JACK GOTTLIEB: SEVEN WORKS
JACK
GOTTLIEB (b. 1930)
Three Candle Blessings
(1972)
Shalom Aleikhem with Candle Blessing (1975)
Love Songs for Sabbath
(excerpts) (1965)
Set Me As a Seal (1991)
Shout for Joy (1967)
Psalmistry (excerpts)
(rev. 1999)
Y’varekh’kha (1977
The broad spectrum
of Jack Gottlieb’s musical endeavors spans concert and theater works, music
of Jewish inspiration and liturgical compositions, and scholarship of the American
popular idiom. His compositions reflect the duality of his background, education
and creative orientation. Grounded in the typically American vernacular idioms
of jazz, Broadway and popular song, he was also steeped in the Jewish musical
tradition, to which he was introduced by noted choral conductor and composer
Max Helfman; and which subsequently informed his artistic activities. Gottlieb
served as Leonard Bernstein’s assistant at the New York Philharmonic, has edited
his books and scores, and is recognized as a leading authority on Bernstein’s
music. Summing up Mr. Gottlieb’s musical style, Milken Archive Artistic Director
Neil Levin remarks, “An imaginative sense of theater on the highest level permeates
many if not most of his works. With its rhythmic vibrancy, eclectic spirit,
openness, and general mood of optimism, Gottlieb’s music has the thorough ring
of a quintessentially American composer.”
In Mr. Gottlieb’s program
notes for this Milken Archive CD, the composer observes that while the works on
the recording span four decades in his creative life, they are linked by
certain textual symmetries and display an expressive pattern: the more
contemplative music for the Sabbath that occupies the first half contrasts with
livelier Psalm settings in the second half. Separating the two is Set Me
As A Seal, a lively, syncopated setting of texts from the Song of
Songs and the Book of Deuteronomy for chorus, violin and piano
The recording opens with
three works connected to home and synagogue observances of the Sabbath. Three
Candle Blessings, scored for soloists, choir and organ,
celebrates the weekly blessing of the Sabbath candles that is the special
domain of women, and that has also made its way into the Friday evening service
of American reform synagogues. Readings from the Reform prayer book, rendered
here by actress Tovah Feldshuh, have been added to the traditional prayers. In
the second work, Shalom Aleikhem With Candle Blessing, written
for soloists, choir and brass ensemble, Gottlieb has combined the
candle-lighting prayers with the best-known of Sabbath “table hymns,” (z’mirot
in Hebrew), Shalom Aleikhem. Traditionally sung by family and guests
before and after the Friday evening meal, it is presented here in the familiar
tune composed by Rabbi Israel Goldfarb that has achieved almost universal
usage.
Nine vocal and
instrumental sections from Gottlieb’s Friday evening service, Love Songs
for Sabbath, are excerpted on this Milken disc, its world premiere
recording. The piece was commissioned in 1965 by Cantor David Putterman for
his pioneering annual service of new music at New York’s Park Avenue Synagogue,
and is scored for cantor, choir, organ and percussion. Rather than a
functional liturgical service, Gottlieb produced a large-scale work more
suitable for concert performance. He was subsequently persuaded to enhance the
theatrical qualities of this service by adding poetic readings as well as a
dancer to interpret certain passages. In this new dramatic format, which
includes poems by the great medieval Spanish-Hebrew poet Yehuda Halevi, Hannah
Szenesh, and Ranier Maria Rilke, Love Songs for Sabbath was first
performed at the White Plains, New York Jewish Community Center by Cantor
Raymond Smolover, with Felicia Montealegre (Mrs. Leonard Bernstein) as reader
and choreography by Anna Sokolov. On this CD, the reader is again Tovah
Feldshuh.
Shout for Joy is a setting for choir, brass
ensemble and organ of three Psalm texts that are rich in references to both
musical instruments and nature. The composer has responded with musical
suggestions of bird call and rippling water, among similar imitations, and with
the use of three tuned drums in the first and third rhythmically syncopated
sections that, in his own words, “are intended to convey a sense of excitement,
dance, and joy.” This work stems from the 1960s, when ecumenism was in favor,
and was intended for performance in either synagogues or churches as well as in
concert.
This Milken recording
features ten excerpts from another cycle of Psalm settings by Jack Gottlieb,
entitled Psalmistry. Scored for chorus, soloists and jazz
ensemble, and marked by unmistakable echoes of American vernacular idioms, this
work, alternately spirited and lyrical, utilizes several Psalm texts with
musical references, the most famous being the 150th Psalm, in which
many instruments are mentioned. It also includes such familiar texts as the 23rd
Psalm, the 24th (“The earth is the Lord’s”), and the 121st
(“I will lift up my eyes to the mountains”). In his program note, the composer
notes his utilization of “familiar and traditional synagogue chant fragments
and liturgical melodies, treated unconventionally.” While they are employed in
a stylized fashion and may not be readily apparent, he acknowledges that for
him these tunes acted as “catalysts to the creative process…[and] by the same
process, should have meaning, as unifying elements, for the listening process.”
The final work on this CD
is a setting for cantor and choir of the three-fold priestly blessing Y’varekh’kha,
the ancient text intoned during the concluding portion of many
synagogue services.
Jack Gottlieb studied at Brandeis University with noted composers Irving Fine, Harold Shapero and Arthur Berger, and
has acknowledged Copland, Stravinsky, Bernstein and Bartớk as major
influences on his style. Among his works are numerous songs in both “art” and
popular styles, chamber music for various instrumental and vocal combinations,
and a large body of synagogue music. His compositions have been performed by
ensembles and artists from the Boston Symphony and the Vienna Philharmonic as
well as by Seiji Ozawa and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra; Leonard Bernstein;
leading soloists; and a host of cantors, synagogue choirs, and other choral
groups throughout North America. Gottlieb has served as music director at a
major American Reform congregation and as Professor of Music at the School of
Sacred Music of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York. He is an authority, author, and lecturer on the influence of Jewish popular,
folk, theatrical, and even liturgical musical traditions on the development of
American popular music.