Music From BABEL
Recital of 'Jewish Classical Music' for violin & piano
Performed
by HARRIS SHILAKOWSKY, violinist
with ELLA LOU WEILER, pianist
recorded live at the Newton Free
Library
Thursday, July 16, 1998 7:30 PM
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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HARRIS
SHILAKOWSKY, violinist & music director of the Bristol Chamber Orchestra,
has appeared as violin soloist with the New Orleans, Omaha and Charleston, New
England Conservatory and Grand Rapids Symphony Orchestras, and in live recitals
on NPR Stations in Boston, Omaha and Nashville. He performs with many
organizations, including the Boston Lyric Opera, Boston Pops Orchestra &
Pro Arté Chamber Orchestra, and has played with the Boston Ballet, American
Symphony, Boston, Chautauqua and Nashville Symphonies, the Buffalo
Philharmonic, and Handel-Haydn Society of Boston. In 1994, Mr. Shilakowsky was
a guest leader of the London Symphony Orchestra.
Shilakowsky earned his Bachelor of Music cum laudé from New England
Conservatory of Music and a Master's Degree from Yale University. His teachers
include Boston Symphony concertmaster Joseph Silverstein, Tokyo Quartet's
Koichiro Harada, Nancy Cirillo, Leo Panasevich, David Cerone, Vali Bluttner,
Yair Kless, Joseph Gingold, Louis Krasner, Rudolph Kolisch, Eugene Lehner,
& Oscar Shumsky.
Shilakowsky is also a playwright. His musical, BABEL is derived from the
Biblical story of the Tower of Babel. He wrote a violin concerto, chamber music
and is creating new arrangements of Jewish songs.
ELLA LOU WEILER is an active free-lance pianist, and a principal violist and
quartet player in the Boston area. She has performed extensively in Switzerland
and Germany.
ABOUT JEWISH MUSIC
After the destruction of the second
Temple in 70 AD, the Jews were dispersed throughout the world, where we were
influenced by several local, ethnic traditions;
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'.
More about Shilakowsky
"...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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