Is Its Beauty Unknown?…

Ben-Haim now? This sounds to me like a call for rescue: the rescue of the works of Ben-Haim from the text books, the catalogues of competitions for young performers or the “no choice” files in the offices of orchestras.

In the 40s and 50s, at the peak of Ben-Haim’s creative activities, it could be expected that this composer – and such a one – will come to be for the cultured Israeli just  what Aaron Copland is for the cultured American; or what Elgar or Vaughan Williams are for the enlightened  Englishman. In 2001, masses of young people still sing Elgar’s Land of Hope and Glory on the opening night of the Proms at the Albert Hall and every educated American can whistle the tune of Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man. But Ben-Haim – where is he?

The problem is not the unknown beauty of Ben-Haim’s music. With only a very little effort it could be made known and the measure of its beauty and finesse can easily be agreed upon. I amuse myself, at times, with the idea  of a CD album produced in today’s style: the disc will open with Tranquility and will close with Sephardic Lullaby (two different arrangements by Ben-Haim of the same judeo-espagnol romance). It will also contain Three Songs Without Words; Morena (for female voice and harp); the middle movement of his Sonata for violin solo; two of the middle sections of the orchestral suite From Israel and the last movement of his song cycle Myrtle Blossoms from Eden. On the cover of the disc will appear Moshe Kastel’s painting Luncheon on the Grass (a Middle Eastern landscape in spring: in the distance red-tiled roofs of little kibbutz houses, camels and goats grazing on the hill slope, a figure bearing water from the well, a man and a woman in colourful traditional dress leisurely taking their meal). The title of the disc will, of course, be ‘Tranquility’, and the advertiser will whisper: ’A Magical Mystery Tour to the Beautiful Land of Israel’.

It is my guess, that the disc will sell quite well. Better, in any case, than most (all?) Israeli works on the shelves. Yet, there is something that makes me feel uncomfortable – it is not simply the thought that this old ideal of an ‘cultivated Israeli’ for whom Israeli classical music forms part of his identity, has been eradicated, but rather the feeling that this eradication has been unavoidable, because the model had been fashioned by an elite of European origin, small, united, imbued with an ideology and living its very own utopia (‘...a generation which’ – in the words of the poet Yaacov Orland – ‘took upon itself the yoke of ‘Divine Kingdom’; and he continues, ...’even the daily small-talk of that passing generation was required, for some reason, to be couched in rather ceremonial language…’[i]). No less troubling is the thought that the fate of Ben-Haim’s music is tragically tied with the fate of that Zionist utopia, and that it is not by accident that the stereotype image of both – in the present Israeli discourse – is one and the same. Ah well, I wanted to rescue Ben-Haim from one kind of stereotype and have instantly enmeshed him in another: the pastoral Eretz Israel = gentle orientalism; a sophisticated parallel to ‘Songs of the Land of Israel’ (Shirei Eretz Israel).

I shall not stop here. It seems clear to me, that Ben-Haim’s works – or rather many of the works he wrote in Israel – are permeated with the stereotyped imagery from first to last. Perhaps the efforts to extricate them – seemingly for their own good – from such extra-musical meanings, impair their perfection. Perhaps the contemplation of the musical texts in the context of composition/performance/listening – especially when speaking here and now of works such as those by Ben-Haim – is an essential feature of the experience of the very act itself of listening to music. (I have used here Dalia Cohen’s terminology, which is relevant in many other contexts[ii]).

When speaking of comprehensive research study, there is no doubt that Yehoash Hirschberg’s two books on Ben-Haim and his music[iii], as well as on the socio-cultural context in which and for the sake of which Ben-Haim composed after leaving Germany and on his arrival in Israel[iv] , are the indispensable basis. Possibly – and it is tempting to think so – Ben-Haim and his generation will be examined in the future with the means at the disposal of the New Musicology. We have been shown in recent years by cultural researchers and the New Hhistorians, that the old and beautiful Eretz-Israel was not necessarily a sterile bubble and  need not be seen as such today. It would be interesting, if only for argument’s sake, to consider the oriental traditional elements integrated in Ben-Haim’s works (and, of course, in most Israeli works in the fields of music, plastic arts and dance by many excellent artists) aided by such concepts as ‘Orientalism’, ‘Exoticism’ and ‘Appropriation of the Other'.[v] Indeed, these concepts serve a political, critical ‘reading’ of Art and History (or, rather, accepted – too easily accepted – historiography). Such a reading of the works by Ben-Haim, exactly like the analogical reading of the culture of the Yishuv (population) in general, is bound to cause controversy and profound dissatisfaction. It will not surprise me if the most stormy of all future research will be the one relying on basic feminist assumptions, and on the means for diagnosing the ‘minority’ versus ‘hegemony’ syndroms, concerning the ties between Ben-Haim and Bracha Zefira. This personal relationship, between a highly cultured Central European artist and a very young singer of Yemenite origin – exotic, authentic, an ’other’ ‘different’,was at its height in the 40s; and the musical ties between them left an imprint on Ben-Haim’s style and persisted for many years (even after their personal relationship ended). And the scars left in Zefira, especially in her declining career, later on?

All these are possible venues for a new study of Ben-Haim and his legacy, at which I have only hinted. There still remains a mass of material for critical reading, such as has already been done in the past and such which I expect to see in the future.  For instance, I am interested in the resistance of great many Israeli composers to the majority of romantic or post-romantic components of Central-European music, but also in their enthusiasm for Romantic ideas of nationality, ‘national authenticity’, ‘atavism’ and natural and rustic life being taken as the true expression of all those. I am also interested in the attraction/ revulsion towards the West of the Zionist musical community: the desire to be rid of it and to open a new page in the East, but also the obstinate drive to merge with it again, and to have equal rights therein, to succeed on its concert stages and even – an idea formulated by Boskovich[vi] with his characteristic enthusiasm – to bring a new invigorating message to the music of the west. And I am interested in the question which, in one way or another, plagued the founding fathers of art music (and of all other arts) in Israel: how to combat the geographic-cultural distance – and the unresolved strains between the ‘periphery’ (i.e. us) and the ‘centre’ (i.e. them, over there in Europe and/or the USA). I should like to know whether scars of that combat can be found, until today, in specific works created here, or perhaps in the styles evolved here, or even in the entire mode of public musical life in Israel.

Here I return to Ben-Haim, trying to understand the strategy he chose to use on settling in Israel in 1933. ’Strategy’ seems to be the right word: not only for the shaping and fortifying of the ‘Ben-Haim musical style’, but also for the forging of his own personality, which determined its place and the paths of action to be taken in the new country. We must forgo any in-depth analysis of Ben-Haim’s personality, and must retain only the three basic characteristics which do not make it easy to distinguish where his public persona begins or ends, not necessarily as the composer would wish it. The three features are: a caring and affectionate integration in the country (but it must be kept in mind that the ‘country’ was seen through the collective-mythological filter); the reflection of this integration in Ben-Haim’s music, so much stronger than personal expressivity (in other words: a sort of distant, impersonal musical language); and a firm unshakable grip on the paradigms and basic musical elements learned and internalized in Germany (thus a tendency to conservatism).

In an interview given in 1988, the composer Andre Hajdu said:[vii] “When someone was asked who is the most important French author, he replied:  Much to my regret, it is Victor Hugo. And so I must also say: Regrettably, Ben-Haim is our greatest composer. I do not like his spirit – the National idea; the archetype of ‘Middle-ness’... Ben-Haim is ever impersonal, he generalizes.” This is not the place to look into the fundamental assumptions and ideas of the speaker and, anyway, his comments are also rather general. Yet I think that, in his own way, Hajdu expressed publicly (a rare occurrence, one must admit), not only the manner in which Ben-Haim is perceived by his (Hajdu’s) generation, as well as by those even younger, but he also made a diagnosis which is hard to ignore.

Indeed, anyone looking to find the very ‘personal’ in Ben-Haim’s music – whether in the conventions of romantic exaltations, or in terms of original innovation – will fail  to do so. Ben-Haim is a solid and well-balanced composer. A master of well constructed melody, harmonic nuances (which are particularly noticeable in the micro levels and the middle-ground of the composition; the general schemata are worked out with precision, in the best German tradition), and colourful orchestration (under French and Spanish inspiration). Only very few moments – as for instance in his Symphony No 2 and even in a certain unexpected place, in a miniature such as Sephardic Lullaby – reveal inner tensions. Ben-Zion Orgad, one of Ben-Haim’s first students in Tel-Aviv, speaks of an ‘open account’ he has with Ben-Haim because he had never involved those around him in the experience of his uprooting and emigration. Neither did the works Ben-Haim composed in Israel give expression to these experiences – the ‘Israeli’ in it is, as it were, secure and complete. It is worth comparing these works with those he had written in Germany. Did he, indeed, consciously choose to create for himself in Israel a new musical persona, whose music – as P. E. Gradenwitz, sympathetically described – ‘is remarkable  for its assured writing […], its pleasant and attractive colouring, lacking perhaps some extra depth […] but its success is phenomenal’?[viii]

Already in the 50s, when Partos and Tal were preparing the ground for dodecaphonic writing; when composers such as Alexander and Ehrlich travelled to Darmstadt in the last years of the decade (Ben-Haim, by the way, visited there at the end of the next decade and his impressions were, of course, negative); when Boskovich became interested in the music of Boulez (and later expressed this in his Concerto da Camera), there were some who, according to Gradenwitz, referred to Ben-Haim as ‘a man of the old generation’.[ix] Tzvi Avni – also a student of Ben-Haim for a while – notes that oddly, the three composers who were so very different from Ben-Haim and who openly opposed him – Partos, Boskovich and Seter – were those who ‘left their mark on […] a number of composers of the young generation.’[x]

Since the 50s, the teachings of the three – which called for analytical treatments of traditional and oriental materials; a certain reserve in dealing with routine tonal and/or modality; avoidance of large-scale calsssical form and distancing from too familiar Eretz-Israeli images – were much more relevant for the young composers than the legacy of Ben-Haim. If there ever was a ‘Ben-Haim school’, then it exists in the early works of Noam Sheriff and in most of Ami Maayani's music.

In the late 60s (the fading of political forces which led the old Eretz-Israel; the War of Attrition; first buds of the Black Pantherism and with it – the shattering of the myths of orientalism), the image of the pastoral Middle East found in the musical clichés became more closely identified with the Israeliana-for-tourists act. A pleasing melody, half pentatonic, half maqam-like, played on the flute, against a background of an open fifth in the strings and a quiet ostinato on the harp, could become a musical icon, suitable for use in films, or, for some years (until Israeli rock music gained full recognition), at popular song festivals, but not in a sophisticated work of art. Ben-Haim, his varied legacy – even the most diversified one, and even his work Symphonic Metamorphoses on a Chorale by Bach (1968)  whose neo-Baroque, Mahler-like and Oriental components are, all-at-the-same-time, described by Hirschberg as ‘the historic-retrospective summing-up’[xi] – could not possibly be ‘in’ today.

And so – Ben-Haim now? I have started with this question watching the audience, and have reached the standpoint of the composers. Does the problem of Ben-Haim ever occur to young composers today? If so – the adoption of some techniques from his scores is a purely personal choice; but reconstructing large ‘slices’ of style, which are clearly identified with Ben-Haim, cannot be a personal affair, devoid of relevant historic content. The pleasing melody for flute, which I have previously mentioned, is not simply a charming moment. It is a quoted icon; an arrow pointing towards a known Israeli past, an assembly of known meanings and, of course, a certain memory – stereotypic, it is true – in which Ben-Haim is involved. All of these reverberate in the quotation, and with them unavoidable questions arise: does the composer crave nostalgia? Is he stating an argument (with the accepted historiography; with the local myths; with the icon)? Does he attack? Is he being ironic? Is he joining the ranks of what Moshe Zuckermann calls the ‘Fabrication of Israelism’?[xii] Is he trying to side-step the questions?

*

And what of the beauty of Ben-Haim’s music, which deserves to be known so much better? It is not beauty net (does such a thing exist at all?). As a listener, I am aware of its historic weight. I admire Ben-Haim’s polished arrangement of Desert Caravan by David Zehavi, from the film Hill 24 doesn’t answer – the Hollywood-like Zionist production of 1954. In this not the original desert fantasy which predominates, but an heroic stampede forwards, very exaggerated to up-to-date ears, to what was then called (I must smile at the memory of a distant annual excursion) ‘conquest of the desert’. As a young child I could not read David Avidan’s first book of verse Lipless Faucets, Which had appeared that same year. I read his words today: “and we took all items into account / the forecaster did not err and prophesied rain too / but our calamities jolted and deranged / and our razor crawled upon the lawn” (Incident’). Two worlds?

Ben-Haim’s last large orchestral work, Metamprphoses, which I have mentioned earlier on, and Mordecai Seter’s last work for orchestra (if we do not count Jerusalem), Meditation, were written more or less at the same time. I like first one very much and warmly recommend to return to it. The second one is, for me, more difficult –  mournful (even when some light can be seen in it towards the end, I feel it comes from a ‘black sun’); it is more exciting – as a challenge that Mordecai Seter set himself and continued to face in his late chamber music. The official Israeli music has yet to come to terms with it. Two Israeli composers both of whom we call ‘the founding fathers’. Two words?

I look again at the Luncheon on the Grass  – the painting on the cover of my imaginary disc and cannot avoid seeing in my mind’s eye Avidan’s razor on the grass there. And immediately next to it, David Goss’ painting from1995 entitled Strategic Lettuce: an open field, the deep green of the lettuce (again, ‘our’ landscape) and in the center once again a figure wrapped in colourful eastern dress. She is not eating peacefully. She is a Palestinian worker done very realistically in this painting, unlike the lettuce which resembles a computerized advertisement (again, ‘our’ hi-tech). This is a picture of a break-up and confrontation. Eretz-Israel of Ben-Haim or Kastel is – to my ears and in my eyes, today – a melancholic embrace of euphoric memory which was described in the words of Natan Zach: ‘even in this land of ours we  entertained / other hopes unrealistic / in those bad old days / before the really bad days’ (‘No Alternative’).[xiii]

And since all the worlds and all the moods I have spoken about above are part of me, I shall, of course, be the first to rush to buy ‘Tranquility’ – Now on Disc!

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1 Ya’akov Orland, 27 Poems – Natan Would Have Said, Hakibutz Hameuhad, Tel-Aviv (p. 7) [Hebrew].

2  See Dalia Cohen (1981), Observation and Experience in Musical Education, Magnes, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem [Heb.].

3 Yehoash Hirshberg (1990), Paul Ben-Haim, His Life and Work,(ed.: Batja Bayer; trans.: Nathan Friedgut), Israeli Music Publications, Jerusalem.

4 Yehoash Hirshberg (1995), Music in Jewish Community in Palestine, 1880-1948, Clarendon Press, Oxford.

5  I refer here to widespread concepts in many musicological publications during the last decade, discussing the relations between ‘East’ and ‘West’ (as well as ‘High’ and ‘Low’). But it should be kept in mind, that dealing with Israeli music is very rare in such publications, of which I’ll mention here two salient collections:

  Jonathan Bellman (ed), 1998, The Exotic in Western Music, Northeastern University Press, Boston.

   Georgina Born & David Hesmondhalgh (eds.) (2000), Western Music and its Others (Difference, Representation, and Appropriation in Music), University of California Press.

6  A. U. Boskovich (1953), ‘Problems of Israeli Original Music’, in Orlogin, 9 (pp. 280-293) [Heb.].

7  ‘Israeli Music: Four Composers about Forty Years’, in Music, 13, April 1988 (pp. 52-55) [Heb.].

8  P. E. Gradenwitz (1961), ‘Israeli Music in the Concert of Nations’, in A Collection of Literature, Criticism and Meditation, book 2, Kiryat-Sefer, Jerusalem (p. 642) [Heb.].

9  ibid.

10 Tzvi Avni, ‘And the Sea is not Full’ ( trends and sub   

    trends in Israeli Music)’, in Studio 5, November 1989

    (pp. 56-57) [Heb.].

11 Translated from the Hebrew version (Hirshberg 1983,

    p. 223).

12  M. Zuckermann (2001), The Fabrication of Israelism –  Myths and Ideology in a Society in Conflict, Restling, Tel-Aviv [Heb.].

13 Free translation.