Download Liner Notes PDF - Milken Archive of Jewish Music

with name-dropping and overseasoned with a pepperingof literary titles and references, that image is nonethelessnot entirely without justification. In addition to hismathematical pursuits and writings, he delved seriouslyinto several other fields of intellectual and philosophicalenquiry. He was at home with the European canon ofbelles lettres and art, but he also soon became conversantin American literature; and he acquired a knowledgeof eastern philosophies and religions. Among his booksare Music of Our Day; Music of the Ghetto and the Bible;Living Music of the Americas; Physics and Metaphysics ofMusic and Essays on the Philosophy of Mathematics; andEssentials of Conducting.During his lifetime Saminsky enjoyed a respectable insiderreputation in the general contemporary music world inAmerica. For reasons that have yet to be fully and objectivelyexplored, his name has faded from the roster of significantAmerican émigré composers of that era. At the beginningof the 21st century, however, there are unmistakable signsof renewed interest in his legacy. A Saminsky revival seemsimminent and promising.THE VISION OF ARIELThe Vision of Ariel, identified both as an opera-ballet and achoreo-drama in its published score, was one of several stageworks in which Saminsky experimented with combiningelements of choral, symphonic, solo vocal-operatic, anddance media within a single unified expression. “In myoperas,” he reflected in his memoirs, “I have tried acomplete absorption of ballet as a self-dependent agentof parallel action. . . . I aimed at reaching out for a newform, sure and self-sufficient.” His artistic vision in termsof dance concerned liberating its music from what hesaw as “formulaic uses.” At the same time, he aimed formusic that—as this work demonstrates—is equally viable asabsolute music, with sufficient drama of its own.The Vision of Ariel is set against the backdrop of theInquisition in Spain and lands under its dominance, and theresultant implications for those Jews who converted underpressure to Christianity but who clung to some Jewishpractices or some vestiges of Judaism. Following the fiercepersecutions in Christian Spain during the 14th century thatculminated in the massacres of 1391, in which an estimated70,000 Jews were murdered and entire communitiesextinguished, significant numbers of Jews surrendered tobaptism and conversion. That situation was repeated inthe early 15th century. Some of these “new Christians,”or conversos, continued to practice Jewish customs andceremonies in secret. They were known as “crypto-Jews”or as marranos (swine)—the epithet that was originallyattached to them but which remains in common usagewithout its initial aspersion. As Christians, however, theconversos were under the authority of the Inquisition—theCongregation of the Holy Office—and they were subject tothe same consequences that attended heresy or denial ofthe faith for any other Christians.This opera-ballet, even as historical fiction, does notnecessarily represent a historically researched effort bythe composer (who was also the librettist), who had nodifficulty leaning on artistic license. According to thesynopsis, the action occurs in Flanders in the latter partof the 16th century, in a large but unnamed city in thepart of the Netherlands that, from at least 1584 to 1713,was under Spanish military and political control. Ariel, amarrano there, parades under the disguise of Don Diego,presumably a Spanish nobleman. Ariel, which translatesliterally as “lion of God,” is also understood in Jewishtradition as a symbolic name for Jerusalem, and thereforecan represent pre-Diaspora Jewish sovereignty. The nameAriel is also biblically associated with the prophet Isaiah’svision warning the people concerning their iniquities. Here,the vision is removed from that context to become a visionof resistance inspired by a biblical account.The one-act work comprises a prologue and three scenes;the recorded excerpts here are drawn from the first and31 8.559439