Malya Muth
Special to JTNews
In the classic 1927 silent movie The Golem: How He Came into the World, Paul Wegener, the filmmaker and actor in the title role, retold the story from rabbinic legend of the Golem, the giant clay monster who stood by to save the Jewish citizens of 16th-century Prague from persecution. The Golem was a folktale grounded in Kabbalistic mysticism, its retelling growing out of the need to address and confront the violent anti-Semitism that roiled 1920s Europe.
A showing of this film, accompanied by music written by Israeli composer Betty Olivero, will open the 11th season for Music of Remembrance, the Seattle-based chamber music organization dedicated to remembering Holocaust poets and musicians. Heading into its second decade, Music of Remembrance is taking a different tack in approach to its concerts.
The organization’s first decade emphasized the diverse populations victimized in the Holocaust: Jewish men, women, and children, gays, gypsies and political dissidents. MOR has taken on seldom-discussed events and populations by commissioning new works like Jake Heggie’s one-act musical drama, For a Look or a Touch, which explored the persecution of homosexuals during the Third Reich, or Lori Laitman’s poignant setting of poems written by children who lived in Terezìn and later died in Auschwitz.
This year however, according to Artistic Director Mina Miller, MOR is exploring new mediums and focusing “on the complex question of Jewish identity, but with a truly diverse set of artistic contributors.” In the first concert of this new season, German conductor Guenter Buchwald will conduct the score written by Olivero that will accompany The Golem.
This work and screening is a project that Miller said she has wanted to present for many years. She feels that now the timing is right, with a solid, loyal subscription base, to do something a little more daring that also reaches out beyond the Jewish community — in this case to Seattle’s sophisticated film community.
Maestro Buchwald, himself a composer, violinist and pianist in addition to conducting, has pioneered the renaissance of silent film nearly single-handedly by accompanying and composing scores to silent films for over 30 years. His arrival in Seattle is a much-anticipated event for the Seattle International Film Festival, Miller told JTNews by phone. Buchwald was scheduled to give a lecture for SIFF about The Golem and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, another silent film he conducts, on October 30. A screening of Caligari — with the conductor improvising music on violin and piano — will follow the lecture.
Buchwald expressed, via e-mail from his home in Frieburg, Germany, his reaction to Olivero’s score for The Golem.
“The music,” he said, “is a revelation to me. I always have [this music] in my mind when I improvise to the film for my own use. From the first moment on, the music brings you into the story.”
One aspect he especially appreciates is Olivero’s sensitivity to the emotion in the film, he wrote. “Betty’s music comes from the silence, the use of forte is just on those parts where the story, the action, the colors are “˜loud’ and heavy.”
He explained that the music breathes with the movement in the film and that the harmonic colors — coming from a small chamber ensemble — engage the listener in such a way that draws them into the action.
The score was written very precisely. with ornamentation, for Israeli clarinetist Giora Feidman, who recorded the original soundtrack. But Olivero always intended to give the soloist freedom for personal interpretation. During the world premiere by the Arditti String Quartet in Vienna in 1997, at a moment during the film when the Golem runs out of control, the strings must play the most difficult agitato, fast, rhythmical complex part. The performers were initially concerned about those nearly un-executable scales and chords (they ultimately mastered, note by note, how it is composed). But, as Olivero explained to them, “all I want is that fast chaotic, aggressive character of the music. You do not have to play all the notes. Excuse me, but I had to put something on the paper to show what I want.” How very considerate!
Finally, Buchwald commented, “you can imagine that the execution of the score demands a high level of input from the players, and not just reading and playing a score. Every performance will be a unique moment. That is what makes it so exciting, and much more than a normal cinema-going.”
Betty Olivero came up with the idea to score the film when she was in Munich about 15 years ago and had a chance meeting with a woman involved in restoring The Golem. Struck by the beauty of the film as well as remembering the powerful story from her childhood, she was moved to write a score for clarinet and string quartet.
“The body movement of the actors, the exaggerated expressions, the over-acting — all so characteristic of the silent movie acting style — seemed to me like a ballet that music should be set to,” she said. “It was like writing music to an existing choreography.”
Olivero was born in Tel Aviv, attended the Rubin Academy in Jerusalem, and currently lives in Israel where she is the composer-in-residence for the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra. However, much of her career was spent in Florence, Italy where she studied with composer Luciano Berio.
Her works tend to blend traditional and ethnic music and borrow from contrasting influences of East and West, holy and secular. In doing so, she feels that the result is a development, adaption, transformation, assimilation and re-composition where the music reemerges as a new form and in new contexts. The style for The Golem combines music from Jewish folk and klezmer traditions throughout the centuries combined with German Expressionism.
The characters in the film are distinguished by their own distinct themes, which then progress through the film so that as the drama develops, the themes become more interwoven. Paul Wegener’s depiction of The Golem has often been perceived as anti-Semitic, partly because he later went on to produce films for the Nazi party. Miller feels strongly that this film is not.
“Many of the typical derogatory symbols of Jews are not present in this film,” she said. “It’s hard for our present-day audience to watch the film from our perspective in history, but to remember that at the time the film was made, viewers were unaware of what was yet to be in regard to the Holocaust.”
Also on the Music of Remembrance program will be Simon Sargon’s composition “Before the Ark” (1987) for violin and piano. Sargon, currently a professor of composition at Southern Methodist University, holds degrees from Brandeis University and the Juilliard School of Music in New York. As director of music at Temple Emanu-El in Dallas for over 25 years, he led one of the most distinguished programs of Jewish music in America. This is Sargon’s second presentation with Music of Remembrance. Two years ago we heard a performance of his “Shemá” for soprano and chamber ensemble with singer Maureen McKay.
The third composer featured in this program will be Lior Navok, an Israeli whose composition “Found in a Train Station” for soprano and chamber ensemble is receiving its U.S. premiere. The text for the work is a note, found at a Polish train station during World War II, written by a mother forced to board a Nazi deportation train, pleading for a righteous person to protect her very young child who she has agonizingly decided to leave behind.
The music portrays the running thoughts, passiveness, stored-anger,
remorse and hope that ran in the mind of the mother, facing this heart-breaking dilemma. Miller described the music as “very understated and almost evoking sounds that feel dreamlike, eerie. And the vocal part is as much acting as singing.” She commented on the unusual use of mandolin in the chamber ensemble, which also includes cello, clarinet, piano and soprano. Soprano Vira Slywotzky, a new Seattle Opera Young Artist, will sing the mother’s words.