Two Hebrew Songs

Program Note:

French composer Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) demonstrates the easy diffusion of cultural ideas through music. Born in the Basque region of southern France, Ravel’s earliest contact with Arabic culture would come from his mother, who lived most of her life in Madrid. And though he lived nearly his entire life in Paris, he maintained a special connection to his mother and his vivid memories of her singing Spanish folksongs. Added to that influence is a larger aesthetic interest in “exotic” (i.e., non-European) music and art which Ravel shared with most figures in his generation. Alongside a musical setting of Five Popular Greek Melodies and the tale of Shéhérazade, Ravel completed Two Hebrew Songs in May 1914. The first, titled “Kaddisch,” refers to the veneration of God’s name in Hebrew scripture; kaddish is often said in the context of mourning. Ravel suggests the intoned style of a Jewish cantor with the chromatic and ornamental vocal line; crucial are the augmented-2nd interval (A-flat to B in the original key) and quick turn figures and grace notes. The piano begins with sparse bell sounds, but later develops into harp-like glissandi. Its companion, “The Eternal Enigma,” sets an anonymous Yiddish text, whose rhetorical ellipses open the door to an equally mysterious and haunting musical setting. The familiar augmented-2nd appears again, supported by gently hypnotic motion in the piano’s left hand. Completed just months before the outbreak of the First World War, Ravel’s songs strike a powerful tone of lament, dramatically presaging the great suffering to come.

(c) Jason Stell