“SCHELOMO” (SOLOMON), HEBREW RHAPSODY FOR VIOLONCELLO AND ORCHESTRA
Mr. Bloch is most inspired when he stands firmly and proudly on Jewish ground. The well equipped composer is seen in all that he writes, but his three Jewish Poems for orchestra, his Psalms, for voice and orchestra, his Schelomo, are far above his what might be called Gentile work, even above his concerto, not to mention the cycloramic America. As he has written in an account of himself and his artistic beliefs, it is the Jewish soul that interests him: “the complex, glowing, agitated soul” that he feels vibrating through the Bible. No wonder that the despair of the Preacher in Jerusalem and the splendor of Solomon alike appealed to him; the monarch in all his glory; the Preacher, who when he looked on all his works that his hands had wrought and on the labor that he had labored to do, could only explain: “And behold, all was vanity, and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the Sun.” And so Mr. Bloch might have taken as a motto for this Hebrew rhapsody the lines of Rueckert:
Solomon! Where is thy throne? It is gone in the wind
. . . . . . . . . . .
Say what is pleasure? A phantom, a mask undefined.
Science? An almond, whereof we can pierce but the rind.
Honor and affluence? Firmans that Fortune hath signed
Only to glitter and pass on the wings of the wind.
Other composers have taken Solomon for their hero; as Handel in his oratorio; Goldmark, representing him as mighty and jealous in The Queen of Sheba; Gounod in the opera similarly entitled, based on the wildly fantastic tale of Gerard de Nerval; there are older operas, but all, or nearly all, are concerned with Grand Turke, the Sultan of the Ottomans. It was left for Mr. Bloch to express in music the magnificence and the pessimistic, despairing philosophy of the ruler to whom is falsely attributed the book, Ecclesiastes. Here is music that does not brook conventional analysis; music that is now purely lyrical, now dramatic, now pictorial; music that rises to gorgeous heights and sinks to the depths; with a conclusion that is not of the Preacher, the pious admonition after summing up the whole matter, but a conclusion voiced by the violoncello: “There is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave, whither thou goest.” Here is no Solomon, lord of all creatures at whose name Afrites and evil genii trembled, the Solomon of the “Thousand Nights and a Night,” here is the monarch that having known power and all the pleasures, enumerating them—even to “the delights of the sons of men, as musical instruments, and that of all sorts”—reasoned that everything was futile; that all was vanity.
One might therefore infer that this rhapsody is distressingly somber, for nothing is more wearisome than a long-drawn-out complaint. The inference would be wrong, for Mr. Bloch has imagined in tones, in superbly exultant measures, the pomp and sumptuousness of the King enthroned. There are orchestral bursts of glorification; between them are recitatives and lyric reflections for the jaded voluptuary, the embittered philosopher. The ingenuity displayed is as remarkable as the individuality, the originality shown by the composer stirred in his soul not only by the story of Solomon; moved mightily by the thought of ancient days, the succeeding trials and persecution of his race. More than once in the rhapsody, if there is a suggestion of Solomon’s court and temple, there is also the suggestion of the Wailing Wall.
Schelomo was composed at Geneva, Switzerland, in the first two months of 1916. With the Trois poèmes juifs (composed in 1916) and the symphony Israel (1913-18), it is that portion of Mr. Bloch’s work that is peculiarly Hebraic in character. In a letter to the writer of these notes in 1917, Mr. Bloch wrote that the Psalms, Schelomo, and Israel were more representative than the Jewish Poems because they came from the passion and the violence that he believed to be characteristics of his nature. “It is not my purpose, not my desire, to attempt a ‘reconstitution’ of Jewish music, or to base my works on melodies more or less authentic. I am not an archæologist. I hold it of first importance to write good, genuine music, my music. It is the Jewish soul that interests me, the complex, glowing, agitated soul, that I feel vibrating throughout the Bible; the freshness and naïveté of the Patriarchs; the violence that is evident in the prophetic books; the Jew’s savage love of justice; the despair of the Preacher in Jerusalem; the sorrow and the immensity of the Book of Job; the sensuality of the Song of Songs. All this is in us; all this is in me, and it is the better part of me. It is all this that I endeavor to hear in myself and to transcribe in my music: the venerable emotion of the race that slumbers way down in our soul.”
The Musical Quarterly of January, 1921, published a translation by Theodore Baker of Guido M. Gatti’s estimate of Schelomo contributed to La Critica musicale of April-May, 1920:
“The Hebrew rhapsody for solo violoncello with orchestra bears the name of the great king Solomon. In this, without taking thought for development and formal consistency, without the fetters of a text requiring interpretation, he has given free course to his fancy; the multiplex figure of the founder of the Great Temple lent itself, after setting it upon a lofty throne, and chiseling its lineaments, to the creation of a phantasmagorical entourage of persons and scenes in rapid and kaleidoscopic succession. The violoncello, with its ample breadth of phrasing, now melodic and with moments of superb lyricism, now declamatory and with robustly dramatic lights and shades, lends itself to a reincarnation of Solomon in all his glory, surrounded by his thousand wives and concubines, with his multitude of slaves and warriors behind him. His voice resounds in the devotional silence, and the sentences of his wisdom sink into the heart as the seed into a fertile soil: ‘Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, ... all is vanity. What profit hath a man of all his labor which he taketh under the sun? One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.... He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.’... At times the sonorous voice of the violoncello is heard predominant amid a breathless and fateful obscurity throbbing with persistent rhythms, again, it blends in a phantasmagorical paroxysm of polychromatic tones, shot through with silvery clangors and frenzies of exultation. And anon one finds oneself in the heart of a dream-world, in an Orient of fancy, where men and women of every race and tongue are holding argument or hurling maledictions; and now and again we hear the mournful accents of the prophetic seer, under the influence of which all bow down and listen reverently. The entire discourse of the soloist, vocal rather than instrumental, seems like musical expression intimately conjoined with the Talmudic prose. The pauses, the repetitions of entire passages, the leaps of a double octave, the chromatic progressions, all find their analogues in the Book of Ecclesiastes—in the versicles, in the fairly epigraphic reiteration of the admonitions (‘and all is vanity and vexation of spirit’), in the unexpected shifts from one thought to another, in certain crescendi of emotion that end in explosions of anger or grief uncontrolled.”
Schelomo is scored for three flutes (and piccolo), two oboes (and English horn), two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, contra-bassoon, four horns, four trumpets, three trombones and tuba, kettledrums, tambourine, side drum, bass drum, cymbals, tam-tam, celesta, two harps, and strings.
ALEXANDER PORPHIRIEVITCH
BORODIN
(Born at St. Petersburg, November 12, 1833;[16] died there February 28, 1887)