559379 bk MOR 2/13/08 1:24 PM Page 24 AMERICAN CLASSICS Also available from Music of Remembrance: JAKE HEGGIE For a Look or a Touch GERARD SCHWARZ: In Memoriam LORI LAITMAN: The Seed of Dream Music of Remembrance 8.570119 8.559219 8.559379 24 559379 bk MOR 2/13/08 1:24 PM Page 2 Jake Heggie (b. 1961) For a Look or a Touch (2007) 33:47 Libretto by Gene Scheer Commissioned by Music of Remembrance, Mina Miller, Artistic Director World première recording 1 Prelude: Do You Remember? 4:16 2 I. The Voice 5:13 3 II. Golden Years 5:48 4 III. The Story of Joe 4:26 5 IV. Silence 3:59 6 V. Der Singende Wald (The Singing Forest) 3:21 7 VI. Remember 6:43 Morgan Smith, Baritone Julian Patrick, Actor Music of Remembrance Zart Domburian-Eby, Flute • Laura DeLuca, Clarinet Mikhail Shmidt, Violin • Amos Yang, Cello Craig Sheppard, Piano Permission to use the libretto by Gene Scheer was granted by the author Gerard Schwarz (b. 1947) 8 In Memoriam (2005) 9:06 World première recording Julian Schwarz, Cello Music of Remembrance Jeannie Wells Yablonsky, Violin 1 • Leonid Keylin, Violin 2 A chart of colored prisoner markings used in German concentration camps (1938-1942). Susan Gulkis Assadi, Viola • Mara Finkelstein, Cello Section 175 prisoners were assigned pink triangles. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of KZ Gedenkstaette Dachau 8.559379 2 23 8.559379 559379 bk MOR 2/13/08 1:24 PM Page 22 Lori Laitman (b. 1955) The Seed of Dream (2004) 17:57 Poems written in the Vilna Ghetto by Abraham Sutzkever Commissioned by Music of Remembrance, Mina Miller, Artistic Director World première recording 9 I Lie in This Coffin 3:42 0 A Load of Shoes 1:46 ! To My Child 5:34 @ Beneath the Whiteness of Your Stars 4:19 # No Sad Songs Please 2:36 Erich Parce, Baritone Amos Yang, Cello Mina Miller, Piano Permission to reprint these texts was granted by The Jewish Publication Society Recorded at Illsley Ball Nordstrom Recital Hall, Benaroya Hall, Seattle, USA, on 12th May, 2007 (tracks 1-7), 11th May, 2006 (track 8), and 29th January, 2007 (tracks 9-13) Baritone Morgan Smith (left) and actor Julian Patrick in the world première of Jake Heggie’s ‘For a Look or a Touch’ (May 7th, 2007), commissioned by Music of Remembrance. Photo: Ilya Moshenskiy 8.559379 22 3 8.559379 559379 bk MOR 2/13/08 1:24 PM Page 4 Jake Heggie (b. 1961) @ Beneath the Whiteness of Your Stars # No Sad Songs Please For a Look or a Touch (Libretto by Gene Scheer) Beneath the whiteness of your stars, No sad songs please: World première: 7th May, 2007, Benaroya Hall, kind. But when I looked for poetry or stories from the era, Stretch out toward me your white hand; Sad songs just tease Seattle, WA, at Music of Remembrance’s Holocaust I was deeply upset to discover a vast silence. All my words are turned to tears — At sorrow. Remembrance concert. Because homosexuality was against the law in They long to rest within your hand. Words, too, betray, Germany until 1970—even after the camps were closed, And names, Homosexuality had been considered a crime in the war over—gays stayed in hiding or got married, fled or See, their brilliant light goes darker Forever, Germany since the late 1800s, and Paragraph 175—the tried to blend in. Not until the late 1970s did the literary In my eyes, grown cellar-dim; And tomorrow. pre-Nazi legislation outlawing it—remained in effect and art world break the silence (e.g., Martin Sherman’s And I lack a quiet corner until 25 years after the war. The Reich considered 1979 play Bent). Even in 2005, when the European From which to send them back again. Look out at the snow: homosexuality a symptom of “racial degeneracy”, and Union’s Parliament drafted a resolution regarding the In memory’s art homosexuals were incarcerated in prisons and Holocaust, any mention of the persecution of gays was Yet, O Lord, all my desire — Is unexpected concentration camps. The Nazis murdered thousands, removed. To leave you with my wealth of tears. Radiance, and in and shattered the lives of countless others. After visiting the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum In me, there burns an urgent fire, The speeches of the heart For many years Music of Remembrance had and reading book after book, I came across Robert Epstein And in the fire, there burn my days. You yourself are envisioned commissioning a work which would address and Jeffrey Friedman’s extraordinary documentary film, Resurrected. this tragedy. Our challenge was to find a composer who Paragraph 175. It provides testimony from several gay Rest, in every hole and cellar could communicate its moral and historical importance, men, survivors of the camps in their seventies, eighties, Weeps, as might a murderer. Stretch your hand out and do so in a way that would be intimate rather than and nineties, telling stories they never thought they would I run the rooftops, even higher, To that whiteness: didactic. When I came to know Jake Heggie’s music be able to tell. Surprising, tragic, funny, hateful, shocking And I search — where are you? Where? In its cold and burning (Dead Man Walking, The End of the Affair), I knew stories. Then Mina Miller sent me a link to the journal of Veins immediately that we had found the perfect composer for Manfred Lewin, a gay Jew murdered at Auschwitz with Past stairs and courtyard I go running, You’ll feel returning this work. I am so impressed by the emotional honesty his entire family. Chased by howling enemies. The redeeming life of his writing, and by how expressively his music I had all the elements, just not the story. I needed a I hang, at last, a broken bowstring, It contains. captures complicated human relationships. Jake Heggie librettist. I had just worked with the tremendously gifted And I sing to you — like this: has been a wonderful collaborator, and For a Look or a Gene Scheer—a songwriter as well as a librettist and Narocz forests, 5th February, 1944 Touch reflects his heart as well as his genius. lyricist—on a new song cycle, with plans to write an opera Beneath the whiteness of your stars, together, so I asked him. I shared the research I had done Stretch out toward me your white hand; Mina Miller with him; he found books I did not know about. When All my words are turned to tears – Gene came across Manfred Lewin’s journal, excited by They long to rest within your hand. Jake Heggie offers the following remarks: the beauty of Manfred’s poetry, he called me right away. Manfred wrote his journal for his lover Gad Beck, Vilna ghetto, 22nd May, 1943 Because the persecution of gays during the Holocaust is who is still alive today. (One of the storytellers in a topic not much recognized nor discussed, Mina Miller Paragraph 175, Gad has also written an autobiography.) decided to take it on in a powerful and meaningful way: The two teenagers were lovers in Berlin until Manfred and through music. When she called and asked me to create his family were taken. In their love affair, we found our a new chamber music composition on this subject, I was story: an actor would play Gad in the present day, while deeply moved—and hugely challenged. How on earth the baritone would sing the role of Manfred, appearing could we do honor and justice to this subject? one night to Gad as a ghost. Through the two of them, we As an opera composer—a theater man—I told Mina would be able to share Manfred’s poetry and the stories I’d want to include a singer and find a narrative of some from Paragraph 175. 8.559379 421 8.559379 559379 bk MOR 2/13/08 1:24 PM Page 20 The feet from these boots who from the limits of the world Manfred’s question “Do you remember?” Housman and Lindsay), and the cello concerto Holy The with buttons outside swept two of us established the work’s tone. In our story, Gad wants Firm: Essay for Cello and Orchestra. Upcoming are a or these, with no body, into consummate pleasure. only to forget the horrors he lived through; Manfred’s chamber opera titled Last Acts (libretto by Scheer, book or these, with no bride? ghost wants only to be remembered, for Gad to treasure by McNally) for the Houston Grand Opera and San How can you shut your eyes, their powerful, timeless love. The play between past and Francisco Opera, and collaborative projects with the Where is the child leaving me here present was, musically, filled with rich possibilities. The Metropolitan Opera and Lincoln Center Theater, Dallas who fit in these? in the dark world of snow tune for “Do you remember?” serves as the anchor of Opera, San Francisco Opera and London’s Wigmore Is the maiden barefoot you’ve shrugged off? the piece; most of the other material in the piece is Hall. Recordings include Dead Man Walking (ERATO), who bought these? connected to it. I chose the instruments in the ensemble The Faces of Love (RCA Red Seal), and The Deepest You never even had your own cradle for a variety of color (so I could include elements of jazz Desire (Eloquentia). Slippers and pumps, to learn the dances and swing), for a lyrical as well as gritty look, there are my mother’s: of the stars.