Word: kaddish
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Leonard Bernstein is a man of so many parts that he finds it hard to find time for the part that is serious composer. He had not composed a work since the Kaddish symphony two years ago. But he could not say no when the Bishop of Chichester asked him to create a piece for the 1965 Tri-Choir Festival to be held at the ancient cathedral in Sussex, England. Last week a capacity audience of the excited and curious packed into New York's Philharmonic Hall to hear the Chichester Psalms...
...stood mutely at the edge of a shallow ditch where the Nazi SS troops had burned corpses on pyres when the crematoria were filled. Traces of ash and bone could still be seen. One German picked up a yellowed, half-burned page printed in Hebrew. It was the Kaddish-the prayer for the dead. One of the accused, former SS Dr. Franz Lucas, who is charged with making life-or-death selections of incoming prisoners, voluntarily accompanied the court officials. Said Lucas: "It was my duty to come. Everyone who has the opportunity should come here and see what racism...
Taking such a sharp and familiar tone with God would be called chutzpah in Yiddish, but what Leonard Bernstein intended for his Third Symphony was a musical statement of Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead. Bernstein's Kaddish was commissioned for the Boston Symphony Orchestra's 75th anniversary eight years ago, but it was not until three years ago that Lenny was gripped with "this horrible sense of imminent destruction," and finally buckled down to work. Last week Boston finally played its Kaddish...
With such an ensemble, the Boston was committed to Kaddish up to its ears. Bernstein had come to town to cajole and kibitz while poor Munch tried to lead rehearsals. "Beaucoup mieux, Charles," Lenny called down from the balcony, then finally took the baton himself for one of the last run-throughs. "Wonderful! Marvelous! Beyond my greatest expectation!" Lenny cried when all was ready. And indeed, when the music dissolved into the curious whimper that closes the work, Boston's well-dowagered matinee audience gave Bernstein and all the performers a nonstop 15-minute ovation...
Sheepish Thunder. Boston liked Kaddish better than Tel Aviv did when Bernstein took it there for its December premiere. Few Israelis could accept what they called "this American Kaddish"; when the cantor chants the Kaddish in the synagogue, it is with a cry, not with the hand-clapping Lenny prescribed for the choruses. Said one Israeli critic: "It's philosophy, it's drama, it may even be music, but it certainly is not Kaddish...