Ben-Zion Orgad (1926 - 2006):
The Song of the Individual and of the Multitude
The
creators of Israeli art music – especially in the first two generations – often
reveal a conspicuous tendency to weave the personal and the national, the local
and the universal, into a single creative fabric. This tendency manifests itself
differently with each composer, according to their individual world-views,
aesthetic concepts and creative imaginations. In the 1940s and 1950s, most
composers’ sense of public commitment was clearly discernible in their music.
From the late 1960s onwards, personal elements – independent of the composers’
geographic location and national affiliation – became more prominent, although
most composers have not completely given up on their affinity to their place or
cultural tradition.
For
Ben-Zion Orgad – usually associated with the second generation of Israeli
composers – profound identification with common collective values remained a
vital need. His music clearly reflects his aspiration to express a distinctive
national identity; yet it also reveals the composer’s profound familiarity with
modernist trends in Western music. Beyond the ‘Song of the Multitude’, there
arises within it the ‘Song of the Individual’: Orgad’s music impresses upon the
listener, with striking immediacy, the presence of a powerfully individual
voice, which seeks and finds its identity by forging an indivisible, inalienable
link between personal and national expression. The opening words of Amir
Gilboa’s “Song of an Early Morning” – “Suddenly a man awakes one morning to feel
he’s a nation and begins to stride”[1]
– seem to fit Orgad better than any other Israeli composer. Orgad set this song
as part of his Amir Gilboa cycle Songs of an Early Morning (1968).
Yet the sense of an individual who feels that “he’s a nation” is clearly audible
beyond this cycle, in Orgad’s oeuvre as a whole; the individual and the
collective, forces that would usually seem to oppose each other, are reconciled
and merged in his works. In his informative essay on Psalms
(1966/68), the critic Nathan Mishori spoke of “[t]he diametric opposition of the
individual and the group [… which] is executed in each section of the work by
setting the solo singer off against the background of the ensemble”. Mishori
shows how these oppositions complement each other, since “the contrasts are
actually opposing poles of the same entity”. In Psalms, as in
several other works by Orgad, the concepts of “togetherness” and “individuation”
acquire a mystical, religious significance. The musicologist Eliahu Schleifer,
in his notes to Orgad’s orchestral work Hallel (1979), considers
Orgad “a true mystic”, infused with “a yearning for pure religious feelings, for
mystic love”.
This
unity of “man” and “nation” also embraces man and land, man and language.
Orgad’s sense of belonging, as revealed in his works, stems from three sources
that are inevitably interlinked: the history and culture of the Jewish people
across the generations; the Land of Israel and its landscapes; and the Hebrew
language, its sonorities and rhythms. It seems that each of Orgad’s works
expresses, in its way, at least one aspect of belonging and identity, always
portrayed in a very personal manner, since the quest for belonging and identity
seems to arise from the depths of the composer’s psyche. One might discern
stylistic changes in Orgad’s music over the years; yet, unlike other Israeli
composer, he knows not the transition from collective to personal expression, a
transition that often involves essential changes in the composer’s inner world.
In Orgad’s music, the collective and the personal are interwoven and mutually
complementary.
Ben-Zion
Orgad was born as Ben-Zion Büschel in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, and spent his
early childhood in Essen. He immigrated with his family after the Nazis’ rise to
power in 1933, when he was not yet seven years old. He is part of a group of
composers, most of them born in Germany, who are not officially ‘sabras’ but who
were mostly raised and educated in Israel. These composers – unlike their
colleagues who immigrated to Israel as mature, fully-formed artists – created
and consolidated their spiritual and musical worlds through unmediated contact
with the reality and life-experience in the Land of Israel, and this clearly
affects their music. In his youth, Orgad studied the violin; he reached his
early maturity as a musician while taking part in the 1948 War – a formative
event which deepened his affinity with the Land of Israel and its landscapes.
Between 1940 and 1944, he studied composition privately with Paul Ben-Haim, and
later studied with Josef Tal at the Music Academy in Jerusalem, which he
graduated in 1947. The contrasting stylistic influences of his two mentors
merged in Orgad’s oeuvre into a new and original entity: on the one hand,
his music reveals the link to Eastern musical traditions, cultivated by
Ben-Haim; on the other hand, it is marked by Tal’s post-Schoenbergian modernism.
His music has also been influenced by his sojourns to the United States. In the
early 1950s, he won two scholarship (from Esco Fund Committee and from UNESCO’s
Koussevitzky Fund), enabling him to study with Aaron Copland in Tanglewood and
with the musicologist Curt Sachs in New York. In 1961 he travelled to the United
States again to study for a Master’s Degree at Brandeis University, Boston,
under the supervision of Irving Fine, Harold Shapira and Kenneth
Levy.
Two
piano works that he composed during his studies clearly illustrate the stylistic
duality he had skilfully integrated as he fashioned his own style. The Two
Preludes in Impressionistic Mood (1960) live up to their title,
representing as they do Orgad’s impressionistic inspirations, including
Ben-Haim’s “Mediterranean” style; Seven Variations on C (1961), on
the other hand, are a clear manifestation of the expressionistic element which
can be found in most of Orgad’s works, including the earliest ones. These two
works, whose ‘Israeliness’ is implicit in their melos, can serve as a gateway
for those who seek to enter Orgad’s world and penetrate its secrets.
During
the 1950s, Orgad began to forge a long-term connection with Israel’s music
education system. He frequently lectured in seminars and universities in Israel
and abroad; but he has never taught courses in theoretical subjects, nor has he
given private lessons in composition. This avoidance of teaching (which, to the
best of my knowledge, has never been fully explained) sets Orgad apart from most
composers of his generation. Nonetheless, Orgad was a very influential figure in
the development of music education in Israel, thanks to his prominent posts at
the Ministry of Education and Culture: in 1950 he was appointed Pedagogic
Director of Music Education; in 1956 he became Supervisor of Professional Music
Education; in 1975-1988, he served as Superintendent of Music Education. In the
latter role, he was responsible – as initiator, editor and author – for the
creation of a rich pedagogic literature (songbooks, articles, methodical books
etc.). Much of this literature was published by the Methodical Centre for Music
which he established, and it formed an integral part of the systematic music
curricula he initiated and helped formulate. Orgad did not accomplish all of his
pedagogic aims – not altogether a surprising outcome given Israel’s intricate
political reality; but he achieved remarkable successes in raising the level of
pre-academic institutions and in integrating outstanding musicians in the IDF.
The latter idea arose from Orgad’s own experience as a soldier in the Givati
brigade; in the midst of the war, he composed a work for baritone and small
orchestra (the original version of Back to Suafir), setting Haim
Guri’s poem Prayer (which became one of the canonical poems of the time);
this work was performed by the Givati Orchestra – a group of players consisting
of soldiers in the brigade.
The
lexicographer Israel Shalita (in the biographies volume of his Encyclopaedia
of Music) quotes the following statement from Orgad: “True art does not
develop by alienating and isolating itself from the nation’s spiritual
treasures; it is more authentic, more faithful to itself, if it grows out of the
world of experiences and emotions that arise and evolve in the society that
nurtures it”. Therefore, the traditional music of the land and the nation are an
essential component for any composer loyal to his identity. Yet this musical
heritage is not sufficient in itself: the composer must also avail himself to
“the sum total of the nation’s spiritual assets, its treasure-trove of values
[...] which are woven into the nation’s cultural being”. And indeed, even
Orgad’s earliest works reveal his affinity with Biblical texts: The Beauty
of Israel (a setting of David’s lament on Saul and Jonathan, composed in
1949 to mourn the deaths of those fallen in the war); The Story of the
Spies (1952); Isaiah’s Vision (1953); and the orchestral
work Building a King’s Stage (1957), based on Orgad’s incidental
music for Nissim Aloni’s 1953 play Most Cruel the King. The Biblical
character of these works, which possess considerable expressive power yet also
reveal a certain immaturity, is evident in the archaic associations evoked by
their atmosphere. Biblical texts and imagery remained an abiding presence in the
composer’s world throughout his life – in the choral work Yedidot
(1966, setting words from Psalm 84) and in the aforementioned
Psalms; in the three Watches (1969, 1973, 1977) –
three orchestral works which evoke the ancient vision of the temple in
Jerusalem’s nocturnal atmosphere; in the late cantata And this is the
Blessing (1993); and others. The attraction of Eastern antiquity is also
clearly evident in works that draw upon the world of ancient Mesopotamia:
Hymn to the Goddess (1989) – setting Sumerian texts (sung in
Hebrew) and Acadian texts (sung in Hebrew and Acadian); and Sheva and
Elul (1984/5), an instrumental work in which Orgad alludes to the
symbolism of the number 7 and to the ritual meanings associated with the summer
month of Elul (roughly equivalent to August).
In
other works, Orgad turns to Jewish sources of later periods. The Jewish passion
The Old Decrees (1970) draws on chronicles from the time of the
Crusades (edited by Recha Freyer and the composer). The issue of Jewish
Messianism is at the heart of the cantata Sufferings for
Redemption (1974), in which Orgad combined seven ‘Reshuyot’ (poems
recited before the prayer; literally “permissions”) by Shlomo Ibn Gabirol with
seven songs by Recha Freyer. Another cantata, Story of a Pipe
(1971), uses Agnon’s version of the well-known Hassidic tale of the ignorant
youth who played his pipe in the synagogue on the Day of
Atonements.
In
each of his texted works, one can immediately recognise Orgad’s scholarly
learning, his in-depth reading of the text. Orgad himself was a notable poet; he
published several books of poetry, and wrote a series of autobiographic
monologues, mostly in poetic prose. In Songs Out of Choshen Valley
(1981) and in A Personal Place (1995), he set his own poetry to
music, and he was just as sensitive when setting the texts of other contemporary
poets. We already mentioned his youthful setting of Haim Guri’s
Prayer and his Amir Gilboa cycle Songs of an Early
Morning; one might also mention the Er’ella Ur setting Out of the
Dust (1956); Door Door (1977) and The Last
Lullaby (1977), setting texts by Aba Kovner; and Death Came to the
Wooden Horse Michael (1968/77), setting a poem by Nathan Zach. All these
works can be cited as exemplary illustrations of Orgad’s sensitive
musical-poetic hearing, his keen attentiveness to the poems’ sonorities and
significance, and his intense love for the Hebrew language.
Even
Orgad’s instrumental music derives much of its tonal substance and inspiration
from the Hebrew language. Thus, the rhythmic organisation in several of his
works is based on certain qualities of the Hebrew text; at times, a specific
text which is not set to music nonetheless provides a sub-text for the work. In
Yedidot, mentioned above, the syllables are treated numerically:
accented syllables receive three metric units; regular syllables – two units;
and weak syllables – one unit. The metric structure of Sephardic Hebrew poetry
serves as the preliminary impetus for the first movement of Music
for horn solo and orchestra (1960/1988); in Monologue for
unaccompanied viola (1957), the rhythmic formulas of Arabic poetry (which were
also taken over in Medieval Hebrew poetry) serve a similar function. In
Reshuyot for piano (1978), Orgad sought to create an instrumental
equivalent to Ibn Gabirol’s ‘reshuyot’ (which he set to music in
Sufferings for Redemption); he therefore based the work on a cycle
of eleven beats which typically characterise the poetic line in this genre of
medieval Jewish-Sephardic sacred poetry.
In
an interview with him, the composer stated: “Music, like language, is perceived
by our auditory senses, and one can therefore discover connections between the
vocal-emotional characterisations of music and language […] it is the musical
potential, from the points of view of rhythms and intonation alike, that gives
language a more specific character”. Zecharia Plavin – one of the most qualified
Orgad experts, as pianist and musicologist alike – writes that Orgad had
experienced
several
artistic revelations in a realm which most people do not consider crucially
important: the borderline between the language of music and acoustic character
of the Hebrew language throughout its various historical periods. These
revelations inspired Orgad to formulate a mode of musical expression that
impressed knowledgeable listeners with its unexpected historical authenticity.
Through music – the art of the direct emotional ‘now’ – Ben-Zion Orgad succeeded
in bridging over the abyss that separates twentieth-century Jews
[…]
from the heritages of the ancient kingdoms.
For
Orgad, the melodic formulae of ta’amei hamiqra (the Biblical accent
markings, which indicate both the punctuation and the melodic cantillation)
arise directly from the Hebrew language’s musical potential. Several composers
of the ‘Jewish school’ in early 20th-century Russia have already
noted their important potential contribution to the creation of original Jewish
music. Almost all the composers of the first and second generations of Israeli
music were influenced (at least at some phase of their creative lives) by the
melos of Biblical cantillations. In Orgad’s case, however, the impact is not
merely musical; it is a spiritual link, which testifies to a deeply-ingrained
spiritual identification with these musical traditions and the ancient voices
they preserved. The singing of Biblical cantillations, in the varied traditions
of different communities in the Jewish Diaspora, is among the foundations of
Orgad’s music, as are the prayer melodies (themselves based in part on Biblical
cantillations’ modes). In several works, the link between Orgad’s music and
Biblical cantillation is immediately perceivable on the musical surface: this is
the case, for instance, in the early Biblical works; in Melodic Dialogues
on Three Scrolls (1969) and Dialogues on the First Scroll
(1975); and in his late works And This is the Blessing (see above)
and Melosalgia (1993). Yet even in works which do not forge such
explicit (or even conscious) connections with Biblical cantillations or prayer
melodies, listeners might still sense an affinity between Orgad’s melodic
patterns and traditional modal formulae.
Two
distinctive characteristics in Orgad’s music emerge from the connections with
Biblical cantillations. The first is the centrality of the melodic line, which
is apparent in virtually all of his works. In some of them, melody and the
search for melody serve as the primary compositional motivation. This is the
case, for instance, in the six Filigrees. According to the
composer, “the filigree (a delicate ornamental work made of fine gold or silver
wire) refers to a tonal embroidery made of different melodic motifs, whose moods
and atmospheres express longing for melos, tonescapes and an emotional place”.
In his notes to Filigrees No. 4, he further elucidates: “The title
invites the listener to follow the joining of these melodic patterns to the
musical statement – in which one can detect intonations, stresses and phrasing
that belong to a unique tonal Maqam”. The Filigrees belong
to larger group within Orgad’s oeuvre which are based on personal
maqams, which are treated in a manner analogous to the employment of
maqams in mid-Eastern music.
The
influence of cantillations and traditional Jewish prayer can also be sensed in
Orgad’s overall formal concept, and especially in his frequent employment of
“developing variations” technique. Seven Variations on C, already
mentioned, is a typical example; String Trio (1961), First
Watch (1969) and other works are similarly structured. These works
display an interesting combination of ‘East’ and ‘West’: the repetition through
variation, together with the ever-changing ornamentation of the melody, is
typical of Eastern music; the development, as a structural element that
increases tension, is typical of European musical traditions. In several works,
the mosaic-like structure, which distinguishes cantillations, is especially
apparent – for instance, in Kaleidoscope (1961), Movements
on A (1965) and Second Watch (1973). “The principle
governing the structure of this symphonic movement”, wrote Orgad in the notes to
Kaleidoscope, “is the ever-changing combination of fixed tonal
elements”; this succinct definition seems equally applicable to the use of
“developing variations” in most of his works.
Orgad
also employs the term maqam in its literal, geographical sense – “place”.
As a generalisation, one might state that his music is always rooted in a
particular locality; it is, in many cases, geographically inspired (usually by
the Land of Israel and its past and present landscapes), and it enlivens, in its
special way, the visual and auditory experience of being within the landscape
and its open spaces. The music is linked with the locality, making its soul
speak. Orgad felt an intimate link, in every fibre of his being, with the
landscapes of Israel, with which he became familiar during his service as a
scout in the Palmach. He continued to tour the land, even in his later years,
and developed an intimate relationship with particular sites – “personal
places”, as he called them – which he visited repeatedly. This affinity to
nature can be traced back to the composer’s childhood in Germany: his parents’
house stood next to a forest, and the composer’s earliest childhood impressions
are linked with this forest. Another childhood experience that left an indelible
mark on the composer was the sound of bells, which filled the city and which
would later merge with the sounds of Jerusalem’s bells. As the critic Yehuda
Cohen notes in The Heirs of the Psalmist, “one can frequently hear a kind
of bell peal emerging from [Orgad’s] music, even though there are usually no
bells in the performing ensemble”.
Several
of Orgad’s works refer explicitly to specific locations. This does not
necessarily imply the presence of a descriptive element; in most cases, the
music expresses the composer’s feelings towards the landscape, inspired by what
he called the “Religion of the Landscapes” – perhaps a kind of personal
pantheism, which imbues the love of the land and of nature with a spiritual,
metaphysical dimension. Orgad’s woodwind quintet Landscapes (1969)
contains two movements, which refer to two specific places – Amirim and
Gilboa. The three Watches, mentioned above, were
inspired by the composer’s impressions of night-time Jerusalem. The composer
says:
In
1955, in the [military] reserve, I was stationed on Mount Zion for six weeks […]
Being awake during the nights, I heard a rich compilation of sounds and voices
characteristic of Jerusalem. The ringing of bells coming from nearby Dormition
Abbey merged with the sounds reaching me from the distant past which I heard in
my mind. I could hear the priests keeping watch on top of the Temple Wall
calling each other. The actual sounds and the sounds in my mind fused and filled
my heart with music.
Toccata
in a Galilean Maqam (choreographic
tonescape for orchestra, 1994), and the closely-related Toccata II
for piano (1995), also belong to the group of maqam works, whose
maqam stands for an actual place. The composer
writes:
My
Toccata
for piano expresses the musical sounds of a specific landscape in the Upper
Galilee in Israel overlooking the meeting place of three wadis, the crossing of
three streams: Tawahin (mills), Lamoon (lemon), and Amood (pillar). […] The
traveller knows where he is going, he has been here before, many years ago, and
now – as then – he finds shelter from the blistering sun in the shade of an old
oak tree that crowns this high place, his ‘meditation tree’. Soon he notices
that something important is missing. It is the slow and monotonous beat of the
pumps that used to pump the water into the mills. The memory of the steady beat
brings the past into the present and makes the landscape pulsate with its unique
sound.
Orgad’s
last two works (the string quartets To the Beginning and
Arsalgia, 2004) were also inspired by a profound landscape
experience – in this case, a prolonged visit to the shores of the Sea of
Galilee. It was, in a sense, a fitting conclusion and culmination to his
creative path.
As
one who often spent time in wide, open, natural landscapes, Orgad developed a
spatial conception of sound and a finely-honed sensitivity to simultaneous
sonorous events. Many of his works contain extended sections which present,
simultaneously, different, even contrasting elements, each occupying its own
niche within the acoustic space. Listeners experiencing this “Orgadian
simultaneity” (to use Yehuda Cohen’s term) are required to match the music’s
stereophonic underpinning with their own stereophonic mode of listening. In
Orgad’s music, this sonorous simultaneity has its own special magic, arising, in
part, from the illusion of spatial depth that Orgad creates. In
Psalms, for instance, several texts are sung simultaneously, each
with its own unique sound-layer. In his article on the work, Nathan Mishori
describes the listening experience as an imagined yet tangible participation in
a ritual event; the listener experiences the liturgy as if ‘from within’, from
the temple’s innermost sanctum. Story of a Pipe reaches its climax
when the narrative is heard simultaneously with two additional layers of
liturgical texts. In several works – such as the Ballade for
orchestra (1971) and First Individuations for clarinet and chamber
orchestra (1981) – the stereophonic experience is intensified through the
distribution of the instruments in different locations in the hall, and through
alterations in their location and position during the performance. Orgad found
his path towards the creation of contemporary polyphony, combining techniques
from the West (such as Renaissance antiphony) and the East (like other Israeli
composers, he expanded the frames of traditional Eastern heterophony, giving it
a modern and, it might be added, uniquely personal
interpretation).
Already
in the 1960s, Israeli art music’s involvement in the national experience began
to decline. Composers gradually tended to commune with their art within their
own private worlds, influenced, inter alia, by contemporaneous
avant-garde trends. Orgad too was influenced by the new spirit (especially after
he returned from his second sojourn to the United States in 1960/1), but
remained true to his own self: for him, giving up on national identity and
identification was tantamount to giving up on his personal identity.
Consequently, Orgad cuts a somewhat unusual figure, in his work and personality
alike, against the backdrop of Israeli music from the 1970s onwards. However,
despite the reservations that a national ideology might raise, his oeuvre
constitutes an original answer to the frequently asked question: What is Israeli
music?
The
personal story of Zecharia Plavin, related in his autobiographical memoir,
significantly titled Listening to Orgad, illustrates Orgad’s success in
creating a musical language which combines the voices of the individual and the
collective and conveys its creator’s messages. Plavin was born in Vilnius and
immigrated to Israel in 1977. As a teenager, still in his native city, he
enjoyed an intense experience: he heard accidentally, on the BBC’s Russian
programme, an orchestral work which turned out to be by Orgad (probably
his Movements on A). As
he relates:
From
the radio came forth solid, grandiose sounds, which conjured the image of the
classic Biblical East. But the unique rhythms, fanfare-like motifs and rich
polyphony – all these were submerged in a wise, authoritative and inexorable
flow. I felt an intense sense of wonder, hard to describe in words, when faced
with the character – at once strange and familiar – of this work. The image
arose within me of wisdom emanating from Eastern history and linked with it, yet
embracing advanced Western technology and bending it to its will. The image of
the huge, pulsating body of an entire ancient nation began to form in my mind’s
eye.
It
seems a great privilege for a composer to have thus touched the heart of a young
listener and arouse the kind of reactions Plavin describes here. Years later,
Plavin discovered additional meanings in Orgad’s music: “Above and beyond the
moving musical experiences it inspired, I consider Orgad’s music a repository of
insights and observations that are dear to my heart; they help me consolidate my
sense of self, the signs of my identity”. It seems, therefore, that Orgad’s
music indeed answered the question of its own creator’s identity – and, beyond
them, helped to shape and fortify the identity of those listeners who lent their
ears to it and learned how to “listen to Orgad”.
Joseph
Peles
July
2007
Translation:
Dr. Uri Golomb
© Israel Music Institute, 2007