VOCAL MUSIC

Voice and Piano

Brim a Brew (Mezzo Soprano and Piano)

Psalms of Light and Water (Soprano or Mezzo and Piano)

Lights of Amethyst (Soprano and Piano)

Rucksack (Mezzo Soprano and Piano)

Sacred Transitions (Mezzo Soprano and Piano)

Songs of Wind (Mezzo Soprano and Piano)

VOICE AND PIANO

BRIM A BREW
OP. 61

Program Notes

These songs speak of simple things: the magic of wind whistling through empty glass bottles, an aged maid representing the harvest of a simple bountiful life, a lullaby to ward off the great darkness, and winter galloping on a stallion followed by snowy hosts. Juliana Gondek sent me home one day with an extensive folder filled to the brim with poetry of her belated friend Ray Underwood. Ray’s poems got under my skin with their simplicity, elegance, Americana quality—and beneath all that, a mighty darkness. This collection sets five of his poems in musical language that tries to tap into that sense of simple and elegant American identity, with resonances of Copland and Barber.

Brim a Brew: Five Songs on Poetry of Ray Underwood            

by Russell Steinberg

Sacred Transitions: A Song Cycle Based on Meditations by Harold M. Schulweis
OP. 74

Program Notes

The texts from these songs are selections from mediations in Finding Each Other In Judaism by Harold M. Schulweis. With these meditations, Rabbi Schulweis revitalizes rites of passage as sacred moments in our lives using simple, clear, and beautiful language to focus us to a higher awareness. In reading them, I find a personal, intimate quality to these meditations, as if one person is speaking to another with deep love, compassion, and awareness. That is why I've set the texts as arts songs, the most intimate form of chamber music.

Sacred Transitions focuses on the four primary life passages—birth, marriage, sickness/age, death—(however, Rabbi Schulweis's book also embraces bris, coming of age (bar/bat mitzvah), conversion, and even divorce as important life transitions that require consecration). The songs of the four parts are as follows:

Childhood:

RUCKSACK: Monodrama for Mezzo Soprano
(with Piano or Pierrot Ensemble+Perc)

Op. 78a and op.78b

Program Notes

Rucksack is a single movement monodrama that interweaves two stories from Juliane Heyman's book From Rucksack to Backpack. The first story details her harrowing year and a half long escape from the Nazis, beginning with the arrest of her parents in 1 938. In semi-comic relief, her next story describes her first hiking experience just a few years later in the United States. The police arrest her and her girlfriend, believing them to be prostitutes because they were walking alone with backpacks! Apparently, hiking was only popular in the US after the 1 940s.

The parallels and confusion juxtaposing these two stories is meant to provide both a dramatic counterpoint as well as the urgent importance of allowing immigration in a free society.

The vocal part switches continually between three different styles: bel canto, rhythmic speech, and dramatic speech. Bel canto is exclusive to Julie's hiking story in the Poconos mountains. The speech is used mostly to relate her difficult journey of escape from the Nazis.

Lights of Amethyst
Op. 85

Program Notes

Lights of Amethyst

1. Strings in the earth and air

2. The twilight turns to amethyst

3. O lonely watcher of the skies

4. Goldenhair

5. To and fro

6. I hear an army charging upon the land

At a post-concert reception, Hila Plitmann spontaneously asked me to write her a piece. Was she serious? Did she even know my music? I had heard her magnificent operatic voice in performances with the LA Philharmonic and wondered how it might glow in more intimate art song. I had recently discovered James Joyce’s poem “The Twilight Turns From Amethyst” (from his early poetry collection titled Chamber Music). The way Joyce described the changing colors of the darkening sky, that was how I imagined the changing colors in Hila’s voice. Months later I wrote the song, invited her over to read it through, and her simple reaction, “Great. Why don’t you write some more.”

“More” became this collection of six songs distilled from the larger Joyce collection. In deceptively simple language, Joyce illuminates the beauty of earthly life, while all the time actually speaking about love and the pain of love’s loss. The journey begins with Love sounding a string instrument along the river. Then the sound of an old piano drifts in the air as twilight enfolds the earth. That piano becomes a harp of the heavens at night. Reading by the hearth, the poet imagines the golden-haired lover singing cheerfully, leaning out the window. Then a meditation on the tide of the sea, “the noise of waters making moan...flowing to and fro.” Finally, a dream vision of an army on horseback charging from the sea, arrogant, shouting, and laughing, tearing away denial, raining despair, and wresting a final heart-wrenching plea from the poet: “My love, my love, my love, why have you left me alone?”

PSALMS OF LIGHT AND WATER
OP. 86

Program Notes

I composed these two psalm settings at different times: He Has Given Us Light during the 2020 pandemic while nationwide protests were happening over the police murder of George Floyd, and Save Me, O God as music director for the Stephen Wise Schools around 2003.
He Has Given Us Light is set in Hebrew. Save Me, O God is set in English.

He Has Given Us Light is adapted from Psalm 118 and commissioned from the Judaic Sacred Music Foundation. My thanks to Steve Rothstein for advising me with textual sources and to Hila Plitmann, first for providing an excellent phonetic translation of the Hebrew, and second, for her beautiful premiere performance.

"Light" is the emphasis of this song, but the light journeys through a festive dance pulse, a hushed contrapuntal weaving, and an unexpected arrival in the distance of millenia to an anthem of black civil rights, ultimately settling in joyful radiance. This song was written at the time of the national George Floyd protests.

Both voice and piano require special attention to changing timbre in the different sections. The piano part requires a sense of pulse and delicate resonance with the clusters, but also care not to obscure the singer.

Save Me, O God is an expressive piece adapted from Psalm 69. Shaping dynamics and color are important especially in the vocal melismas and piano pedaling. Tempo may have some freedom to create the best sense of ebb and flow.

Va Ya-'ér Lanú He Has Given Us Light adapted from Psalm 118 (text in phoenetic Hebrew with English translation)

Va ya'ér lánu. El, Adonái. Va ya'ér lánu. E'ven ma'asú habonim hay tál' rosh Piná. Meét Adonái, Haytázot; Hi Niflát beEynéynu. Isrú chag baAvotim— Ad karnót, haMizbé'ach. Va ya'ér lánu. El, Adonái. Va ya'ér lánu.

He has given us light. The Almighty is God. He has given us light. The stone despised by the builders has become the cornerstone. This emanated from the Almighty. It is wondrous in our eyes. Bind the festival boughs to the altar. He has given us light. The Almighty is God. He has given us light.

Save Me, O God adapted from Psalm 69

Save me, O God, For the waters are come in unto my soul; I sink in deep mire, where there is no standing; I am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow me. I am weary of my crying, my throat is dried: Mine eyes fail while I wait for my God.

SONGS OF WIND

Op.3

Program Notes

These earliest of my songs began as exercises making music with just 6 notes (a hexachord). I ultimately “cheated” several times for some variety. The gentle loneliness of the Meredith dirge makes a nice contrast with the howling of the Shelly dirge. The third song, Western Wind—a stunning anonymous 16th century poem—is set a cappella. A setting of Shakespeare’s bitter Blow blow thou winter wind from As You Like It completes the cycle.

VOICE AND ENSEMBLE

CHANGE OF HEART
Op. 14

Program Notes

In his Intimations of Immortality, William Wordsworth refers to his early poem brimming over in exuberance for nature’s beauty, famously proclaiming “The Child is the father of the Man.” Now older, and too well-versed in mortality, he writes “To me the meanest flower that blows can give /Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.”

Change of Heart merges both sentiments in an evocative soundscape that combines a cello, harp, and organ with a baritone singer. A short instrumental prelude introduces “My Heart Leaps Up,” and an instrumental interlude marks the transition to “There Was A Time.”  

For the organist: My specific registrations should be taken only as suggestions. Please make every effort to not to overpower either baritone or the cello and harp

Text for CHANGE OF HEART
(poetry by William Wordsworth)

II. My Heart Leaps Up

My heart leaps up when I behold 
   A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began; 
So is it now I am a man; 
So be it when I shall grow old, 
   Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.

IV. There Was A Time
(from Intimations of Immortality)

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, 
The earth, and every common sight. 
To me did seem 
Apparell'd in celestial light, 
The glory and the freshness of a dream. 
It is not now as it has been of yore: — 
Turn wheresoe'er I may, 
By night or day. 
The things which I have seen I now can see no more!

The rainbow comes and goes, 
And lovely is the rose; 
Waters on a starry night…

The clouds that gaiher round the setting sun
Do take a sober coloring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality! 

 Another race hath been and other palms are won.

Thanks to its tenderness, its joys and fears; 
To me the meanest flower that blows can give 
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. 

CANOPY OF PEACE
Op. 77

Program Notes

CANOPY OF PEACE is a five movement work scored for mezzo-soprano, solo violin, harp, and strings, based on texts by Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis. The piece was commissioned by Noreen Green and the Los Angeles Jewish Symphony. Noreen asked me to transcribe three of my songs from my Schulweis cycle Sacred Transitions. I framed those songs with my Aria for a Calmer World and another Schulweis text setting I titled Because You Suffer.

I. Aria for a Calmer World (solo violin, orchestra)

II. Whose Am I (mezzo soprano, orchestra)

III. Touch My Heart (mezzo soprano, orchestra)

IV. Mirror Eyes (mezzo soprano, orchestra)

V. The Meaning of my Existence (mezzo soprano, solo violin, orchestra)

Testimony poured out continually with great emotion in December 2014 during memorial services at Valley Beth Shalom for Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis—an undeniable compassion for people to look beyond their differences and come together in community, the courage to stand up against social injustice, and a strength of character that insisted on dignity for all people, whether it be between divisions of Jewish sects, for equal rights, or speaking out against atrocities like genocide. His impeccability rang in sharp contrast to our current world of clay-footed leaders.

Conductor Noreen Green had asked me earlier to consider composing a suite for voice and strings based on my recent collaboration with Rabbi Schulweis, the song cycle "Sacred Transitions." And there Noreen and I sat as Rabbi Eddie Feinstein began the memorial service with this prayer for peace:

"This we know:
Fear can yield to faith, hope can reignite,
Rage can cease, hatred can be melted...
Merciful One, spread the canopy of your peace over us,
Over all who dwell on earth."

I heard these words and knew that "Canopy of Peace" was the perfect title for this project. The suite has 5 movements. The first movement, "Aria for a Calmer World," is a gentle invocation featuring solo violin. The second, third, and fourth movements are songs from my cycle "Sacred Transitions." "Whose am I?" suggests that our frustrated inner search for identity—Who am I?— is best answered in our search outward for community— Whose am I?—using the refrain "In belonging lies the secret." Similarly, "Touch My Heart" is a mother's song to a child asking how we touch love, suggesting instead that love is not a where (an object) but a when. "Mirror Eyes" is a love song to a spouse ("In your eyes I find myself")  that also speaks to the larger ideas of differences and toleration: "I choose eyes/ Not focused on blemishes alone/ Eyes that do not blink away my crooked nose/ And twisted mouth/ But wink encouragement and hope and love."

The final movement, "The Meaning of My Existence," is a setting of the concluding words of an extraordinary speech Rabbi Schulweis delivered at a Jewish World Watch benefit. Like the previous songs, he used word reversal to dramatically explain our individual responsibility in the world for peace. "The philosopher defined existence... 'I think therefore I am'. The existentialist wrote: I feel therefore I am...But our tradition declared, 'Because you suffer, therefore I am.' "

The music in Canopy of Peace is tonal and warm, not overtly written in any particular Jewish style, but rather it suggests the intimate world of German artsong. While the texts are meant for an entire community, they feel more like a dear friend sitting directly across from you and opening his heart. We are all personally responsible to create this "canopy of peace." In that spirit, this work is dedicated to Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis.

CHORAL

Contrary States
Op. 31