Consequential new music from Paul Schoenfield premiered in Seattle

In a talk before Monday’s Music of Remembrance concert composer Paul Schoenfield said, “I don’t think my music aspires to be anything more [than entertainment].” Schoenfield’s assertion probably startled the handful of people who had arrived to hear the composer talk about the primary piece on the night’s program, the composer’s own Ghetto Songs.

Later in the talk Schoenfield expanded on his view, “Philosophically, I am against the idea of writing music that turns the audience off. They are paying money to hear a concert if not time.”

Ghetto Songs, is the second work commissioned by Music of Remembrance. The first piece, Camp Songs, was performed earlier this decade, recorded for the Innova label, and was a finalist for the Pullitzer Prize in music. For both works, Schoenfield used poems penned during the Holocaust. Six of Mordecai Gebirtig’s poems were used for Ghetto Songs. Schoenfield sets Gebirtig’s poems to music for violin (Mikhail Schmidt), cello (Josh Roman), bass (Jonathan Green), clarinet (Laura DeLuca), and piano (Paul Schoenfield). Vocals are divided between a baritone (Morgan Smith) and mezzo-soprano (Angela Niederloh). Gebirtig’s poems were written primarily while he was captive in the Krakow Ghetto. The tone of each poem is varied, encompassing despair, anxiety, hope, anger, indignation and even love.

The first poem, “Shifrele’s Portrait,” introduces the complex emotional terrain of Gebirtig’s poetry. On the one had, the baritone wonders anxiously where his daughter has gone. In response, he imagines what his daughter says back to him. The mezzo-soprano enters with, “Daddy dear! I know that you are sad, but the war won’t last too very long.”

There is no way to escape the gravity of the Holocaust and the context for Gebirtig’s poems. Schoenfield hinted at his own struggle with the subject matter. Schoenfield said, “It bothers me…using the material as an art form or entertainment. I got the okay, but if I hadn’t I wouldn’t have done it. It still leaves a bad taste in my mouth.”

For “Moments of Despair,” the second poem in the series, Schoenfield musters a rage filled movement that embeds Gebirtig’s powerful words: “What will become of us? What will be our fate?” And, “No peace or solace, Just hardship and pain.” With music reflective of Schoenfield’s familiar folk and jazz tinged idiom. Allusions to these influences are abundant. It didn’t take too long for me to imagine the music, without the vocal parts, being performed in a jazz club or some other alternative venue. “Our Springtime” is set to music recalling Shostakovich’s Op.67 Piano Trio. Schoenfield turns the registers upside down, evoking the bitterness associated with the renewal of Spring surrounded by the oppression of the Krakow Ghetto. Gebirtig writes, “Springtime, already! It will soon be May…One giant graveyard, the Earth.”

So it goes for six movements. Complex, emotional poetry, wrapped in equally complicated instrumental music. Schoenfield seems to assign moods to each instrument. The strings embody despair. The piano and clarinet hope. Both groupings come together when the poems are at their most strident. It is in these moments Schoenfield instills the music with rambunctious melodies, spun from his diverse musical background.