Program Notes

Salamone Rossi, Mizmõr l’tõda (Psalm 100)

Shir hamma’a lot (Psalm 128)

The first half of this afternoon’s program opens with two Hebrew psalm settings from Hashirim asher li’Sh’lomo (The Songs of Solomon), by Salamone Rossi. Rossi personified a brief flowering of Renaissance Jewish choral polyphony in Mantua. As his editor said, “A rainbow has appeared in our days in this man of knowledge who has written and engraved these songs of praise.”

At the turn of the century, singer, violinist and composer Rossi was a leading musical figure in the court of Vincenzo Gonzaga, the Duke of Mantua. His colleagues included Monteverdi, Gastoldi, and Wert. Rossi published five books of madrigals, dance music, chamber music, as well as theatrical music for the Università Israeliticia, a popular Jewish theatre group. A musical innovator, Rossi was the first composer to publish madrigals with instrumental accompaniment, and is credited as being one of the creators of trio sonata form.

In 1606, Rossi was granted a Ducal exemption from having to wear the yellow star that all other Jews were forced to wear. In 1612, the Duke created a barricaded ghetto and herded Rossi’s whole congregation into it. The forced isolation cut off Rossi and other Jewish musicians from participation in the “Nuove Musiche” (New Music) that they had helped create. They turned to the Synagogue for new forms of expression, but were hampered by strict prohibitions against polyphony and instruments. Rossi’s editor Leone da Modena was part of a new wave of liberal Rabbis who were able to argue successfully for the inclusion of polyphony in music written for high holidays and joyous occasions such as weddings.

It was in this context that Rossi published his Songs of Solomon, in 1623, a collection of 33 psalms, hymns and other liturgical poems set for three to eight voices. The title is a pun – none of the texts have anything to do with the actual “Song of Songs.” Rossi’s psalm settings are a capella, and largely homophonic, with only restrained use of imitation. But within those constraints, they are incredibly expressive. Harmonically they have more in common with the court and theatre music Rossi had been writing than the traditional melodies and modes of the cantors.

Seven years later, the Hapsburg emperor Ferdinand sacked Mantua and ordered the destruction of the ghetto. It is not known if Rossi was killed in the slaughter or by the Plague that followed. Because he had published, his music survived, to be discovered 200 years later by Baron de Rothschild.

Listen to Mizmõr l’tõda (Psalm 100) and you can still hear the upper voices “singing before the Lord” in exuberant bird-like runs, the lower voices coming through the gates with calls of praise, and generation upon generation of the faithful evoked in the closing cascades of entrances. Shir hamma’a lot (Psalm 128) unfolds in long arcing lines that sing of peace with many children dancing around the table (in a lively triple meter). In the repeated murmurs, “Shalom, shalom ‘al Yisrael” (Peace be upon Israel), there are echoes of the voices of the Synagogue turning to greet each other with prayers for peace.

-- Yoshi Campbell, Program Annotator

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Patricia Van Ness, Psalm 31 (In You Have I Taken Refuge)

Several years ago I began a long-term project entitled Music for the Psalms, a work involving composing an anthem for each of the 150 passionate prayers in the Book of Psalms.  The most important reason for doing so was my desire to discover and express my own interpretation of what I have long felt is the book’s often difficult language.

I was aided in coming to a new understanding of the language when I attended a conference given by the author

Kathleen Norris entitled “Too Close for Comfort?  Living with the Psalms and Ourselves,”  New ideas emerged: the Psalms are not about the divine, but about the poets’ notions of the divine; and, according to the Psalmists, vengeance is God’s, not ours; therefore, the Psalms become a safe forum in which to express negative emotions without actually committing violence, all within a prayer.

Most importantly, I learned that the Psalms may be understood in both a modern and historic context.  Norris suggested that, in the modern, if I interpret the enemy as internal rather than external, the enemy might become those things within me that cause me to fret, to lose patience with myself.

Psalm 31 (In You Have I Taken Refuge) reflects this interpretation of the enemy as internal.  The words “In you, O God,” becomes the divine within; “Deliver me in your righteousness” requests an end to useless self-blame. This Psalm therefore becomes for me a prayer of, and for, self-forgiveness.  The text continues, “Into your hands I commend my spirit.” I set these words in a polyphony to express the emotional turning over, relaxing and letting go of inner turmoil within the love of the inner divine.

My thanks are extended to  David Hodgkins and Coro Allegro for their beautiful work and mission.

-- Patricia Van Ness, Composer

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Aaron Rosenthal, Voices of Terezin

It is always difficult to converse about atrocities committed against adults; but more disturbing still is to speak of them in reference to children. Voices of Terezín by Aaron Rosenthal is an unsettling musical portrait of life in the Jewish detention camp Theresienstadt during World War II as seen through the eyes of four young inhabitants. Propounded in Nazi film propaganda as “The Führer’s gift to the Jews,” Terezín contained a high proportion of artists, painters, and scholars, and the arts were allowed to flourish. Terezín was then showcased to the world as a “model” camp. In reality, like other concentration camps, conditions in Terezín were horrible; with more than 58,000 people crammed at a time into a ghetto that originally accommodated 7,000. Starvation, disease and death were rampant. And of the 15,000 children that passed through Theresienstadt to be transported to death camps in the East between the years 1942-44, some estimate that only 132 survived.

The texts for the three movements of Voices of Terezin are taken from …I never saw another butterfly… a compilation of children’s poems and drawing from the Terezin ghetto, whose poignancy pierces the soul. In the movement, To Olga (poem by Aléna Munková), a sense of uneasy yearning is created with sound punctuated by open fifths in different octaves. We savor the dream of freedom in the text “Oh, how sweet the name Morocco” (a country which provided safe passage for some European Jews during the war) and are haunted by the final line, “Listen! Now…it’s…time.”  The second piece which is heavily influenced by Klezmer music is whimsical bordering on maniacal. The Little Mouse (words by Koleba Kosek and Löwy Bachner), is a metaphor about a mouse, bothered by a flea that is finally caught and cooked for lunch, with the mouse representing the Germans and the flea symbolizing the Jews. The last movement is a setting of probably the most famous poem from the collection, The Butterfly by Pavel Friedman. The poem alludes to finding beauty in dandelions and chestnut branches. But the final three lines speak directly to the anguish, desolation, and bitterness of existence in Theresienstadt.

Voices of Terezin was the First Prize winner of the 1998 Greater Boston Choral Consortium Composition Competition, which is co-sponsored by GBCC and Frank Warren Music Service.

-- David Hodgkins, Artistic Director

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Claude Debussy, Noël des enfants qui n'ont plus de maison

Composed in the bleak December of 1915 during World War I, Claude Debussy's Noël des enfants qui n'ont plus de maison (Carol for Homeless Children) blends elements of Christmas carol and protest song with art song. It sings of the despair of children left homeless and orphaned by war and of anger at the invading forces. As an 8-year-old boy, Debussy himself had had to flee Paris with his mother to escape the Franco-Prussian war. In 1915, as an adult, Debussy was forced to relocate his wife and daughter several times to avoid the fighting, moves he could ill afford as he struggled with cancer. For this, his last song, written on the eve of an operation, Debussy wrote the text himself, in the voices of children displaced and scarred by the horrors of war.

Yair Rosenblum (Yaakov Rotblit), Shir Lashalom (A Song for Peace)

On November 4, 1995 Yitzhak Rabin, the prime minister of Israel, was assassinated by an Israeli extremist. Just minutes before these three bullets changed Israel’s history forever, Rabin sang Shir Lashalom at the closure of a peace rally in Tel Aviv, along with a crowd of supporters. After the murder, the song’s lyrics were found, stained in blood, in Rabin’s pocket.

This song has become a symbol for peace and hope and was used in peace rallies and ceremonies in Israel. In honor of the twentieth anniversary of this tragic event, I decided to arrange this song for the Boston City Singers choir directed by Jane Money. The choir’s percussion ensemble, directed by Kimani Lumsden, gives this arrangement a Latin flavor.

-- Tal Zilber, Arranger

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Srul Irving Glick, Psalm Trilogy

Srul Irving Glick contributed much to the musical life of Canada. He wrote hundreds of vocal works for use in the synagogue, and many with a strong message of peace. Commissioned for the Toronto Children’s Chorus and Jean Ashworth Bartle, Psalm Trilogy for treble chorus and piano or string orchestra consists of Psalm 92: Mizmor Shir L’yom Hashabbat, Psalm 47: Lam’natzeiach Livnei Korach Mizmor, and Psalm 23: The Lord is My Shepherd.

[Psalm 92 (“How good it is to give thanks to you, O Lord”) opens with seven sopranos (who symbolize the seven days of creation) in unison, answered by the rest of the choir. Psalm 47, marked “Joyous, with rhythmic vitality” is the most ambitious of the three. The Hebrew text is about singing to God with joy. Psalm 23 (“The Lord is my Shepherd”) is slow and stately in two parts; a simple and moving melody in C minor with some beautiful moments of expression and word stress. Other than two words at the beginning in Hebrew, this is the only movement of the three that is sung entirely in English.

 “I proceeded to compile a libretto based on the psalms of David (Psalm 92, Psalm 47, and Psalm 23) using both Hebrew and English in the text. Shortly after that, I composed the music for what was later to become the Psalm Trilogy. Being a religious and spiritually-oriented person, setting the Psalms has always been a special joy for me. In fact, because of the spiritual nature of this work, I also decided to dedicate it, with love, to my mother of blessed memory, Ida (Chaika) Glick, who was born in Benderi, Bessarabia on August 25, 1901 and died in Toronto on January 15, 1997.” --Srul Irving Glick

-- Elektra Women’s Choir, Canada

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Wehi Whanua, Te Iwi E 

Maori songs (waiata) are 'owned' by the elders or tribes who 'composed' them. As with many colonized indigenous people, the Maori are protective of their cultural icons so that they not be exploited by other cultures. This is an aural tradition, without any written notation, and harmonies would be improvised. Each family (whanau) has signature harmonies they add to a given melody.

This powerful song of welcome echoes the women's karanga(an exchange of calls that takes place during the time a visiting group moves onto a marae or into a formal meeting area). It draws hosts and visitors together through a shared memory of loved ones who have been lost from the land, both by war and migration. While showing grief, the singers also express earth-shaking pride in the achievements of those who went away to the war, and later, those who have found a new way of life in the city. 

-- Jane Money, Boston City Singers Artistic Director

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Howard Frazin, The Voice of Isaac

“I am eight maybe nine years old, kids flicking spitballs at each other in Saturday School at Temple Sholom in Chicago; an adult up in front of class telling us the story of Abraham and Isaac, how God tests Abraham with the sacrifice of Isaac: and I am confused, troubled, worried. What about Isaac? I wonder in my head, but am too angry to give voice to my thoughts. How can this adult teacher relate this horrible trauma of Isaac’s near death at his own parent’s hands to a room full of young children and so blatantly gloss over the child’s view of the story?

Perhaps more disturbing, though, is that I am not really surprised. How often, in all too many families we know (perhaps even our own), are children sacrificed to the narcissistic needs and destructive impulses of their own parents, and how consistently do the adults around them (not just their parents), either for shame or ignorance, look in another direction, a child’s story left untold or consciously denied. Back in religious school I wished there could have been someone in that classroom to stand up and give voice to Isaac. Instead we fidgeted uncomfortably at our desks and waited embarrassed (at our own silence? or at our teacher’s overly confident voice?) until the bell rang for the end of class.

In 2003 while listening to the children of PALS Children’s Chorus who commissioned the original version, I was reminded of the echo of my own young voice from another time when I was a kid, a littler human being: the sound of that voice has never completely left me, even as an adult—its vulnerability, its awkward truthfulness, its wonder at all that is good and bad in the world. And I remembered that day when I had wished someone could have stood up and given voice to Isaac. It was also in 2003, when what seemed an endless wave of child abuse allegations broke forth from behind a wall of silence in the Church, while at the same time young adolescents were blowing themselves up in the Middle East—children being sacrificed, quite literally, to an adult god. And I thought back then that perhaps now is a good time to listen to the voices of children, to retell their (our) stories, with the hope of hearing the distant echoes of our own histories and futures. 13 years later, I still believe it is a good time to listen, and retell, and reflect on Isaac's story.

Originally The Voice of Isaac featured only children’s voices – a children’s choir and child soloists -- singing the role of Isaac. In this new version, Isaac is sung by an adult choir of women’s and men’s voices in combination with a children’s choir and child soloist. These expanded forces have allowed me to more fully realize the various expressive layers of vulnerability at the heart of Isaac’s story.

Thanks to Jody Simpson, PALS founder and former director, and the children of PALS 2003 whose voices served as the inspiration for this oratorio. Thanks to David Hodgkins and Coro Allegro for the opportunity to create this revised ISAAC. And a continued special thanks to Larry Smith who first brought Jody and I together many years ago and without whose encouragement and unflinching faith in the project I don’t know that I would have had the gumption to speak for Isaac; this work is in part dedicated to you."

-- Howard Frazin, Composer

Program notes © 2016. These notes are published here for patrons of Coro Allegro and other interested readers.  It is permissible to use short excerpts for reviews.  For permission to copy, publish or make other use of these notes, please contact the author and make a donation to Coro Allegro