Three Jewish Poems For Orchestra - Fanfare For The Common Man - Variations For Orchestra by Ernest Bloch; Aaron Copland; The Hartford Symphony Orchestra; Fritz Mahler Vanguard (VSD-2085) Publication date 1961

 ERNEST BLOCH

Trois Poemes juifs

(Three Jewish Poems)

AARON COPLAND

Fanfare for the Common Man

Orchestral Variations, 1957

Hartford Symphony Orchestra

FRITZ MAHLER, conductor

Ernest BLOCH was born, the son of a

clock maker, at Geneva, Switzerland, July 24,

1880. He studied music in Geneva, Brussels

and Frankfort-on-Main, then lived in Paris

from 1903 to 1909. There his Symphony in

C sharp minor was hailed for its power and

promise by the great critic—soon to become

the great novelist—Romain Rolland, and his

Macbeth was produced at the Paris Opera. He

returned to Switzerland to teach at the Geneva

Conservatory. The increasing war clouds loom-

ing over Europe, and then the outbreak of the

First World War itself, came to him as a

profound shock and spiritual crisis, signifying

an outburst of barbarism in the midst of

civilization. In 1915 he traveled to the United

States as conductor for the dancer Maud

Allen, and a year later decided to make this

country his home. He greatly enriched Ameri-

can musical life, both as composer and as

teacher, first at the Cleveland Institute of

Music and then as Director of the San Fran-

cisco Conservatory. His reputation grew on

the American and the international scene, as

a composer handling large-scale forms with

consummate structural mastery and freshness

of thought. He gave them an epic grandeur

rare in the “avant-garde” music of the cen-

tury, and a personal involvement, like a cry

from the heart, which put them among the

most moving expressions of our time. His

death, on July 15, 1959, was deeply lamented

wherever music was loved. And although some

of his works, like the rhapsody Schelomo,

have a permanent. and cherished place in the

concert repertory, the process of discovering

the musical riches he left to posterity is still

under way.

Bloch is a composer wholly of the 20th cen-

tury who never sought to write a cryptic music,

or to invent a “new musical language.” His

approach to composition rests on the evoca-

tive power of melody, intensified by a master-

ful polyphony. His musical forms are never

mechanically applied, but always grow as a

process of organizing and giving shape to his

complex emotional expression. But he creates

a rich texture, in which every woven fibre

has its own communication, and so the full

appreciation of a Bloch work demands the

kind of repeated hearings which the concert

hall rarely affords to a living composer. One

of his major works is the Three Jewish Poems

(Trois Poémes juifs).

it was in 1912 that Bloch, always responsive

to some urge rising deep within him, em-

barked upon his “Jewish cycle.” First came

the Trois Poémes juifs (1913), then three

Psalms for voice and orchestra (1912-14), the

Israel Symphony (1912-16), Schelomo for

‘cello and orchestra (1915-16) and the First

String Quartet (1916). These works make a

unique and profound impact, as a music quite

like nothing else ever written, an unmistake-

able voice representing a Jewish conscious-

ness addressing the modern world. Yet the

means through which they achieve this are

not easy to explain. For Bloch’s musical form

and idiom embraced the sweep of music from

Palestrina, Bach’ and Beethoven to Strauss

and Debussy. We can find in the motifs of

these “Jewish” works of Bloch, here and there,

a turn reminiscent of Hebrew chant, and an

oriental-sounding cantilena and rhythmic com-

plexity. But what is important is the unique

and passionate emotional expression, infused

throughout by these relatively slight touches

of Hebraic and oriental color. What emerges

is a questioning of what the long history and

traditions of the Jewish people mean to the

world today, and to a Jew to whom the crisis

of the modern world has brought a sharp

awakening and search for answers.

The titles of the three movements of the Trois

Poémes juifs, namely Danse, Rite and Cortége

funébre, are typical of Bloch’s modest under-

statement. For each movement is a symphonic

conception, with contrasting themes that un-

dergo a rich development. The Danse is most

oriental, with its tremulous opening flute

theme (which returns so effectively both near

the end of the movement, and near the end

of the Cortége funébre) and the feeling

throughout is not so much of a dance as a

dance rhapsody, rising and falling in intensity.

The Rite is most Hebraic, very much like

Schelomo, in its tragic outcries, great climax,

and touching solos near the close. The Cortége

funébre is in the tradition of the great musi-

cal laments for the dead, with its affecting

dissonances that only near the end are re-

solved in a tender, lovely and soothing melody.

The work has been performed by many of the

major American orchestras. On the occasion

of its presentation by the Boston Orchestra

in 1917, with the composer conducting, he

responded to a request for notes with the

following comments.

!. Danse. This music is all in the coloring;

coloring rather sombre, mystical, languorous.

il. Rite. This music is more emotional; but

there is something solemn and distant, as

the ceremonies of a cult.

ill. Cortege funébre. This is more human. My

father died—these “Poems” are dedicated to

his memory. There is something implacably

severe in the rhythms that obstinately repeat

themselves. At the énd, sorrow bursts forth,

and at the idea of an eternal separation the

soul breaks down. But a very simple and serene

melody arises from the orchestral depths as

a consolation, a balm, a gentle faith. The

memory of our dear departed ones is not

effaced; they live forever in our hearts.

Just at about the time that Ernest Bloch

was finding a welcome field for his creative

activities in the United States, the young

Aaron Copland, born in Brooklyn, New York

on November 14, 1900, was planning to go to

Paris to solidify his musical education. Be-

tween 1922 and 1925 he studied with the

remarkable teacher and personality, Nadia

Boulanger. And from the strikingly bold sound

of the works which he produced back home

between 1925 and 1930, with their leanness

of texture and percussive strength, like a

landscape eroded by storms to its bare rock,

it was apparent that when he had learned in

Paris was not so much what to write, as what

not to write. In other words, he had found

himself, which meant gaining a highly skepti-

cal view of traditions which had accumulated

in the 19th century, and a highly selective

attitude towards the elements of the entire

musical past that he could find to be useful

to him. This “self” that he found became in

a few years a major figure in American music,

about whom a number of other composers

gathered, feeling that he had broken open the

path they were looking for. And indeed Cop-

land assued a kind of leadership, not out of

any feeling that he himself had exceptional

powers, but out of an awareness that some-

thing had to be done for American musical

life as a whole. To give new, groundbreaking

composers a hearing became a major re-

sponsibility, which he carried out with the

“Copland-Sessions” concerts of 1928-31, his

directorship of the American Festival of Con-

temporary Music at Yaddo, near Saratoga

Springs, N. Y., and his activities with the

League of Composers.

The major work of Copland’s early maturity

was the Piano Variations of 1930, which is

presented on this program in its recreation

for orchestra, done by Copland in 1957. It

has a special place in 20th century music,

for no other work, upon its appearance, so

affected musicians and composers here with

the conviction that a unique American mas-

terpiece had been born and a new era had

opened. Its very opening theme, with its

percussive notes separated by silences like

individual entities, its wide leaps, and the

dissonant harmony implicit in its successive

intervals, was like a manifesto of revolt against

romanticism. Throughout the twenty variations

and coda, with all their brilliance of rhythmic

play and structural invention, the feeling of

this opening is never lost but rather expanded,

so that the work as a whole has the effect of

an integral aesthetic statement. And although

repeated hearings disclose that all the tradi-

tional communicative devices of music are

present, such as melodic phrase, harmony,

rhythm and counterpoint, what is so impres-

sive at first is the special expressive possi-

bilities disclosed in an almost independent

use of rhythm. Sections, such as from the

fifteenth variation on, evoke memories of

jazz. But there is no adoption of jazz motifs;

rather a grasp of the interplay of two rhythms

against each other, with a dropping and catch-

ing up of the beat, that both lies at the heart

of jazz and has expanded from jazz to connote

a definitely home-grown musical style.

if, In studying Bloch, one only later grasps

the stong outlines of form hidden within a

free and turbulent emotional life, with Cop-

land it is the opposite. Familiarity with a work

is required in order to react to the nostalgic

and poignant feelings beneath the apparently

granitic surface. This subjective life is present,

however, and it has helped to make the

Variations much more than simply a formal

turning point or challenging event in Ameri-

can music. The work is alive and affecting

thirty years after it was written.

While the Orchestral Variations of 1957 are

based on the piano work, it would be wrong

to call the new score an “orchestration.” This

concept is foreign to Copland’s approach, one

of the characteristics of which is the germinal

place that timbre holds in his musical think-

ing from the very inception of a creative task.

So it is with the new work, for from the start

we hear a completely orchestral conception.

And all the way through we find the orches-

tral instruments, both alone and in combina-

tion, disclosing unsuspected possibilities, with

each variation as much a matter of timbre as

of rhythm, harmony and melody, and the whole

stamped with Copland’s unique voice and

thought. Thus in a remarkable way, while the

music is basically the same, the new work

represents not only the brash young rebel of

the 1920's but also the geniality of the com-

poser of the 1950's. For one of the results of

this rethinking for orchestra.is to bring out

more clearly, as may be heard from the very

first variation, what could perhaps be called

the hidden lyricism of the piano version.

The Fanfare for the Common Man is one of a

series of fanfares commissioned from various

composers by Eugene Goosens, then conductor

of the Cincinnati orchestra, during the 1942-3

season, to commemorate various aspects of

the nation at war. Copland’s short, stirring

work “honors the man who did no deeds of

heroism on the battlefield, but shared the

labors, sorrows and hopes of those who strove

for victory.”

Notes by Sidney Finkelstein

About the Performance

it Hartford, Connecticut, is one of the most

live and active musical centers in the Eastern

part of the United States, with perhaps more

music lovers in proportion to the population

than most other cities can boast, much of

the credit must go to the splendid Hartford

Symphony Orchestra and the eminent leader-

ship of its conductor, Fritz Mahler. A native

of Vienna and related to the composer, Gustav

Mahler, Fritz Mahler conducted the Berlin

Radio Symphony, Dresden Philharmonic, and

Danish State Symphony, before transferring

his musical activities to this country. In 1954

he was engaged as musical director of the

Hartford Symphony. Europe still makes its

demands on him, and he returns yearly to

officiate as guest conductor and to meet the

ae composers, many of whom are friends

of his.

crnest Bloch on Vanguard Records

ISRAEL SYMPHONY. Vienna State Opera

Orchestra, Litschauer cond. VRS-423

SECOND STRING QUARTET. Musical Arts

Quartet VRS-437

BAAL SHEM (Nigun, Viduil, Simchas Torah),

and works of Bartok, Milhaud, Ravel. Eudice

Shapiro, violin and Ralph Berkowitz, piano

VRS-1023

AMERICA: AN EPIC RHAPSODY. Leopold

Stokowski conducting the Symphony of the

Air, and Chorus VRS-1056 & *VSD-2065

the Hartford Symphony on Vanguard Records

MARLER: DAS KLAGENDE LIED. Soloists, and

Orchestra VRS-1048 & *VSD-2044

URFF: CARMINA BURANA. Soloists, Chorus,

Orchestra VRS-1007 & *VSD-2066

* Stereolab Disc

This is a Vanguard Stereolab stereophonic

disc cut by the new 45/45 system. The

multi-channel Vanguard stereophonic record-

ing technique makes it possible to hear for

the first time all of the subtle and varied

color of the music in performance with a

roundness, depth and feeling of physical

presence possible to no other disc recording.

Especially designed microphones, tape re-

corders and amplifiers were employed on the

basis of acoustically precise calculations to

produce a sound of such fidelity and au-

thenticity of presence that all consciousness

vanishes of an intermediary between the

listener and the living performance. This disc

is playable with any stereophonic cartridge.

VANGUARD STEREOLAB CORP., N. Y. PRINTED IN U.S.A.