PROGRAM NOTE
In the spring of 1984, two happy moments in my life converged together to bring about the creation of Amichai Songs. First, I was commissioned by the Eastman School of Music to write a work for the great mezzo-soprano Jan DeGaetani (1933–1989). Ms. DeGaetani, as it turned out, had just formed an ensemble together with Philip West, Martha McGaughey and Arthur Haas on oboe, viola da gamba and harpsichord, respectively. The group’s idea was to prepare a program for the following year (1985), in celebration of the multiple centennials of Bach, Handel, Scarlatti, and Schutz, and to include the premiere of a new work for this essentially baroque-style instrumentation. Having long been an avid admirer of DeGaetani’s magnificent voice and artistry, I was overjoyed at the prospect of writing a work for her, even though it meant familiarizing myself with an instrumental combination I would have, most likely, never fathomed on my own.
It was just then that I had come across a book of love poems in a bilingual edition by the Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai. Reading these poems both in Hebrew and in English made me feel that I had met here a poet one could spend a lifetime setting to music. Because my commission’s stipulation was that the poetry be in English, I consulted with Amichai himself, who assured me that he had no objection to my setting Ted Hughes’ excellent translation, rather than the Hebrew original. If anything, Amichai’s reaction reinforced my own sense that these poems were only coincidentally about the sound of any particular language. Much more profoundly, they are about human emotion, raw and stark, cutting across time and place.
In retrospect, there is no doubt in my mind that the work’s musical language is, to varying degrees, influenced by my own response not only to the content of the words, but also to Jan DeGaetani’s exceptional vocal sound, to music I recall when conjuring up the image of the viola da gamba and the harpsichord, and to the special sound and rhythm, lean yet sensual, of the Hebrew language, in which this poetry was initially conceived.
The overall shape of this four-song cycle has the violent second movement as its climactic centerpiece. A brief Interlude and an ‘Aria’ for English horn and gamba bridge the third and fourth movements together. The first performance of Amichai Songs took place in Rochester, New York, on October 1, 1985, at the Eastman School of Music.
—Shulamit Ran
Amichai Songs
I. On This Evening
On this evening I think again
of the many days
that have sacrificed themselves
for just one night of love.
I think about this waste and this waste’s fruit.
about abundance and about fire
and how without pain—time…
II. People Use Each Other
People use each other
as a healing for their pain. They put each other
on their existential wounds,
on eye, on mound, on lips and open hand.
They hold each other hard and won’t let go.
III. My God, the Soul
My God, the soul
you gave me
is smoke—
from never-ending burnings
of memories of love.
The minute we are born
we start burning them
and so on until the smoke
dies, like smoke.
IV. Late in Life
Late in life I came to you
filtered through many doors
reduced by stairs
till almost nothing remained of me…
From Love Poems by Yehuda Amichai, translated from Hebrew by Yehuda Amichai and Ted Hughes. Harper & Row, publishers. Used by permission.
INFORMATION
Commissioned by Eastman School of Music for Jan DeGaetani
Premiere: October 1, 1985
Eastman School of Music,
Kilbourn Hall
Rochester, NY
Jan DeGaetani, mezzo soprano
Philip West, oboe/English horn
Martha McGaughey, viola da gamba
Arthur Haas, harpsichord
Duration: c. 16’
SHEET MUSIC
Available from your favorite sheet music seller or directly from Theodore Presser: here or here.