Ravinia 2022, Issue 3

A “Rose of the Winds” from Joannes Janssonius’s Atlantis majoris quinta pars, orbem maritimum seu omnium marium orbis terrarium (c. 1650) this hymn as the “Mother’s Lament for Good Friday.” The Lebanese singer Nouhad Wadie’ Haddad, known as Fairuz (b. 1935), issued a very popular recording of “Wa Habibi.” Goli- jov included his arrangement in the song cy- cle Ayre for soprano and chamber orchestra, written for Dawn Upshaw on a commission from Carnegie Hall. II. K’in Sventa Ch’ul Me’tik Kwadalupe ( Ritu- al for the Holy Mother of Guadalupe ). David Lewiston, an English collector of global tra- ditional music, recorded “K’in Sventa Ch’ul Me’tik Kwadalupe” for the Explorer Series on Nonesuch Records ( Mexico: Fiestas of Chiapas & Oaxaca , 1976). Golijov included a sample of this recording in his setting for the Kronos Quartet’s album Nuevo (2002). The Miracle of Our Lady of Guadalupe weaves more flowers into Golijov’s Rose of the Winds . Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin (1474– 1548)—a member of the Chichimeca people living in Cuautitlán (part of today’s Mexico City) and one of the first indigenous converts to Christianity—received a vision of the Vir- gin Mary on Tepeyac Hill while walking to mass. She instructed Juan Diego to ask the bishop to build a shrine in her honor at that location. The bishop demanded proof, and Juan brought roses he found flowering on Te- peyac in the middle of winter. As he dropped the roses to the floor, the image of the Virgin Mary miraculously appeared on the front of his tilma , a simple peasant’s cloak. Our Lady of Guadalupe has been honored by a church, basilica, and shrine near Tepey- ac—one of the most visited pilgrimage sites in Christendom—since the 16th century. The Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe is celebrated annually on December 12. Juan Diego spent the last years as a hermit living in a hut near the original chapel, where he was eventually buried. Pope John Paul II beatified Juan Di- ego Cuauhtlatoatzin on May 6, 1990, and can- onized him on July 31, 2002, in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe—the first indigenous saint from the Americas. III. Tancas Serradas a Muru ( Walls Are Encircling the Land ). Melchiorre Mureno (1803–54), popularly known as the “Homer of Sardinia” for his blindness and poetic output, wrote the lyrics to “Tancas Serradas a Muru.” His father’s death and imprisonment left the family in a state of poverty and oppression, topics his poetry confronted. In “Tancas Serradas a Muru,” Mureno addressed the illegal seizure of land: “Walls are encircling the land / Seized with greed and in haste, / If Heaven was on Earth / They would grab it too!” Golijov included his arrangement in Ayre , which soprano Dawn Upshaw recorded in 2005 with The Andalucian Dogs. IV. Aiini Taqtiru ( My Eyes Weep ). Golijov in- structed the instrumental performers to play this Christian Arab melody from the Easter Service “like a Gregorian litany, rubato and with slight ‘vocal’ swells.” V. Tekyah ( A Place for Mourning ). A consor- tium of broadcast corporations in England, Poland, Canada, and Germany co-produced a television special commemorating the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Aus- chwitz-Birkenau in 2005. Recorded on loca- tion at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial, Oświęcim, Poland, the award-winning Ho- locaust—A Music Memorial Film from Aus- chwitz featured historic photographs and film footage, interviews with Holocaust survivors about the role of music in the concentration camp, and live performances of the Introi- tus from Mozart’s Requiem, a Chopin waltz and mazurka, an extract from Steve Reich’s Different Trains , the lament for the dead “El Male Rachamim” (God Full of Compassion) from the Jewish liturgy, a movement from Henryk Górecki’s Symphony No. 3 (“Sym- phony of Sorrowful Songs”), the “Vocalise for the Angel who Announces the End of Time” from Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time , an excerpt from Viktor Ullmann’s opera The Emperor from Atlantis , and Bach’s Chaconne from the Partita No. 2 for violin. The soundtrack contained one newly com- missioned composition to underscore the desolate penultimate sequence of the film, which takes place in the woods (Birkenau translates as “Valley of the Birches”) where prisoners waited before being forced into the gas chambers. That haunting musical score was Golijov’s Tekyah ( A Place for Mourning ) for brass, clarinet, accordion, and twelve sho- fars, the ram’s horn trumpet played on Jewish High Holy Days. The accordion player, Mi- chael Ward-Bergeman, recalled the recording session: “We performed in a small forest at the edge of the former concentration camp, behind the numerous empty barracks. A freshly fallen snow had left the ground and trees white. When the breeze blew, snow fell lightly from the branches. It was quiet.” LEONARD BERNSTEIN (1918–1990) Symphony No. 3 ( Kaddish ) Scored for four flutes, alto flute, and piccolo, two oboes and English horn, alto saxophone, two clarinets in B-flat and A, E-flat clarinet, and bass clarinet, two bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, trumpet in D and three trumpets in C, three trombones, tuba, harp, piano, celesta, timpani, vibraphone, xylophone, glockenspiel, three side drums, bass drum, hand drum (Israeli), two suspended cymbals, crash cymbals, finger cymbals, antique cymbals, tam-tam, three bongos, three temple blocks, woodblock, sandpaper blocks, raps, whip, ratchet, triangle, maracas, claves, tambourine, chimes, strings, mixed chorus, children’s choir, speaker, and solo soprano The Kaddish expresses praise, celebrates life, and calls for a return of peace during Jew- ish prayer services. In its various forms, this prayer is chanted at the conclusion of major parts of the service, during periods of mourn- ing, on anniversaries of a death, at the end of study or recitation of Talmudic literature, and at the graveside. The largest portion of its text is in Aramaic, the language of the common people during the Second Temple period when the prayer was written, while the final call for peace represents a later Hebrew addition. Leonard Bernstein selected this complex, pro- found prayer as the subject of his third and fi- nal symphony. Commissioned by the Kousse- vitzky Foundation for Charles Munch and the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1955, Kaddish (Symphony No. 3) was not completed until eight years later, a delay caused primarily by Bernstein’s enormous responsibilities as mu- sic director of the New York Philharmonic. In the interim, ideas for a musical portrayal of mankind’s crisis of faith began to gel in his imagination. Something more than spirituality, though, may have motivated the rebelliousness and reconciliation communicated through this symphony. Remarks delivered at a 70th birth- day celebration for his father Samuel on Janu- ary 7, 1962, describe a son’s defiance against both earthly and heavenly fathers: “Every son, at one point or other, defies his father, fights him, departs from him, only to return to him—if he is lucky, closer and more secure than before. Again, we see the parallel with God: Moses protesting against God, arguing, fighting to change God’s mind. So, the child defies the father and something of that defi- ance also remains throughout his life.” All protestation and distancing from God re- solve in the Kaddish prayer. However, Bern- stein needed a companion text that could ade- quately capture the disorientation he perceived in contemporary society. After considering poems by Robert Lowell and the young Jewish writer Frederick Seidel, Bernstein decided to write his own narrative. With typical theatrical flamboyance, the composer-turned-poet craft- ed a provocative, fist-shaking disputation with God. At the height of his anger, frustrated and near violence, the speaker bellows: “Your cov- enant! Your bargain with Man! Tin God! Your bargain is tin! It crumples in my hand!” The speaker shares a dream—a rainbow of man’s own making, a new covenant—with God. In due course, man and God reconcile under a renewed pledge. “We are one, after all, You and I: Together we suffer, together exist. And for- ever will recreate each other. Recreate, recreate each other! Suffer, and recreate each other!” While orchestrating the final Amen and pre- paring for a Young People’s Concert by the Leonard Bernstein RAVINIA MAGAZINE • JULY 18 – JULY 31, 2022 46