Music From BABEL

MEDLEY OF SONGS from BABEL, the MUSICAL by Harris Shilakowsky

Introduction from "What Is...A Man?", "The Shinar Oratorio", O Great Hunter
"Just Another Little Drink...of Wine", "What Is ...A Man?", "Six Feet Under"
"Not A Tender Word", "Give It Back", "I Give My Love", "Shminoy Pink Tooty"

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1. Oriental communities in Yemen, Iraq, Persia, Kurdistan, India and Ethiopia
2. Mediterranean Sephardic in Spain, Morocco, Tunis, Egypt, Turkey, Greece, the Balkans, Italy, and to some extent Holland, England, and USA
3. Ashkenazic communities in Eastern & Western Europe.

The inhibitions bred by living in ghettos discouraged the development of vigorous songs about animals, war, labour, drinking, or hunting that other folk music traditions have. The Jewish folk dances & music of the past were modeled primarily on a life based economically on small trade and on artisanship in individual craft industry. There was no Jewish peasant class nor any substantial form of outdoor labor. Instead, Jewish folksongs were mostly limited to the semi-religious & ceremonial with a preference for philosophical, ethical, or mystical meditations based on poetical passages from the Bible & the domestic & social songs dealing with life, problems...intellectual, satirical and sometimes naive analysis of events of daily life + songs of love, lullabies, and a few labour & epic historical songs
These are the traditional influences on composers of Jewish music.
Until the Jewish national school of music was founded in Russia in 1908, there was no classical Jewish school of composition until composers like Ernest Bloch created a characteristic Hebrew music using Jewish folksongs collected from eastern European countries. They tried to create a Hebrew style distinct from the folk style of the Jewish national composers of Eastern Europe and from Synagogal music. Ernest Bloch set out to recapture in his music the spirit of the Bible, the Psalms and the Prophets. Bloch doesn't quote Synagogal or folk-music elements, but Oriental traits abound in his compositions. Among Bloch's disciples (Jewish and non Jewish) are Roger Sessions, Douglas Moore, Bernard Rogers, Randall Thompson, Frederick Jacoby, Quincy Porter, Isadore Freed, Mark Brunswick and George Antheil; Some wrote "Hebrew" works, but Bloch's Hebraic style influenced most of their general music.
ISRAELI composers in the 1940's such as Avidom and Lavry talked of a "Mediterranean" style, attempting to incorporate in their works a 'Near Eastern-pastoral-Mediterranean atmosphere". A new influence; "challutznikim"- the pioneers who brought water to the deserts and turned them into fertile areas, and who did hard physical work, like farming, stone cutting & road-building, inspired more powerful physical working-music. This, combined with the Eastern influences of the Muslim/Arabic inhabitants of the lands, created a new hybrid Israeli music.
THE COMPOSERS
MENAHEM AVIDOM (b. 1908) (originally known as; Mahler-Kalkstein)
The music of Menahem Avidom has the textural lucidity, lightness, life & colour & oriental atmosphere of the "Eastern-Mediterranean School" of Israeli composers.
The Concertino for violin & piano was composed in 1951. It was written for Jascha Heifetz, who gave the 1st performance in Jerusalem in April 1953.
MAX BRUCH (1838-1920) b. Cologne, studied in Bonn, & Frankfurt with Ferdinand Hiller & Karl Reinecke. Gained recognition as a composer at a young age. He held many positions in Germany & England, then in 1883 produced his oratorio, Arminius, in Boston. Bruch was not Jewish, but wrote at least two pieces which seemed to draw upon Jewish influences. The most well known is the Kol Nidrei variations for cello. The G minor Violin Concerto, from which the Adagio is excerpted in this performance, begins in quiet meditation, and builds with passionate, almost religious crescendi. It evokes an image of passionate fervour in my mind.
ERNEST BLOCH (1880-1989): Born in Switzerland, was professor of composition at Geneva Conservatory 1911-5. In 1917, he settled in the U.SA. A strong Hebrew idiom is evident in much of Bloch's music. His works include the operas Macbeth and Jezebel, chamber music, symphonic poems, symphonies, concertos, the Shelomoh Rhapsody for cello and orchestra and a setting of the Sabbath service.
MARC LAVRY is one of the Israeli composers in the "Eastern-Mediterranean School". He was born in Riga, Latvia, moved to Leipzig, then in 1935 emigrated to Palestine.
HARRIS SHILAKOWSKY (b.1955) Boston, Massachusetts incorporates influences from his Hebraic background plus all the composers he has performed as an instrumentalist, including John Williams, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Leonard Bernstein and many others. In BABEL, he learned about the rhythms of the belly-dancers from violinist, Jane Hemenway, and included other popular styles, such as dixieland, reggae, pop, and rhythm & blues, to represent musically the babel of languages which created the disaster of misunderstandings between people which led to the downfall of the great 'tower to God'.

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"...Judaism is something more than a badge, something more than a birth-mark; it is a life. To be born a Jew does not declare any of us to be of the elect; it only designates us for enrollment among the elect. God signs the covenants, but we have to seal it- to seal it by a life of service..."
MORRIS JOSEPH

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