Cover Art Berlinski II A MESSAGE FROM THE MILKEN ARCHIVE FOUNDER Dispersed over the centuries to all corners of the earth, the Jewish people absorbed elements of its host cultures while, miraculously, maintaining its own. As many Jews reconnected in America, escaping persecution and seeking to take part in a visionary democratic society, their experiences found voice in their music. The sacred and secular body of work that has developed over the three centuries since Jews first arrived on these shores provides a powerful means of expressing the multilayered saga of American Jewry. While much of this music had become a vital force in American and world culture, even more music of specifically Jewish content had been created, perhaps performed, and then lost to current and future generations. Believing that there was a unique opportunity to rediscover, preserve and transmit the collective memory contained within this music, I founded the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music in 1990. The passionate collaboration of many distinguished artists, ensembles and recording producers over the past fourteen years has created a vast repository of musical resources to educate, entertain and inspire people of all faiths and cultures. The Milken Archive of American Jewish Music is a living project; one that we hope will cultivate and nourish musicians and enthusiasts of this richly varied musical repertoire. Lowell Milken A MESSAGE FROM THE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR The quality, quantity, and amazing diversity of sacred as well as secular music written for or inspired by Jewish life in America is one of the least acknowledged achievements of modern Western culture. The time is ripe for a wider awareness and appreciation of these various repertoires—which may be designated appropriately as an aggregate “American Jewish music.” The Milken Archive is a musical voyage of discovery encompassing more than 600 original pieces by some 200 composers—symphonies, operas, cantorial masterpieces, complete synagogue services, concertos, Yiddish theater, and folk and popular music. The music in the Archive—all born of the American Jewish experience or fashioned for uniquely American institutions—has been created by native American or immigrant composers. The repertoire is chosen by a panel of leading musical and Judaic authorities who have selected works based on or inspired by traditional Jewish melodies or modes, liturgical and life-cycle functions and celebrations, sacred texts, and Jewish history and secular literature—with intrinsic artistic value always of paramount consideration for each genre. These CDs will be supplemented later by rare historic reference recordings. The Milken Archive is music of AMERICA—a part of American culture in all its diversity; it is JEWISH, as an expression of Jewish tradition and culture enhanced and enriched by the American environment; and perhaps above all, it is MUSIC—music that transcends its boundaries of origin and invites sharing, music that has the power to speak to all of us. Neil W. Levin Neil W. Levin is an internationally recognized scholar and authority on Jewish music history, a professor of Jewish music at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, music director of Schola Hebraeica, and author of various articles, books, and monographs on Jewish music. Berlinski left Germany in 1933, easily able to secure About the Composer an exit permit with his Polish passport. He went initially to Lód ´z, where he had many relatives and The Jewish creative ori- where he did some concertizing. Not prepared entation of composer to accept Polish army service, however, he left and organist HERMAN shortly afterward for Paris. There he studied at the BERLINSKI (1910–2001) prestigious École Normale de Musique: composition represents a fertile syn- with the legendary Nadia Boulanger, teacher thesis. His Jewish roots of many of the 20th century’s most important and family traditions were composers; and piano with the subsequently fundamentally eastern infamous Nazi sympathizer and collaborator, world- European, but he also renowned pianist Alfred Cortot. Berlinski supported acquired and adopted himself by directing, arranging, and sometimes the cultural perspectives—and especially musical composing incidental music for productions of an affinities—of German Jewry; his Paris studies added émigré Yiddish art theater, known then as PIAT (Paris 20th-century French as well as international influ- Jewish Avant-Garde Theatre). This troupe in effect ences; and eventually he emerged as a thoroughly comprised the survivors of the well-known Yiddish American composer and an ardent advocate of art theater in Vilna, whose repertoire ranged from artistic innovations in the American Synagogue. Shalom Aleichem and Peretz to classic Russian plays in Yiddish. These were literary plays, unrelated to Berlinski was born in Leipzig to parents who, in the the musical Yiddish theater in America—the so- wake of the dangers of backlash following the 1905 called Second Avenue variety—or to its Romanian Revolution in Russia, had emigrated from the highly foundations in the operettas of Goldfaden. developed Jewish community in Lód ´z (then Russian Nonetheless, it was common to include appropriate Poland). He demonstrated natural musical gifts incidental music and even to superimpose or at an early age and at sixteen entered the Leipzig incorporate some songs in those productions. For Conservatory—primarily as a piano student, with Berlinski, this was not only an artistic but a “human additional studies in theory and composition. In 1918, experience,” because it brought him into contact when an independent Polish Republic was declared with so many Ukrainian, Polish, and Lithuanian following the First World War, his father chose to Jews then stranded in France—a profound declare that he and his family were Polish citizens personal episode that was later to find reflection (residing in Germany) rather than accepting an official and expression in some of his American works. passport classification as “stateless,” since actual full German citizenship was difficult to obtain and Berlinski found his studies with Boulanger less than involved a complicated process. The family remained fulfilling. Unlike many of her other American pupils in Leipzig until the installation of the National (or so he felt), he was not seeking to shed ethnic Socialist regime, which barred Jewish musicians from boundaries, as perceived limitations, in favor of participation or employment in musical institutions the more universal approach and technique of the outside the Jewish community. so-called international school. Moreover, he found 3 8.559446 her unable to relate to his artistic preoccupations As both a German native and a veteran French with things Jewish. After two years he parted Legionnaire who had fought against Germany, Berlinski ways with her and entered the Schola Cantorum, was technically ineligible for an exit visa, since the where the respected Sephardi synagogue composer cooperating French authorities were required to hand and music director Leon Algazi actually taught a over all such individuals to the Germans. His illegally course on Jewish music (in a fundamentally Roman “purchased” exit visa still required an approval stamp. Catholic religious musical environment). Berlinski He obtained that only because the French official did later recalled that he was received “with open not realize that Lipsk, shown as his birthplace on his arms” by the French composer Daniel-Lesur and passport, was simply the Polish translation for Leipzig, his circle, La Jeune France, which included Olivier and thus assumed incorrectly that Berlinski had been Messiaen. Messiaen—a deeply and mystically born in Poland rather than Germany. There was still religious Christian whose faith informs many of his the problem, however, that Poland was occupied by major works—understood, along with others in that Germany as well. Fry helped him invent a Russian group, Berlinski’s natural inclination to draw upon identity, which finally qualified him for exit, since the his Judaism. Berlinski later credited Messiaen with Soviet Union was still technically neutral as a result of having encouraged him personally to use the musical the infamous but soon-to-be-violated nonaggression language of his traditions, as fellow composers in pact. He left France and arrived in the United States that circle made use of Gregorian chant. only two weeks before the German invasion of the Soviet Union. In 1934–35 Berlinski applied for French citizenship, which carried with it the obligation of military Berlinski’s first fruitful contact in New York was service in the French Foreign Legion. Though he Moshe Rudinov, cantor of the nationally prestigious never did obtain his citizenship, he later recalled Reform synagogue Temple Emanu-El. Rudinov with pride his participation at the Belgian border introduced him to the small but intensely committed when German army units broke through; and he coterie of Jewish music intellectuals, the Jewish always took great satisfaction in being “one of the Music Forum, and he soon became well acquainted few Jews with the opportunity to have a machine with the leading personalities of that society, such as gun in my hand and shoot at them.” Lazar Weiner, Joseph Yasser, Abraham Wolf Binder, and Lazare Saminsky. Always on the lookout for After France’s surrender to Germany and the Jewish-related pieces for its intimate recital events, establishment of the Vichy government, Berlinski the Forum