FREDERICK JACOBI: FIVE WORKS
FREDERICK
JACOBI (1891-1952)
Concerto for
Violoncello and Orchestra (1932)
Sabbath Evening
Service (excerpts) (1931)
Hagiographa
(1938)
Ahavat olam
(1945)
Two Pieces
in Sabbath Mood (1946)
Born
in San Francisco of German-Jewish descent, Frederick Jacobi was a composer in
the general classical music tradition whose reputation today rests largely on
his Jewish related compositions, both liturgical and secular. In addition,
he was one of the few American composers of his time to use indigenous sources
in his works, reflecting his intense interest in some of the ethnic music that
he felt contributed to the creation of an aggregate American musical tradition.
Just as Bartók collected the folk
songs of Hungary, Jacobi, in the 1920s, visited Pueblo and Navajo tribes in
Arizona and New Mexico, absorbing their traditional motifs, rhythms and sonorities,
and subsequently using them in a number of his concert works.
His
other major ethnic musical interest, which eventually became his primary
inspiration and marked his most significant works, arose from his own Judaic
heritage. His “discovery” of his Jewish roots was probably ignited in 1930,
when he was commissioned by Lazare Saminsky, music director of New York’s Temple Emanu-El, to compose a complete setting of the Sabbath Eve Service for
that congregation. Despite a lack of formal Jewish education or religious
background, Jacobi seems to have been motivated from that point on to explore
the artistic possibilities inherent in Jewish historical, religious and musical
tradition, and soon gravitated towards biblical lore and liturgical subjects as
inspiration for his creative endeavors, both sacred and secular, vocal and
instrumental. As Milken Archive Artistic Director Neil Levin points out, “In
turning to Jewish musical wellsprings and thereby extending American music to
include established Jewish elements and references, Jacobi was often considered
part of the lineage of such composers as Ernest Bloch and Aaron Copland…who
enriched American music in part by Jewish content or allusions.”
Jacobi’s
Concerto for Violoncello and Orchestra was written in 1932, shortly
after the premiere of his Sabbath Evening Service at Temple Emanu-El, and could
be considered almost a spiritual outgrowth of that work. Inspired by the Book
of Psalms, it is a series of meditations on the feelings expressed in, and
evoked by, Psalms 90, 91 and 92. Each of the three movements is prefaced in
the score by a quotation from those texts, which project an undeniable spirit
of confidence in God’s protection. In the program notes for a Cleveland
Orchestra performance of this concerto, the three movements are described as
presenting different aspects of the same religious mood: the tender, the
buoyant, and the poignantly dramatic. This concerto is not a virtuoso display
vehicle for the soloist, but rather an opportunity for intense solo
instrumental singing, spiritual introspection, and reflection.
New
York’s
Temple Emanu-El was probably the first American synagogue to commission serious
20th-century classical composers to write for its liturgy. Four excerpts from
Frederick Jacobi’s Sabbath Evening Service, commissioned by this
prestigious Reform congregation, are heard on this recording. Scored for
baritone cantor and choir, the work is to be performed a cappella, without
organ, reflecting the composer’s desire, as he expressed it, to “seek a return
to the more simple style of the older Jewish ritual.” While the music is
clearly original in melodic and harmonic content, there are echoes of modality
that evoke a common (though not necessarily historically accurate) perception
of antiquity; these modal references are employed with artistic freedom and
ingenuity. The solo recitative passages have definite hints of idiomatic
cantorial ornamentation, always treated with restraint, and the choral sections
feature transparent textures and fluid voice leading.
Jacobi’s
best-known chamber work, Hagiographa (Sacred Writings),
for piano and string quartet, was written in 1938, commissioned
by and dedicated to the legendary patroness of Amerian music, Elizabeth Sprague
Coolidge. The work is a rhapsodic interpretation of episodes and moods from
three biblical books—Job, Ruth and Joshua, featuring musical portraits of their
principal characters. The composer’s own notes describe what he intended to
convey: “In the first movement I endeavored to reproduce the dramatic intensity
of the Book of Job: the sorrows piled high upon the head of the patient Job;
his resignation to them; the advent of his friends; his stormy argument with
God and their final reconciliation. Ruth is a mood-picture, idyllic and
pastoral…Joshua is the siege of Jericho: the battle, the trumpets, the city’s
fall, the hymn of thanksgiving, and the suggestion of a ritualistic dance.
Despite the programmatic content, each of the movements is written in a form
which would be convincing from the purely musical point of view...”
Jacobi’s
Ahavat Olam is a setting for cantor, choir and organ of the
evening prayer text. It was commissioned by Cantor Putterman for the 1945
annual service of new liturgical music at New York’s Park Avenue Synagogue;
that same evening, individual prayer settings by composers including Leonard
Bernstein, Darius Milhaud, and Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco were also presented.
This Ahavat olam exhibits a more traditional flavor than that found in
Jacobi’s earlier Temple Emanu-El service. During the intervening 15 years, he
had become increasingly involved with Jewish liturgical musical concerns, and
the result can be heard in the flow of the solo melismatic cantorial lines in
this setting, as well as the cantorially inspired ornamentation in some of the
choral passages. Appropriately, the setting reflects the twofold Sabbath
spirit of peace and joy.
Two
Pieces in Sabbath Mood (1946) is a two-movement orchestral tone
poem that also depicts the dual spiritual parameters of the Sabbath in Jewish
life and tradition: the tranquility that results from the avoidance of
practical daily concerns; and the mandated experience of uplifting joy on both
personal and social-familial levels. Neil Levin points out that in this work,
”there are several unidentifiable but clearly derivative melodies or melodic
archetypes that recall synagogue chants, modes, and motives; and there are
subtle references to ubiquitous fragments of Jewish folk tunes.”
Frederick
Jacobi studied with Ernest Bloch, Rubin Goldmark and Rafael Joseffy, and
produced, in addition to his Jewish related compositions, piano and violin
concerti, two symphonies, string quartets and other chamber works, solo piano
pieces, art songs and choral works, and a three-act opera. During the years
surrounding the birth of the State of Israel, Jacobi was active in numerous
national Jewish musical organizations, and became increasingly concerned with
the balance between Jewish cultural nationalism and the use of folk elements on
the one hand and artistic originality and imagination on the other. At the
same time, he stressed the importance of preserving elements of the Jewish
musical tradition, such as biblical cantillation, prayer modes and melodic
patterns.