sort of classic now, been around for over thirty years. Asia: When I was at Hampshire College I conducted a program where I did Music for Pieces of Wood by Steve Reich. Later Philip Glass came to Yale and I hung out with him while he did a concert of his music. We talked and he said, “Why don’t you come and do Einstein on the Beach with me? I need some people to sing, and we’re going to go on tour.” And I said, “Well, it’s a nice idea, but I’m in school and I’m doing my own things. So I could’ve gone with Einstein to Avignon. I think there’s interesting stuff in Einstein. And I heard Reich’s Music for Eighteen Musicians, which I consider one of his best, at its premiere in a loft in New York. There were maybe 200 people there, and he was scared to death, and the players didn’t know what they were doing. But I thought, wow, this is a great piece. Having said all that, am I interested in minimal music? No. By and large I find it dull and repetitive; it moves too slowly, and the changes aren't significant enough to be interesting. At the same time, I did learn from that music that one could repeat material more than I was taught to. Swafford: But you like John Adams. Do you consider him a Minimalist, a Postminimalist, or what?



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Asia: I regard him as a maximal Minimalist—somebody who put that language into a medium so colorful that it explodes the boundaries of Minimalism. I admire his ability with the orchestra and his sense of largescale form. Swafford: Let’s talk some about whys and wherefores. You’re one of the few artistic friends I’ve had all these years who is actively religious. How does that inflect your music? It seems to me that religion is always part of your music, even though they only occasionally connect overtly. Asia: I was raised in a Reform household that was very involved in the Jewish community and synagogue. But I became much more religious on going to New York and joining the Jewish community on the upper West Side. I think what’s happened along the way is that I’ve become more interested in the notion of what is at the center of Judaism, which is how we imbue the world with holiness. And it’s become clearer to me that my view of music always was moving in that direction, without my realizing it. I’m not talking about religious or non-religious music, but the idea that the musical experience leads us to something deeper. As a composer I’ve begun to realize that music is such an imponderable and indefinable entity, and that's part of what I love about it. What drew me to it, in part, was that it was not something that you could quantify, the way you can verbalize visual imagery. Music is somehow able to transcend that, and take us to someplace different. Judaism talks about sacred time. For me over the years, music has become an extension of that sense of sacred space and time. Now, music is more than time, but it moves through time. And we make time more meaningful when we listen to music. It’s an ephemeral experience that can lead us to a deeper understanding of ourselves, and of the world. I know you’ve had the experience I have; when you compose and you realize you’re in the music, it’s telling you what comes next. I view that now as a sacred experience, something transcendent. I think also my music has become somewhat more traditional because I’m willing to view myself within a historical context. As younger composers we were taught that Music starts with us! Like Boulez said, Schoenberg is dead! There’s nothing there for us to learn. We’re forging on our own. Swafford: In all the arts there were thousands of petit-revolutionaries proclaiming a new this and a new that. I realized at a certain point that the idea of infinite revolution was disastrous. To deny tradition is to deny



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something essential to us as human beings. Which doesn’t mean that you prostrate yourself before tradition. You make it fresh, make it your own. Asia: Right. You acknowledge it as your past. Swafford: You and I are part of a generation who came to feel that rabid revolutionism couldn’t go on forever. So you began writing symphonies, and I more generally was determined to write expressive and lyrical and coherent music—something that respected the audience without pandering to them. How do you relate to the audience, when there’s such a barrier now between us and them? Asia: There are so many different kinds of audiences now. That’s part of our difficulty. What I ask for in regard to my music is that people come with an unbiased position and open ears, and listen not only attentively but actively. My hope is that my music provides enough guideposts along the way that any active listener can understand it. At the same time I also feel that any good music doesn’t reveal all its secrets at the first hearing. Pop music does that, and sometimes Minimalism. But the best classical music provides a richness of experience, so that every time you come back to it you hear something different. Swafford: Would you rather be politely applauded or noisily booed? Asia: I’d rather be booed! I’d hope that my music has a strong enough profile that it makes somebody stand up and take note, good or bad. Swafford: But audiences now are used to just taking it in. If it grabs them that’s nice, and if it doesn’t they groan and forget about it. They don’t climb over the seats and slug each other, like they used to do in Paris and Vienna. And the reason music lovers got into fights was that they cared deeply about music and its future. If they hated a new piece, they wanted to kill it. Asia: Music meant something to them. Now we’re in an unfortunate situation where classical music is viewed as one of many entertainments, on the same level as a basketball game or a Broadway show or the Stones. You respond to a symphony the same way. Swafford: Some people would say that’s all classical music should aspire to be, just one more entertainment in pop culture. You and I don’t buy that attitude. So what’s the way out of it?



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Asia: To hope that sooner or later people realize that their brains, which are connected to their ears, provide the best way of giving them some intimate connection again to the world they live in. So they’ll seek out quality artistic experience whether it’s through the theater or symphony concerts or museums, and they’ll realize that for them to gain something from it, they have to put something on the line. That means being willing to make an emotional connection to what they’re seeing or hearing. Viktor Frankl said that man’s driving force is a search for meaning. It's my contention that this is the driving force of most composers, and most good music. To give one’s life coherence through the creation of a musical object is the composer's task. This goes back to religion. There are sacred moments and profane moments. In Judaism the Sabbath is great, but it’s also great when it’s over, because then you can go swimming or watch a football game. You can’t live in sacred time all the time, but you recognize its ultimate importance. That’s why you go to the theater and to the symphony, because you want to be in a place where something means more. You work at it because you want to absorb it and confront it, and not be passive and let it flow past you. It matters a great deal to you and me that we write music, just like it mattered to Bach and Mozart and Stravinsky. But nothing happens until it matters to somebody else. Swafford: Those ideas have given you some joyful allegros and beautiful adagios, my friend. So, you want to go swimming? Asia: Let’s do it!



CONTRIBUTORS

Daniel Asia is a composer and Professor of Composition at The University of Arizona School of Music. His work has won many national and international awards, and he has always maintained an interest in Jewish history, music, philosophy, and liturgy. Asia’s Amichai Songs was written in honor of Israel’s 65th birthday. Christopher Booth, PhD candidate, studied piano performance as an undergraduate and later earned an MA in Music Theory at The State University of New York, Potsdam. He is currently completing the coursework phase of the PhD Musicology degree at The Catholic University of America in Washington DC. His primary research interests are hermeneutics, narratology, and opera/film studies. Alexander Dunkel, PhD, is a Professor of Russian at The University of Arizona. His courses on Russian language, literature, and culture vary from undergraduate general education offerings, conducted in English, to graduate seminars, conducted in Russian. He has also served as an interpreter for the US Department of State, interpreting for educational, scientific, and cultural luminaries such as Dmitri Shostakovich, whom he accompanied on his last visit to the United States in 1973. Janet Sturman, PhD, is Professor of Music and Ethnomusicology at The University of Arizona School of Music, where she has taught since 1995. Her research focuses on the relationships among music, politics, ethnicity, and social class. While her recent work focuses on music in Latin America and the Southwestern United States, she still has broad interests in international music practice and personal connections to the local Jewish community. Jan Swafford, DMA, teaches Composition, Theory, and History at The Boston Conservatory. Also a journalist and writer, Swafford has published articles in many periodicals. His books include The Vintage Guide to Classical Music and the biography, Charles Ives: A Life with Music, which has been nominated for a National Book Critics Circle award.

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Contributors

Alexander Tentser, DMA, began studying piano at the age of four with his father in Kiev, Ukraine. He attended the Gnessin Music College and the Russian Gnessin Music Academy in Moscow, and he graduated from The University of Arizona with a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Piano Performance. His dissertation is entitled Second Piano Sonata by Dmitri Shostakovich: A Style Analysis. He is a faculty member at Pima Community College in Tucson, Arizona, and directs the Pima Community College Orchestra. Aryeh Tepper, PhD, is a senior writer for Jewish Ideas Daily. His essays and articles have appeared in The Literary Review, Forward, Jerusalem Post, Akdamot, and Makor Rishon. Tepper has written extensively about music, and he is a co-curator for the New Jerusalem Orchestra’s monthlong program at the National Jazz Museum in Harlem. His book, Theories of Progress in Leo Strauss’s Later Writings on Maimonides, is forthcoming from SUNY Press.