For this week I thought I'd choose a piece of classical music that includes a narration -- something along the lines of Aaron Copland's "Lincoln Portrait" or Benjamin Britten's "The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra."
Of course, all of the works that I know that include a narration are ones I've heard before, so to find something to listen to, I ran a Google-search on "classical music pieces with a narration." I found what I assume is a fairly comprehensive list on Wikipedia, HERE. I clicked on several pieces on the list to find out more about them, and I ultimately chose Leonard Bernstein's Symphony No. 3 because he dedicated the piece to the memory of John F. Kennedy who was assassinated in 1963, the year Bernstein wrote the work. I knew that Bernstein had been commissioned to compose a work by Jacqueline Kennedy, and that piece, "MASS: A Theatre Piece for Singers, Players, and Dancers," premiered in 1971 as part of the opening of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC. I have heard Bernstein's MASS, and I thought it would be interesting to hear the work he dedicated to the slain president -- and so I landed on Bernstein's Symphony No. 3, "Kaddish," as this week's selection. Of course, my first thought was, "What's a Kaddish?" and the Wikipedia article on the work, HERE, filled me in: "Kaddish is the Jewish prayer that is chanted at every synagogue service for the dead but never mentions 'death.'" The article also warned -- er, prepared -- me for what I was about to hear, Bernstein's "Kaddish" is a work written "for a large orchestra, a full choir, a boys' choir, a soprano soloist and a narrator." Oy! At this point I had listened to the work once, and in many ways it is similar to MASS, and my initial response -- principally related to the religious nature of the work -- was, "Ohhh boy. I think I've bitten off more than I can chew." The symphony is structured as follows: I. Invocation: Kaddish 1 II. Din-Torah: Kaddish 2 III. Scherzo: Kaddish 3; Finale: Fugue Tutti Kaddish 1, 2, and 3? Is there a singular Kaddish (a la "The Lord's Prayer") or are there multiple Kaddishes? Does one write his or her own Kaddish to read at a memorial service? I found more information at LeonardBernstein.com, HERE, but that added to my confusion. The Bernstein-dot-com article upheld the Wikipedia info about a Kaddish with, "strangely enough, there is not a single mention of death in the entire prayer." However, the lines read by the narrator in the opening movement, "Kaddish 1," include the following: * That refuses death, that insists on You, * With his new-found fire, avid for death, * Voluptuous, complete and final death. Hmm. I thought the prayer did not mention "death"? Is the Kaddish what the narrator is reading? Or is the Kaddish in the opening movement entirely different -- maybe the part sung by the soprano? I ran a search on Kaddish, and landed on this article, HERE. It provides the text of the Kaddish HERE, and sure enough, it does not mention the word "death." I'll admit -- I was very confused by the structure and narration of this symphony. Is this the Kaddish? Or is this Kaddish-like? I'll admit, too, that I can be a bit anal at times, so this was driving me crazy. When it comes to the Kaddish, I know bupkis (I found "bupkis" HERE). What could I do? Truthfully, the only thing I could do was to turn to my very dear friend, my Tony-winning friend, who is my adviser on all-things Jewish. I'm not making this up -- she really is my very dear friend (oh -- I didn't make up that "Tony-winning" accolade either -- that really is true). Alas, when it comes to matters of the church -- or in this case, the synagogue -- it turns out that her level of religiosity matches that of mine when it comes to the Christian faith. We'd have been better off discussing the differences between a state function and a path function tied to the mathematical differences between exact and inexact differentials -- if you know what I mean. Oh, my dear friend did help. She turned to a friend of hers and confirmed that the Kaddish is like a requiem, and that it is, indeed, a specific prayer. She also filled me in on a little shmutz on one Siggie Schutzman -- but we'll save that for some future post. So Bernstein took a few liberties with the Kaddish. I need to get past that. An article at LeonardBernstein.com discusses a brief history of the Kaddish (and even a possible connection to the Christian “Lord’s Prayer”) and the incongruity of the prayer -- that there is “not a single mention of death....On the contrary, it uses the word chayei or chayim ('life') three times. Far from being a threnody, the Kaddish is a series of paeans in praise of God, and, as such, it has basic functions in the liturgy that have nothing to do with mourning." They also note that “In his Kaddish Symphony, Leonard Bernstein exploits the dualistic overtones of the prayer: its popular connotation as a kind of requiem, and its celebration of like ( i.e. creation) (sic).” (I'm pretty certain that “like” is a typo for “life”). : ) The article goes on to explore other dichotomic aspects of the piece (for example, the choice for a women to narrate a prayer traditionally recited by a man), but perhaps the most obvious dichotomous aspect of the symphony is Bernstein’s use of complex, chromatic twelve-tone textures and techniques which merge with more traditional and lyrical diatonic melodies. Toward the bottom of the post at LeonardBernstein.com, they have included various comments about the work from the composer himself. In one interesting anecdote, Bernstein recalls, “A whole group of young composers who were at the time considering themselves very avant-garde artists, who had gotten wind of the fact that I had finally written a twelve tone piece, came to all of the rehearsals...and they were all terribly excited until about the midpoint of the symphony when the second Kaddish, which is sung by a soprano and which is a lullaby and completely tonal, appeared, and they all threw up their hands in despair and said, oh, well, there it goes. That's the end of that piece.” Bernstein added, “Of course they didn't understand at all that one of the main points of the piece is that the agony expressed with the twelve tone music has to give way -- this is part of the form of the piece -- to tonality and diatonicism even so that what triumphs in the end, the affirmation of faith is tonal.” I listened to the symphony a couple of more times, and I did enjoy it -- although it is a serious work that, truthfully, deserves to be heard and experienced (and contemplated) at the concert hall or some other formal venue. This is not the type of work one would play as simple background music (say, for example, like listening to Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 4 with wireless earbuds while biking down a tree-lined parkway on a beautiful spring day -- a la the movie “Breaking Away”). Bernstein does have to be careful, though, when charging into twelve-tone territory. I tend to think that portions of the symphony which are meant to sound primal and intense come across as a bit too carnival-like, as though one is careening through a fun house. The symphony was first performed in Tel Aviv, Israel, on December 10, 1963, and its American premiere took place on January 10, 1964, in Boston. According to the article on Wikipedia, “The American reactions to the work were decidedly mixed, ranging from highly favorable to vitriolic.” I’d say I’m somewhere closer to the “favorable.”
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A New Hope:As the header above says, each week I will listen to a piece of classical music that I've never heard before, and then I will report out what I thought about it. Archives
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