Chamber Music Clarinet in Eb, Piano
SKU: CF.W2700
Composed by Martin Bresnick. Sws. Score and parts. Carl Fischer Music #W2700. Published by Carl Fischer Music (CF.W2700).
ISBN 9781491167144. UPC: 680160926220. 9x12 inches.
The title of this work for violin and piano by Martin Bresnick is a play on the words "suite" and "bittersweet." Each of the four movements is based on a Yiddish folk song, which in English translate to On the Road, My Resting Place, Black Cat, and Dona, Dona. Each of the four pieces is primarily based on a Jewish folk song, but re-envisions them in a modern context, akin to Bartok and Kodaly. The composer noted, “I found it a very challenging, yet touching way to remain in contact with some part of my own past that I don’t usually reveal.” The title references the difficult (bitter) and pleasant (sweet) aspects of experiencing the tumultuous history of a people through their folk music.
Oyfn Veg (On the Road)This story was told to Itsik Manger, composer of the original Oyfn Veg, by Marek Edelman, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marek_Edelman). Edelman was a surviving commander of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (the armed resistance by the Jews that lasted three weeks and kept the S.S. from continuing their evacuation of the Ghetto):The Warsaw Ghetto was in its death throes. In order to subdue the remaining Ghetto fighters, the Germans began throwing incendiary bombs into the buildings. The heat became unbearable. Thousands burned to death. We had little ammunition left. Only one choice: to abandon our bunkers and try to make our way outside, to the tunnels that led to the Aryan side. Coming out of our bunker, we were stunned. The whole Ghetto was in flames. This must have been what Jerusalem looked like when the Romans destroyed it, what Rome must have looked like when Nero burned it. Then suddenly a girl in our band began to recite, or better, to mutter: ‘Oyfn veg shteyt a boym/ shteyt er ayngeboygn/ Ale feygl funem boym/ zenen zich tzefloygn. . .’* She barely muttered it, but we all heard it. And we felt that not only had the birds departed, but everyone—fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters...Manger added: “I wrote that song in the 30s, in tribute to my mother, a simple woman who couldn’t read or write but had an ocean of love, love that could become too heavy for even the strongest wings. But the song itself now belongs to that unknown girl in the Warsaw Ghetto. She hallowed it in the last seconds of her life in the glare of the Ghetto flames.” * On the road stands a tree, all bent over. All the birds in the tree have flown away… Oyfn Veg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45KYqWpZKsoCommissioned by YIVO (https://www.yivo.org/) Mayn Rue Plats (My Resting Place)Morris Rosenfeld (1862–1923), one of the “Sweat Shop Poets,” described the brutal conditions of the garment industry, where he himself had worked for years. In his poem Mayn Rue Plats (My Resting Place) Rosenfeld captured the dismal world of the modern industrial worker. If we seek the poet among of the pleasures of youth, flowers, and singing birds, we are told, “you will not find me there.” He asks his beloved, if she loves him with a true love “to make sweet” his resting place. Mayn Rue Plats https://jwa.org/media/lyrics-to-mayn-rue-platshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJkBGa3dxQM Chorny Kot/Shvartse Kats (Black Cat)Chorny Kot or Shvartse Kats is a song about a black cat that is heard as often in Russian as in Yiddish. A black cat is harassed and reviled for no other reason than people’s superstitions about the shade of her fur. The cruelty done to her is due only to human ignorance. No black cat has been shunned by another cat because of her color. Chorny Kot https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09gehjW9sxkShvartse Kats https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXx0trItIVU Dona, Dona Dona, Dona is a song about the fate of a bird, a calf and the driver who must deliver the bound calf to market while the bird flies freely in the sky. All the while the wind laughs in the corn, laughs the whole day through and half the night. Why wasn’t the calf born a bird, free to fly away, asks the driver? Why? Why? Dona, Dona https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIfRCT0F48QDona, Dona is dedicated to my dear friend Elly Toyoda, violinist, who gave the first performance of this final piece in my Bitter Suite.
