Judge Dennis Davis
Leonard Bernstein’s Kaddish Symphony: An Exploration of its Music and Theology
Judge Dennis Davis - Leonard Bernstein’s Kaddish Symphony: An Exploration of its Music and Theology
- Thank you. Good afternoon, good evening to everybody. This lecture on Leonard Bernstein’s “Kaddish Symphony” is effectively a follow up to a lecture which I gave on Bernstein a little while back, which sadly for me culminated in the sound of the second symphony’s conclusion, which I wanted to sort end off for the rousing, rousing one not being particularly great. And I’ve been conscious of that in relation to my lecture tonight, but more about that in a moment. And I said to Trudy that I really wanted to fit in the “Kaddish Symphony” into my Bernstein lecture. And then we agreed that it would be appropriate to do it now as we commemorate the Holocaust. And it might even be even more appropriate to do it now in the light of the assault on the Jewish world which is taking place as we speak, all over, particularly on campuses. And a moment of reflection. For reasons which I hope will become apparent as I progress through this lecture. What I propose to do in this lecture is, firstly I’m going to talk a little bit about the background to the “Kaddish Symphony.” I want to talk a little bit about Kaddish because that’s not irrelevant to the topic. And then to sort of try to understand what Leonard Bernstein had in mind when he composed the symphony. I’m going to give you two clips of people talking a bit about it. And I’ve only selected two clips from the music, partly because I was worried about sound and also because the music isn’t quite easy, just defined significant clips, which would lend to a coherent lecture. So I apologise for that. And also because in relation to the symphony, it was revised, as I shall indicate, later.
And so it’s quite difficult to coordinate the music on Daja or YouTube or wherever I could find it, and the various texts which Bernstein and others changed. But the background to this is that the “Kaddish Symphony” was a joint commission originally of the Koussevitzky Music Foundation. And you’ll recall I did speak about the relationship in Serge Koussevitzky, the great conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the young Leonard Bernstein in my previous lecture. So it was a joint commission by the Koussevitzky Music Foundation and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The premier was in Tel Aviv in December ‘63, I might add at Bernstein’s request. It was played by the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra under Bernstein’s baton with the Mezzo soprano Jennie Tourel, the soprano soloist, Hanna Rovinan actress of the Habima Theatre in Israel, as a speaker. The entire text was translated into Hebrew and performed accordingly. The American premier occurred the following month performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Charles Munch, also with Jennie Tourel, but this time with Felicia Montealegre, Bernstein’s wife in the speaker’s role. The American premier was then revised again, and sorry, the text was revised. The new premier was in Dallas in '77 and Bernstein conducted the first recording of Tourel and Montealegre and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, the Camerata Singers and the Columbus Boys choir, again on a number of occasions. When he learned of the assassination of President John Kennedy, he had just completed the orchestration, which prompted him to dedicate the work to his memory because the world premier in Israel was less than three weeks later and therefore was a memorial to the American president.
And you might therefore think that quite rightly, that Kaddish as it will had an added significance. One of Bernstein’s biographers, Humphrey Burton, noted that between 1957 and 1971, the year of Bernstein, he completed the mass. Only two works had been completed by him. The “Kaddish Symphony”, that’s the third symphony of 1963 and the “Chichester Psalms” of 1965. And Burton writes, “There were several reasons for the slim output, the pressures of a thriving conducting career, the challenges of responding to the American musical modernist aesthetics at the time, which favoured Schoenberg’s 12 tone technique.” again, more about that in a moment. And the composer’s own exacting self-criticism of these two works are largely cheerful and extroverted. “Chichester Psalms” has remained popular on the concert circuit. By contrast, the “Kaddish Symphony” is seldom performed partly because of its fierce dark introversion, partly because it requires a narrator, a large orchestra, a soprano soloist, and a chorus. Now the context, of course, of this symphony has to be Kaddish and Kaddish itself has a kind of curious history within the Jewish tradition. And I just want to say if I may a few words about Kaddish, which of course as you all know or most of you would know, constitutes a petition for divinely fashioned peace. Because of course as we say that we ask for peace for us and all of us and all of Israel at the end of the Kaddish.
The Kaddish, of course, is in the main, written in Aramaic, which of course was the vernacular language following the Babylonian captivity, 5th/6th century BCE. It embodies the supreme acknowledgement of God’s unparalleled greatness. It’s the ultimate expression of unqualified glorification, praise and worship of God throughout the vicissitudes of Jewish history. Varying forms of text, of course, are always available in sense of used. Originally, I might add, it wasn’t part of the liturgy. It was always cited at the conclusion of a rabbinic discourse of some Talmudic lesson. And because the discourses were delivered in Aramaic, the Kaddish was also composed in that language and it developed around its central common response. “May his great name be worshipped forever, for all time and for all eternity.” It was only later that we saw the Kaddish introduced into sections of this service. And of course there are all sorts of different forms of the Kaddish. So you would know that, and many of you would know this, when you go to particularly Orthodox synagogue and a lecture on the Talmud is given, at the end of it, the Kaddish d'rabanan, the scholars Kaddish is recited. We also know that the end of particular section of the prayers, the full Kaddish is recited. At the commencement of a certain section of the prayers, the half Kaddish, Chatzi Kaddish is recited. And it is interesting that in relation to the recitation of Kaddish in memory of parents and siblings, the oldest evidence we have of this is found no later than in this 13th century prayer book around that time, even though the which is a supplementary tractate to the Talmud contains references to Kaddish at burials a little earlier than that. But what is interesting, of course and that’s relevant to the symphony, is Kaddish is not a prayer for the dead.
Even the mourners Kaddish has no mention of mourning or death. It really has exactly the same assertion of the sovereignty of God. And I thought therefore, that if, just to start getting us sort of warmed up as it were, and the significance of Kaddish, which of course is central to the symphony, I would play for you just one of the Kaddishes that are rendered over the year, which of course is the famous and wonderful Kaddish, beautiful Kaddish that we say at the end of the Musaf, the additional service on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. And here’s canto Joseph Malovany and a Hasidic choir singing this wonderful rendition of Kaddish, which just gives how central it is right at the end of the Musaf service, where it is said with a great deal of joy almost, and of affirmation of the sovereignty of God. So if we can get clip one, please.
So I want to move on, if I may, from Kaddish now, to the symphony itself. It’s interesting that in one of the performances in 2004, one of the British writer on music Callum McDonald wrote as follows, “It is relevant to ask how much of a symphony Kaddish is. clearly, it stands in some relationship, even if partly as a parody to such vocal orchestration professions of faith and doubt as Beethoven’s 9th and Mahlers 8th, formally speaking at hints at the familiar symphonic shape of slow introduction, Allegro, slow movement, scherzo and finale. But it’s subverted by the way the argument swings between the principle choral sections and the interventions of a speaker whose role is more reminiscent of more recent expositions and expressions of Jewish faith and crisis, such as Schoenberg’s 'Kol Nidre’ and a ‘Survivor from Warsaw,’” which I have spoken about, I might add. “And the music takes on from Bernstein, the consummate man of the theatre, a distinctly theatrical aspect in a sense of the symphonic form is hardly there for its own sake. It’s a stage set, in front of which a dramatised debate, interior monologue takes place in the Kaddish already points the way to the mass, which is an outright theatre piece and religious choral work all in one.” So it’s not really a symphony. And what it explores, and that’s what I really want to talk to you about it. What it explores is ultimately Bernstein’s own view of faith and religion. But in order to do that, to start with, let me play for you two clips, one of Marin Alsop, who has done a complete recording of the “Kaddish Symphony” and of course who is Bernstein’s student. And we’ll also then play a further clip, which is basically in preparation of an English performance where the choir master talks about the “Kaddish Symphony” as well. So can we have the next clip please?
My feeling always was that Bernstein wrote music as an outlet for his belief system, for his philosophy about life. And his goal really was to connect all the dots in life so that in a piece of music, it’s not really just a piece of music, but music is just the vehicle to express his concern about the world or his love for the world or his worry. And this piece, of course the “Kaddish Symphony,” his last symphony, the third symphony is a very complex piece because it’s not only about the world he was inhabiting, it’s also about the world of his family. You know, of course his father was deeply religious and he comes from a very, very, very serious, I would say even heavy Jewish tradition and culture and he had to try to find his way with that. I’m not Jewish so it’s a little bit difficult for me to really understand, I think the cultural context of the Kaddish. But I do know that it’s the most important prayer in the Jewish tradition and it’s a prayer that not only remembers people who have passed, but it also celebrates the cycle of life. So it ends up being a prayer of positivity rather than of mourning.
Kaddish, I looked up what that word means in general and I saw that it was a prayer for the dead without actually mentioning death, which I found an absolutely fascinating concept.
In his inimitable way, he uses forces that you don’t expect. So of course we have a choir. Alright, Beethoven did that. Okay, we have a choir, we have a children’s choir. Oh, Mahler did that. Okay, we have a narrator. Hmm, that’s a new idea. We have a soloist. You know, there are all these elements that he brings together because I think for Bernstein it’s also about community. It’s about creating a family on stage as well as a family in the audience.
And I wonder if we could do follow up with the next clip.
This performance of the third symphony, “Kaddish,” by Bernstein is part of the London Symphony orchestra’s centenary celebrations of Bernstein. And there is a real relationship here. Bernstein conducted the London Symphony Orchestra memorably on several occasions. There are members of the chorus who, the older members of the chorus who sang it with him, with the London Symphony Chorus, sang the “Chichester Psalms”, sang other pieces with him. And so there is a real reason for the London Symphony Orchestra and chorus to have a Bernstein celebration. Indeed everybody else is doing one as well. And we are all together doing “Wonderful Town” with Simon Rattle and two concerts with Marin Alsop. The first symphony, which does not have choir, and the third symphony that does. And it’s particularly good to do it with Marin Alsop because she was a pupil of Bernstein’s. And so if you like, we are getting it from the horse’s mouth, if I may be so rude about Marin. She also is choosing to do the original version. So what happened with the third symphony is that he wrote it and he performed it and then he wasn’t sure that he liked it. So he did a shorter version, the piece is narrated by a famous actor, and he thought that the first performance had too much talking in it and he also took the opportunity when he revised it to tighten up the music. But I think that Marin believes that the original version is better and should be given a chance at its more heavenly length. And it’s got some very interesting music that we are restoring to it.
So from a historical point of view, the whole thing’s rather interesting. So Bernstein’s third symphony is difficult because it has lots of different music in it. It has an orchestra, it has a boys choir and the boys choir in several parts in up to four parts. Chorus with lots of divisi in 12 parts, a soloist and a narrator. So it’s one of those big things that’s quite a big event to put it together. Then from the choir point of view, a lot of it is unaccompanied, so very, very unhelpfully, the orchestra will give us our first note and then simply sit back and listen to us and then join us five minutes later, as it were checking that we’re on the right pitch. So there is quite a lot of work to do on intonation. So it’s beautifully in tune. A lot of it’s very fast, there’s a lot of language, a lot of division, a lot of it from the men in particularly, is extremely high. So that we are learning it with enormous precision very slowly. And now in the later rehearsals, every day we’ll just have to jack up the tempo more and more so we can arrive at the final metronome marks, and of course be able to sing it with some joy rather than with a bit of concern because the text that the choir sings is almost always “praise the Lord, bless the Lord, be generally cheerful in the Lord,” and we better make sure that that’s how we sound.
- So I find both those clips interesting, which is why I played them, because although it’s the Kaddish symphony and although I started with how central Kaddish is to the Jewish tradition, it’s interesting that here were two people who do not happen to be Jewish, who saw this work and I think correctly say as transcending just the Jewish condition to speak to the universal condition, which as I think Bernstein would’ve been particularly proud of, because the symphony, and we’re going to look at little bits of it now, is a vehicle for Bernstein to explore a lifelong concern of personal faith, the elusive concept of peace, the problems of conflict arising from our great human potential for an attraction to destruction. It’s interesting that in this particular connection, what Leonard Bernstein has chosen to do is to argue with God. So it starts off and we’ll hear this, “Oh my father, ancient, hallowed, lonely, disappointed father. Rejected ruler of the universe, handsome, jealous lord and lover, angry, wrinkled, old majesty. I want to pray.” That was the original text. As Simon said, the text was changed.
And this really, there’s an engagement with God. And those of you who know the Torah, the Bible will know that there’s very central to the tradition is the notion of Jacob wrestling with God. And what we are talking about here is an inversion where the Lord has lost faith in man, in human beings, shrieking, dissonant, brass chords follow syncopated, choral passages with furious clapping and taunting shouts of “Amen, Amen, Adonai.” Who is given one last chance, God that is, to renew the covenant. He’s urged to believe, to believe. There’s something quite remarkable here about the tradition of argument. I want to debate that more in a moment, but in order to do so, let’s listen just the first six minutes of the opening of the “Kaddish Symphony”, which of course starts off with these, the 12 tone structure, which Bernstein to a large degree revolted against but had it in the symphony, then the narrator and then the choir intoning the first version of the Kaddish. It’s about six minutes and it’ll give you a real flavour of everything.
[Narrator] O, my Father, ancient, hallowed, Lonely, disappointed Father, Betrayed and rejected Ruler of the Universe, Angry, wrinkled Old Majesty, I want to pray. I want to say Kaddish. My own Kaddish. There may be no one to say it after me. I have so little time, as You well know. Is my end a minute away? An hour? Is there even time to consider the question? It could be here, while we are singing. That we may be stopped, once for all, Cut off in the act of praising You. But while I have breath, however brief, I will sing this final Kaddish for You, For me, and for all these I love Here in this sacred house. I want to pray, and time is short. Magnified and sanctified be the great name. Amen.
[Narrator] Amen! Amen! Did you hear that-
So that just gives you a flavour of it, both in a sense a strange way in which Schoenberg’s kind of music intrudes, perhaps he was right to do that at the beginning with the kind of choir doing the Kaddish in a sort of discombobulating fashion. And what I want to suggest to you, let me just perhaps do it this way, I’ll just take you through the various movements and then I want to make some conceptual points and then we’ll listen to the last bit. So it opens, as I say, in the way we’ve done and we’ve seen that. The second movement is called “Din-Torah.” Basically judgement . Instead of God judging us, Bernstein reverses the position. The human now questions and judges God. After the narrators introduction, the percussion starts with bangings and the Kaddish theme is again hummed. And there’s a significant confrontation in man and God, a complete breakdown. The music actually becomes quite poly tonal. A reflector of the massive conflict between man and God. The third movement, what he basically says is, summarise. So this is the kingdom of heaven, Father, just as you planned it, every immortal cliche in place, but something is fundamentally wrong. And then God is shown the problems of the world and the narrator helps God believe in a new arrangement where God and man understand the fragile independence needed for both to survive. The music builds to the entrance of a boy’s choir singling out again the phrase, “Magnified and sanctified be his great name,” in Hebrew and the voice of children play pivotal roles here again. And then finally there is the final movement where there’s a Kaddish sung by the full choir and a final dissonant chord. And fundamentally, if you ask yourself, what is this music about?
It’s invoking, and this is the key point. It’s invoking the Jewish tradition of quarrelling with God. It really is about that. That questioning, demanding, even scolding, I’ve said already a number of times in various lectures that the notion that the human being is not entitled to quarrel with God is absolutely antithetical to the tradition. We know that through the time of Abraham quarrelling with God about trying to protect Sodom and Gomorrah. We know that by virtue of the fact that comes quite shortly in our Torah readings, which is at the time of the golden calf where Moses essentially quarrels with God to save the Jewish people. And we think of Job who says, “Thou does seek out my iniquity and search for my sin, although I knowest that I’m not guilty.” So the questioning, not just of God, but of the whole of the Torah itself, arguing about contradictory assertions and laws, which is what Bernstein is invoking, is central to the Jewish tradition. That’s why I’m so upset by the fact that within a framework where we can all accept the broad tradition, we can’t actually seem to accept any longer precisely what he’s talking about, which is the idea of the contradictory nature of life and how the Jewish tradition is always one of questioning, demanding and even scolding. And what he’s saying here is effectively this, “I’m struggling with belief, I’m struggling with disbelief.” “How?” he’s saying, and that’s really central to what he was talking about, “How is it possible to actually believe after the Holocaust when God was silent in causing many Jews to question or lose their faith?”
At the same time, Bernstein was also confronted at the time he wrote with the possibility of nuclear annihilation, which was very much alive at the time, the peak of the Cold War. And then of course we know that a few weeks before the symphony’s premier in ‘63, Kennedy was assassinated. And so what Bernstein is doing here is whatever his blasphemies, he basically praises God. But on the other hand, he’s in dispute with God because he’s struggling with the notion of faith. Let me give you just a soupcon of the text. “Are you listening, Father, you know who I am, your image that’s stubborn reflection of you. That man is shattered, extinguished, banish, and now he runs free, free to play with his new found fire, avid for death, voluptuous complete and final death. Lord God of hosts I call you to account. You let this happen Lord of hosts.” And what he’s basically saying is that heaven is an immortal cliche. Why can God not believe in human beings, in human creation? You know, in other words, the speaker treats God as a needy child who needs comfort, who needs dreams of man’s greatness to restore himself. In short, this is a question to reverse the Heschel argument of God in search of man, of man in search of God who’s not listening and who has allowed this all to happen.
And this is essentially why the “Kaddish Symphony” is so interesting because it is about the crisis of faith. And if you think that was important in 1960s, my goodness, I’m finding it and I’m sure many of you are finding it extraordinarily difficult at this particular point in time to conceive of faith in such a difficult set of circumstances. And that’s what the symphony was about and that’s why it’s strident. And that’s why in the six minutes I’ve played you, the Kaddish is used in a way to basically pay attention to the fundamental problem of can we really magnify your name under these circumstances. Let me play, firstly let us put up a text of the last movement of the last little bit and then I’ll play you a couple of minutes there right before concluding. If we could have the text. So this is a text of the finale and if I can just read it to you. “Good morning, Father. We can still be immortal, You and I, bound by our rainbow. That is our covenant, and to honour it Is our honour, not quite the covenant We bargained for, so long ago, At the time of that Other, First Rainbow. But then I was only Your helpless infant, Arms hard around You, dead without You. We have both grown older, You and I. And I am not sad, and You must not be sad. Unfurrow Your brow, look tenderly again At me, at us, at all these children Of God here in this sacred house. And we shall look tenderly back to You.
O my Father, Lord of Light! Beloved Majesty, my Image, my Self! We are one, after all, You and I, Together we suffer, together exist, And forever will recreate each other. Recreate, recreate each other! Suffer, and recreate each other.” And then of course there’s a soprano solo boy choir chorus which says, which I’ve spoken about. It’s fascinating to me that when I read this, this is the finale in which Leonard Bernstein is basically saying, “We are in this together God and we need each other and somehow together we will recreate the world and we’ll recreate each other. It fascinated me when I read this again thinking of something that I’d spoken to you about when I spoke about Bernstein and his love of Mahler. Because I think I’ve already spoken at some length about the second Mahler symphony, the "Resurrection Symphony,” which essentially comes to the same theme from a very different route, or route as you would say in America. And it’s really interesting to me how Bernstein and Marin Alsop basically says he partly borrowed from Mahler and then his own imagination to give us this quite unique affirmation of, if you wish, a contestation of faith and a question of to what extent can we remain faithful to a tradition given in his case, the context of the Holocaust, nuclear annihilation, assassinations of people like Kennedy, et cetera. In our context, given October 7 and given everything that’s going on now, in a sense, the same questions arise and whether we come to the same answers or the same optimism of recreation, I do not know, but it did seem to me when I played the symphony back to myself and listened and read this text, it seemed to me that it has more than a passing resemblance and significance for our contemporary world. I’m just going to play you the last few minutes of the last movement, it was done by the Vienna Philharmonic. The subtitles I think are in German, but Bernstein himself conducted. We can get the last clip.
Look tenderly again at me, at us, at all these children of God here in this sacred house. And we shall look tenderly back to You. O my Father, Lord of Light! Beloved Majesty: my image, my self! We are one, after all, You and I, together we suffer, together exist, and forever will recreate each other. Recreate, recreate each other! Suffer, and recreate each other!
I’m afraid the music has got all funny, so I’m going to leave it there. But this is the children’s choir now playing the final Kaddish of the symphony. And so in conclusion, why I wanted to draw your attention to it because it seems to me a remarkable work in its own way of taking Kaddish and essentially using music, as it were, and text to give us something entirely reflective of a condition which Bernstein felt at the time and which seems to me still to be so. And when you say, “Good morning, Father, we can still be immortal. You and I are bound by a rainbow. That’s our covenant, honour it. Is our covenant not quite the covenant we bargained for so long ago.” How fascinating that what he’s talking about is we talk about a covenant between the Jewish people and God. That is central to the tradition. But here we talking about a renewal of faith, that man and God will suffer and recreate each other. That in a sense that is the process which Bernstein thought was essential if we were going to get through this. And I would think that you would agree with me that although it’s not played often because it’s not the most easy music to listen to, it speaks considerably to the human condition, not just in the 1960s but today. So thank you very much for listening. I usually, when I lecture this, of course, in an audience, you could play the whole thing and we can have an hour and a half, alas, my sound broke down at the end, and secondly, it’s much more difficult this way. But I do wish you well and may we all struggle together to recreate a world of peace or as they say at the end of Kaddish, Peace for all of us and all for Israel. Good night.