Schelomo: A Sonic "Eternal Flame"

Of all the pieces of performed art written in the 20th century speaking to the Jewish experience, Fiddler on the Roof (1964) is perhaps the widest-known across the world. Its deft storytelling speaks from the heart and is at once specific to the plight of the shtetl Jews during Imperialist Russia and then again more general to the eternal struggle between tradition and modernity. As in the original Isaac Bashevis Singer tales which inspired it, the voice of the fiddle sings out on behalf of Jews everywhere, a sonic eternal flame (Hebr.: ner tamid) which has a merry sadness, or maybe a sad merriment, to it.

Schelomo (1916), a rhapsody for cello and orchestra by Swiss-born, Jewish-American composer Ernst Bloch, is maybe 1% as well-known (if that) as Fiddler, but it too represents the voice of the Jewish experience with a string instrument. Bloch originally was writing a vocal setting of texts from the Book of Ecclesiastes but was inspired by Alexandre Barjansky, a cellist, to write a piece where King Solomon would dialogue with Ecclesiastes through the voice of the cello instead.

Schelomo is, like many great artworks, tantalizingly hard to categorize. It does not hue to typical formalistic elements of a concerto, nor is it overtly virtuosic, as many concerti are. Yet neither is it as freely flowing as many rhapsodies (e.g. Gershwin’s quasi-improvisatory moments in Rhapsody in Blue) - its structure and thematic development are very carefully planned out - and it does indeed require a consummate virtuoso. (Perhaps Bloch might have travelled 36 years forward in time and consulted with Bohuslav Martinu, who wrote a Rhapsody-Concerto for viola and orchestra.) And while Bloch sketched out some minimal information about a program for the piece, of Solomon grappling with Ecclesiastes’ famous “all is vanity” (even for a great king), of his mighty armies marching into battle, and of his final resignation in the face of death, it is really beside the point.

Whatever genre we consider it to be, Schelomo’s power stems from its evocation of Jewish melismas, tonalities, and speech rhythms to approximate the almost-oracular, timeless sound of cantorial singing, a tradition passed down (somewhat through written methods, more so through oral) over thousands of years, encoding Jewish strength and tenderness, victory and defeat, life and death.

Though it was written as the horrors of World War I were just beginning, to this modern-day listener, it is the horrors of World War II and the Shoah which Schelomo seems to presage. In an interesting historic dance, it utilizes elements of Germanic writing pioneered by Richard Wagner, quite the anti-Semite, but also, in its orchestral colors, uneasy rhythmic energy, and grand moments of sound, it can feel filmic, a progenitor to the rich Hollywood scores written by the dozens of outstanding Jewish émigré composers who fled Europe. In between Wagner and Hollywood, it has some dramatic tips of the hat to Mahler, who died five years before Bloch wrote Schelomo, and who was rewarded for his superficial conversion from Judaism to Catholicism in 1897 with accusations that his music still sounded “Jewish.” To the anti-Semitic Viennese press, a leopard could not change its spots.

By contrast, Bloch embraced the task of writing music in his Jewish Cycle (1912-1916) which spoke with an explicit, unapologetic Hebraic voice. In so doing, he emboldened Jewish composers, both in Europe and America, to do the same (e.g. Alexander von Zemlinsky, Aaron Copland, Kurt Weill, and the many composers who were persecuted and killed by the Nazis). He showed them that the cantorial tradition could thrive in concert halls, not just in synagogues.

I find it hard to believe Bloch could have fathomed the Shoah several decades in advance. But, to my ears, his music has an eerie existential resonance. Rather than Solomon grappling with the “good book,” the cello is perhaps a survivor living through and then trying in vain to process the horrors they experienced during the war. And maybe the orchestra is at once Stormtroopers, rounding up the inhabitants of the ghettos, and the voices of millions crying out from beyond the grave. However you hear it, there is definitely an apocalyptic scope to the piece which speaks to the struggle of the Jewish people to survive, in Solomon’s time or Auschwitz’s.

Speaking of ghettos and crematoria, some readers may be drawing a connection to a way more contemporary impression featuring a string instrument speaking for Judaism: the plangent violin playing of Itzhak Perlman realizing John Williams’ score for Schindler’s List (1993). Williams, who adapted Fiddler on the Roof’s score for the screen in 1971, does an admirable job of assimilating Jewish stylistic elements. I would not be surprised if many folks instantly associate the main theme from Schindler’s List with the Jewish plight; I know I do. But I would also suggest, at the risk of heresy, that it’s a little too “pat,” too well-wrought, a beautifully crafted Grecian urn which Williams created to hold the ashes of millions. What I value about Schelomo is that it’s a bit more meandering and quasi-improvisatory, a bit more winging it through life, as the Jewish people have had to do. If Schindler’s List’s score embodies a poetic impression of things which maybe offers us a bit of catharsis, Schelomo seems to ask questions without promising any answers.

It is telling to me that, after the D major section toward the end of Schelomo, which seems to hint that the piece will end in a triumphant major-key resolution à la the Dvorak concerto, Bloch chooses to end the piece in a hush, with the cello dialoguing with the contrabassoon, timpani, and other lower pitched voices in the orchestra. The eternal flame of Judaism may yet burn onward, in music and otherwise, but what future challenges and suffering lie in store? To me, this is the uneasy legacy of Schelomo, a powerful, tumultuous statement on the Jewish experience.