Recent special programs
Robert Stern, Elegy
The music of Robert Stern (Amherst, Mass.; born 1934) has been performed throughout the United States, Europe, Japan, and Israel. His music has appeared on the Musica Viva Concert Series (Tel Aviv), Festival of American Music (Rochester, New York), Fromm Contemporary Music Series (Harvard University), and the Aspen Music Festival. Howard Hanson, Gunther Schuller, Ralph Shapey, Joan Tower, Joel Smirnoff, Joel Krosnick, Gilbert Kalish, and the Gregg Smith Singers are among the many artists who have programmed his music. Recent commissions have included the Library of Congress, Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia, and Apple Hill Chamber Players. The recipient of many composition awards, Stern won a prize at the prestigious Premino Musicale Città di Trieste for his symphonic work Yam Hamelach (The Dead Sea). He has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities, Martha Baird Rockefeller Fund, and A.S.C.A.P., and has been in residence at the MacDowell Colony, Millay Colony for the Arts, and Yaddo. His music is published by G. Schirmer, Transcontinental Music, Rinaldo Press, Music for Percussion, and Vivace Press, and has been recorded on CRI, Opus One, Advance, GSS, Centaur, Albany Records, and Polygram. Stern was educated at the University of Rochester, the Eastman School of Music, and the University of California at Los Angeles. He is professor of music at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Ben Steinberg, Esa Einai (Psalm 121)
Ben Steinberg (Toronto; born 1930) is perhaps the most widely published composer of Jewish music in North America, and certainly one of the most performed. A lecturer on Jewish musical history and style, he has received honors from the city of Jerusalem, the American Harp Society, the Cantors Assembly, the American Conference of Cantors, and the Canadian Broadcast Corporation. He was the recipient of the 1979 International Gabriel Award for broadcast excellence and recently was awarded an honorary doctorate by New York’s Hebrew Union College.

Alex Lubet, Three Short Pieces after Webern
Composer/performer/playwright/author Alex Lubet (Minneapolis; born 1954) is Morse Alumni Distinguished Teaching Professor of Music and American Studies at the University of Minnesota. His over eighty musical and dramatic works have received over 300 performances on six continents on the programs of such organizations as the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and California E.A.R. Unit. His newest work is African Sabbath, a setting of the Jewish Friday evening service (Erev Shabbat). His writings appear in Ethnomusicology, College Music Symposium, Annual Review of Jazz Studies, Modern Greek Studies Yearbook, Bruce Benward’s Music in Theory and Practice, and Essays in American Music (Garland). Lubet is Artistic Director and guitarist/mandolinist for Blended Cultures Orchestra, a multicultural improvisation ensemble, whose roster includes African-American, Chinese, Ghanaian, Greek, Hawaiian, Jewish (Ashkenazi, Israeli, and Sephardi), Latino/Caribbean, and Ojibwe instrumentalists, vocalists, actors, storytellers, and dancers. He is also artistic and educational director for Gathering at the River, the world music and dance series of the St. Paul Public Library.

Simon Sargon, Meditation
American composer and pianist Simon Sargon (Dallas; born 1938) was born in Bombay, India, of Sephardic-Indian and Ashkenazic-Russian parents, and brought to the U.S. as an infant. He studied piano with Mieczyslaw Horszowski, and music theory at Brandeis University, where he graduated magna cum laude. He went on to study composition at Juilliard under Vincent Persichetti, and at the Aspen School of Music under Darius Milhaud. Sargon taught at Sarah Lawrence College (1965-1968), and served as Head of the Voice Department of the Rubin Academy of Music in Jerusalem (1971-1974). In 1974, he was appointed Music Director at Temple Emanu-El in Dallas, Texas, and in 1984 he joined the music faculty of Southern Methodist University where he is currently professor of composition. Sargon’s major works include Symphony No. l (Holocaust), the oratorio Psalms of Qumran, Divertimento for Piano and Orchestra, In Time of AIDS (for chorus and Organ), Implosions for Two Pianos, MoodSwings, and 24 Preludes for Piano. In the summer of 1998 Sargon received a singular honor when the noted musicologist Dr. Karl Haas devoted an entire hour segment of his internationally syndicated program, ‘Adventures in Good Music,” to an interview with Sargon and a presentation of his music. In December of this year, Sargon’s latest orchestral work, Tapestries, will receive its premiere by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. Sargon’s works are published by Boosey and Hawkes, Southern Music, Transcontinental Music, and Lawson-Gould. He is listed in Baker’s Biography and the International Who’s Who in Music. His work as both composer and pianist may be heard on the Crystal, New World, Ongaku, and Gasparo labels. Gasparo has issued two CDs devoted entirely to Sargon’s compositions: Shema and A Clear Midnight.

Lucas Richman, Prayer
Lucas Richman (Los Angeles/Pittsburgh; born 1964) has gained recognition as a conductor and a composer of music that ranges stylistically from classical concert music and opera to musical theatre and film. He is currently Principal Conductor of the Pasadena Pops Orchestra (California) and Assistant Conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, where he has been named one of two Filene Shouse Foundation Conductors for the 1998-99 season. As a composer, Richman has fulfilled numerous commissions, most recently completing The Seven Circles of Life, a cantata for soprano, solo cello, narrator, chorus, and orchestra (premiered by the Spokane Symphony, August 1997), Be A Conductor (Los Angeles Philharmonic, September 1997), and Dachau Lied (Los Angeles Jewish Symphony, April 1998). His catalog of works includes music for solo voices, chamber ensembles, and a number of pieces for orchestra, ranging from concerti and contemporary tone poems to innovative selections for pops programs and young people’s concerts. Richman’s compositions have been heard in concert halls around the world, and featured in films, television programs, and radio broadcasts.

Laurence Sherr, Elegy and Vision
Laurence Sherr (Atlanta; born 1953) studied at Duke University, the Vienna International Music Center, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His works have been performed at sites across the United States, including the Piccolo Spoleto Festival, the Kitchen in New York City, and the Carter Presidential Center. International performances have been given in Holland, Switzerland (Montanéa Festival), Canada (Banff Festival of the Arts), and Cuba (Festival Internacional de Guitarra de la Habana). He has been commissioned by such ensembles as Thamyris and the Atlanta Chamber Players, and has been awarded grants by Meet the Composer, the American Music Center, Illinois Arts Council, Georgia Council for the Arts, Atlanta Bureau of Cultural Affairs, and Atlanta’s Alliance Française. Fellowships for composition residencies have come from the Seaside Institute, the Charles Ives Center for American Music, the American Dance Festival, and the Banff Festival of the Arts. His composition Journeys Within, a concerto for flute and chamber ensemble, won the Grand Prize at the 1995 Delius Composition Contest. Sherr is composer-in-residence and assistant professor of music at Kennesaw State University, in metropolitan Atlanta.

Moshe Denburg, For the Peace of My People (L’ma-an Shalom Ami)
Moshe Denburg (Vancouver; born 1949) grew up in Montreal, Canada, in an observant Jewish family. From his earliest years he was exposed to the music of the synagogue and to the folk music of the Jewish people. Denburg has studied music extensively, both formally and informally. He has traveled worldwide, living and studying music in Israel, India, and Japan. From 1986 to 1990 he studied composition with John Celona at the University of Victoria, Canada. His compositions reflect an ongoing commitment to the principle of cross-cultural integration and adaptation. An artist of many “masks,” he is visible in the artistic community as a composer, arranger, band leader, singer, guitarist, and record producer for his Jewish music ensemble “Tzimmes.” Apart from these credentials he has a long-standing commitment to Jewish music education, and has created original materials on the subject. He has presented a workshop entitled “The Many Faces of Jewish Music” to a wide variety of audiences. His educational materials on Jewish music have been incorporated into the Vancouver schools’ world-cultures curriculum.

Voice of the Composer: Recent Voices
In August of 1998, I presented four questions to several of the composers whose music I performed at the College Music Society’s 1998 National Conference:

Why did you compose your music?

In terms of sound, what is the Jewish element in your music?

Why did you choose the cello?

What problems or advantages did the cello present?

Their responses appear below.

Robert Stern, Elegy
I composed Elegy in 1986, in memory of my colleague Julian Olevsky. Julian was an eminent violinist who graced the faculty at the University of Massachusetts (Amherst) for eighteen years.

Elegy incorporates two preexisting melodies which are intertwined with my own musical language. Both tunes are lullabies, the first a tiny but poignant Lied: “Ein judisches Kind” (“A Jewish Child”), composed by Carlo and Erika Taube during their internment at the Theresienstadt Ghetto (1941-1944) during the Holocaust. (A portion of my compositional output represents a reaction to this period. As a Jew, it seems like a natural response to one of the most unspeakable genocides of the 20th century.) The second melody is a Yiddish folksong: “Pi-Pi-Pi-Pi-Pi,” which represents the only audible Jewish element in Elegy. I have always been attracted to Yiddish folk songs, in particular the melody of “Kum aher du Filizof,” which has found its way into several of my works, most recently Hazkarah, for cello and piano, which will be premiered in the spring of 1999 at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

I have always been drawn to the expressive power of the cello. The piano is my instrument, and I adore it; but if I had to start over again, I would most definitely choose the cello.

Ben Steinberg, Esa Einai
My composition Esa Einai began as a vocal solo with organ accompaniment, intended for use primarily in religious services. Its wide use throughout the U.S. and Canada led to its publication in 1984 by Transcontinental Music in New York, and later its transcription as a cello solo with piano accompaniment.

The piece seeks to illustrate the meaning of the words, which reflect the accents of the psalm’s original Hebrew text. Melodically, it is based on a traditional Jewish mode; rhythmically, its phrases are directed by words or sentences, rather than by the imposition of an arbitrary external meter.

As an instrument close to the human voice in its timbre, and flexible in its ornamental technique, the cello is ideally suited to the interpretation of this piece.

Alex Lubet, Three Short Pieces after Webern
I wrote Three Short Pieces after Webern on a commission from Minnesota’s McKnight Foundation, for cellist Tanya Remenikova and her husband, pianist Alexander Braginsky, two of my faculty colleagues at the University of Minnesota.

The piece was intended as a companion to its model, Anton Webern’s Three Little Pieces for Cello and Piano, Op. 11. My work is extremely brief–not a lot longer than it takes to enter and exit the stage–and it occurred to me that having three more pieces to play as a group would make performing the Webern more comfortable.

I’m not sure there really is an audible Jewish element in my Three Short Pieces. The last movement is a setting of part of the Israeli national anthem “Hatikvah,” which no one ever seems able to hear unless some demonstration of that fact is made prior to the performance. The difficulty of hearing the melody has always surprised me, although of course composers often perceive their own music in ways others do not.

A plurality or majority of my works include a Jewish element. Typically, this takes the form of a cantus firmus, as in the “Hatikvah.” Elsewhere, it might be a sacred text or a Jewish historical theme or philosophical concept. People often say my compositions–such as the first two cello pieces, which have no Jewish intentions–sound Jewish. I think they identify Jewishness with a Romantic melodic concept. I’m pleased if people feel this way.

I wrote the work for cello because I had no previous work for cello and piano and had good friends who play those instruments beautifully. The cello has enormous range: tonal, timbral, emotional. That’s probably its biggest attraction for me. Cellists seem to have no trouble interpreting this piece. I think it fits nicely into their tradition. In 1995, I made a new version for violin and piano for my colleague Mark Bjork and pianist James Howsman of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music.

Simon Sargon, Meditation
I wrote this piece at a time of great personal pain. My father had suffered a severe heart attack and was confined to the hospital for some time. Strangely enough, although I composed Meditation at the time of his death, it did not reflect my grief at the immediate circumstances. As sometimes inexplicably happens with the creative process, the music emerged on a different level. Without my aiming for it, or willing it, the mood of Meditation had moved to a higher plane, one of consolation and acceptance.

The only instrument I could imagine singing my meditative song was the cello, the one instrument which could capture the noble mood I was hearing in my mind. The cello’s warmth and depth of sound was like an expansion of a baritone voice, an ideal actualization of my own poor voice. In addition, I was drawn to the cello’s range. Writing high on its A string creates a special intensity, far beyond that of the upper string instruments playing in a similar register.

To me, it is this singing aspect–this identification with the human voice–which is one of the most “Jewish” elements in Meditation. In essence, all authentic Jewish music is vocal, and relates to the chanting of the prayers and the Bible by cantor and congregation. Another “Jewish element” may be found in the middle section. There the cello and piano carry on a dialogue in an echoing manner, each modifying and commenting on what the other has said, slowly building to a climax of sound. To me this is reminiscent of the traditional mode of teaching Talmud in the rabbinical academies, where the students, repeating what the teacher has taught, chant the words back again. As they sing back to the teacher, the students both affirm the sacred text and indicate their comprehension of it.

Lucas Richman, Prayer
I wrote Prayer for my dear friend David Low, who has been Artistic Director of the Brandeis-Bardin Institute for a number of years. The Institute is an organization that specializes in providing Jewish programs for all ages year-round, from week-long, elder-hostel programs with visiting lecturers, to two-month-long sessions for college-age students in which the participants are introduced to all aspects of Jewish life. David asked me to perform a concert at the Institute with him, so I decided to write the piece for the occasion.

The Jewish element in Prayer most likely can be pinpointed in the harmonic language (the minor key appeals to those rooted in Eastern European Jewish culture) and the rise and fall of the melody (a common occurrence in cantorial music).

I have always enjoyed listening to the cello, and had I not studied the violin as my first string instrument, I might have chosen the cello, just so I could play the Brahms E-minor sonata! I feel that the cello is incredibly expressive and is the closest instrument to the male tenor voice in its singing quality, so it naturally lends itself to a lyrical phrase.

The music is obviously not written in a progressively contemporary fashion. There is something to be said for a good, straightforward tune. It goes a long way.

Laurence Sherr, Elegy and Vision
In 1993 I received two requests for new works, one for a concert work for cello (from cellist Ian Ginsburg) and the other for a work in memory of my brother Neal (for the opening of an art exhibit at the Carter Presidential Center in Atlanta). I decided to combine the two into a single commission. During the creation of the work, I did not consciously attempt to make the music sound “Jewish,” although there are several subtle links. My intention was to write a lamentation about Neal. Of course, the kinds of lamentations I heard most often as a youth were from the Jewish liturgy.

My brother, Edwin Neal Sherr, was named after my mother’s sister Edith Bacharach, who also died at an early age (in Auschwitz, 1943). Another indirect connection is that the writing of Elegy and Vision coincided with the period during which I founded a klezmer band here in Atlanta, a group with whom I still perform (as a clarinetist).

One aspect of the cello that appeals to me is its very large range, with distinctive timbres in different registers. The expressive quality of the tone is also well suited to this kind of work, and I am sure that many have observed the ability of the instrument to intone and soar like a cantor.

Moshe Denburg, For the Peace of My People; L’ma-an Shalom Ami
My music L’ma-an Shalom Ami (For the Peace of My People) is a work that has gone through several incarnations. While I was involved in the study of composition at the University of Victoria (Canada) in 1989, I began to look at Jewish melodic modes as potential material for my work. At first I was reluctant to regard the music of my own Jewish roots as “important” enough to compose with, but I had a change of heart when a clarinetist mentioned to me, quite in passing, that his ultimate piece to perform would be a klezmer-style trio for three clarinets. So I set to work creating a piece using Jewish modes–music that was really in my blood. My Trio for Two Soprano Clarinets and Bass Clarinet was the result. The work was performed and recorded by the C.B.C. in Vancouver in 1991.

Audibly speaking, the Jewish element in L’ma-an Shlom Ami lies in its modal-melodic content. The intent of the work is to create a juxtaposition of Jewish and Arabic modes, representing a musical rapprochement of two cultures perennially at war with each other. Of course, Jewish and Arabic music have much in common, and their modes are in certain instances synonymous. Jewish content can be heard in the opening and closing sections, which utilize a mixture of traditional Jewish modes. The first statement played by the cello is in a mode known in Jewish parlance as Misheberakh (G - A - B flat - C sharp - D - E - F - G). The melody heard in the 5/8 section is in a Jewish mode known as Ahava Raba (D - E flat - Fsharp - G - A - B flat - C - D). (The names of these modes are taken from the opening words of Hebrew prayers which are sung in these modes in the synagogue.) Another audible element from Jewish and Arabic music is the melodic ornamentation that is common to both traditions.

Harmonically, I have used chords and tone clusters that derive from the modal melodies that these chords accompany. Thus, the effect of the work is entirely modal, and yet it acquires tonal variation and complexity by modulating from mode to mode and by using harmonic materials that have few parallels in the Western classical system.

The cello is a wonderful vehicle for the expression of the Jewish spirit. It emulates the voice of the cantor in the traditional synagogue, and I am sure Ernest Bloch was well aware of this. The cello is well-suited to performing the modal content of Jewish music, as well as its inflections and crying voice.

The piece is, on the whole, an intuitive act: here are my modes, my melodies, the tunes and soul in the voice of my own mother and father. Here is an offering that represents for me a fervent desire to preserve peace and dignity for Arabs and Jews alike.

HomeInternational concertsWhy Jewish music?
Some composer biographiesRecent special programs

Daniel Kazez, Professor of Music
Wittenberg University
Springfield, Ohio USA