Oratorio Terezin–A Hidden Agenda?
Yesterday I was lucky enough to be present at the Montreal Premier of Oratorio Terezin by Ruth Fazal. It was presented at Salle Wilfred Pelletier at Place des Arts, a posh spot, and although the theater was only 3/4 full, the audience was attentive and appreciative. It was quite long—over three hours in all–and very intense, but the singing was wonderful. Several choirs were present: The Vanier Singers, a childen’s choir and another choir, plus a small orchestra and five soloists.
Ruth Fazal, who is a Christian, takes letters and poems written by Jewish children in Terezin concentration camp and weaves them together with passages from the Old Testament. In the work, as the children–and the Jews themselves–remain in the camp, they go through various stages of emotion, almost like the stages of grief that have been written about: denial, during which they talk about how they will be going home soon; annoyance, in which they talk of minor complaints; despair, during which they cry out for God to save them; anger, with which they tell themselves that their Lord will smite the unjust; uncertainty, when they wonder if God has forgotten or rejected them; anguish, when they ask themselves what they could have done to anger Him; sorrow at their situation and at God’s silence; hope for a future in which they can be reconciled to God.
In the midst of all this intensity, there is a segment that made me wonder. It is the passage from Isaiah in which the prophet talks of a man growing up in obscurity, “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief”, who was “afflicted” and “suffered for our sins, and who was “led like a lamb to slaughter.’ I wondered, as I sat there listening, if the Jews in the audience realized that these are the words that classical music lovers know well because they are used in a part of Handel’s Messiah, where they refer to Jesus. For the Jews, I guess they refer to the Messiah, but it’s confusing, because Isaiah speaks of this person in the past tense rather than in the future tense, which is odd for a prediction, whether of a Messiah or of Jesus. Could Isaiah originally have been speaking of someone who had already lived? Did the Jews pick up his words and think they described a future Messiah the way the Christians saw them as a prophesy about a future Jesus?
More to the point, why did Ruth Fazal use this passage in Oratorio Terezin?
Is she suggesting that what kept the Jews alive was a hope in the coming of the Messiah? That seems strange, for if the Messiah was going to come and suffer, the Holocaust would have been a good time for him to have appeared, when there was suffering enough for all. Is she suggeting that the Jews identified themselves with a suffering Messiah they thought Isaiah had promised them? Or was she, on some level at least, implying that they might have had more hope if they had believed in Jesus?
Ruth Fazal is not only a Christian, but a very fervent one, one who believes that God led her to this material and sustained her during her composition of it. Could she then have been without any Christian sentiment as she wrote it? Could she subconsciously have chosen that passage with Jesus in mind, even as she arranged it as one of the prophesies from the Jewish prophets? Could she in fact have included this passage to suggest a kind of link to Christianity, which also believes in a suffering leader, as if to say that we have something in common with the Jews, even apart from the fact that we have used all their stories from the Torah for our own Old Testament, plus their prophesies as ones for our Jesus?
There is also, according to my husband, a place in the work where she introduces a few lines of a well-known.hymn by Handel, She was apparently quite annoyed when the conductor, on his own, told the orchestra to play this with disdain, since it was a Lutheran hymn and Lutherans hated the Jews. He understood that Fazal was putting in in there ironically. Instead, she had some idea about Lutherans that was positive. All this does make me wonder if she had a hidden agenda.
One of the soloist is supposed to be The Voice of God. The singer was a tall, young man with shoulder length hair, a tenor, quite a surprise for those who think of God as a mature, Jove-like being with a beard. His songs made me mad, even though they were beautiful in themselves. As the choirs sang of the Jews’ cries of sorrow, pain and outrage, the Voice of God sang passages from Psalms and from the prophets about how God had always loved the Jews, therefore how could he forget them? Rather than then voicing God’s advice or consolation, the young tenor sang the lovely words from the Song of Solomon: “Awake, my love, it is spring, and the sound of the turtledove is heard in the land.” I beg your pardon? How does this help the suffering Jews? I know that these passages, which contain such lovely love poems, are considered by both the Jews and the Christians as symbolic of God, i.e. the bridegroom, calling His people, or his Church., i.e. the bride, but I still don’t see how this fits in which the situation in the Oratorio. If this is God’s answer to his suffering people, the Jews, what is he saying? He’s saying “I love you”, I guess. But it sounds both beautiful—invoking as it does the beauty of spring–and cruel, since the Jews are in a concentration camp, forced to find beauty in dandelions and the occasional butterfly.
It doesn’t matter, of course, except that as it is, the piece doesn’t really have a conclusion that works, in my estimation. After the anger and sorrow of the songs, there is a passage from Psalms about going into a garden and seeing the richness of the earth. I thought, “Oh great. This suggests Israel, God’s gift to the Jews after all their suffering, and how they will turn a desert into something rich and arable.” But no, the next poem, in describing some aspect of natural beauty, mentions the barbwire again, so they must still be in the camp.
And then, just when there seems to be no answer to the situation of the Jews at all, the children begin to sing: ‘Da da da da da da da da da da da,” over and over and over, until it is finally taken up by the adult choir and eventually by the orchestra. It is a very long passage of repetition, and then, with a flourish of trumpets and timpani, the work ends. What does ‘da da da’ mean, though? Does it represent whistling in the dark? The passage of time? John says it is supposed to be a song of joy. Oh, really? It’s monotony keeps it from sounding joyful; it sounds like Morse Code, using all dots and no dashes, not like notes of joy. And it feels as if Ruth Fazal really didn’t know how to resolve the tension of the work she had created. I had half-expected a ‘rescue by the Allies’ segment of victorious music; or a segment when they sang in joy at release; or one when they set sail for Israel, or reconciled with their God; or thanked him for the gift of a new land. But no; it’s as if at the end we are only hearing telegrams being sent around the world, which eventually lead to, supposedly, the flourish (of freedom?) at the end.
Very strange. It was quite beautiful and dramatic, however, and I’m glad I went.
Posted by in 19:12:49
I appreciate your balance assessment of this piece. Your willingness to affirm what you liked indicates to me that you would be willing to accept somewhat of a different perspective. So here it goes…
I was privileged to see and hear the world premier of this piece in Toronto and heard Fazal address the crowd (full of holocaust survivors) and offer this work very openly and clearly as a gift from the Christian community to the Jewish community. It has played to scores of holocaust survivors from Toronto to Israel and always to very pleased Jewish audiences. She has always been open about her faith.
Nothing about the holocaust, or pain and suffering, or for that matter “faith and religion” is simple, simplistic, or easy to grapple with. I appreciate that Fazal made no attempt to give “easy answers” to difficult questions. I think the brilliance of the piece is that it does not minimize the crisis of faith that pain and suffering causes people to experience. The ultimate questions of life are not simply resolved. We all wonder - what did I do wrong? Why does God not hear me? Could I or should I have done something different? It is indeed “both beautiful…and cruel.”
The Isaiah passage is first a JEWISH text. And certainly Jewish people and Christian people know the significance of the passage in both faiths. Jews and Christians both have seen it as Messianic - only Christians see that Messiah in Jesus. That is certainly no secret and could not be considered a “hidden” agenda. And it is certainly no secret that Christians do indeed see themselves as linked, in fact, born of Jewish roots. The inclusion of the “first testament” into the Christian Bible makes that self evident
It would be unfortunate if a Christian, who “fervently” believes that Jesus is the Messiah, could not express sympathy for the pain of Jewish people while acknowledging their Messianic perspective.
Fazal explains the purpose of the Christian Hymn in the oratorio as a confession for the failure of the Christian world to respond to the horror of the holocaust while comfortably seated in their sanctuaries singing their hymns. It is more of a self-condemnation than an attack. That the hymn plays during the cacophonous part of the oratorio describing the holocaust makes this clear. How could Christians sing their songs while the world around them is in chaos.
Finally, the “conclusion.” This is to me the most powerful moment of the piece. It is a testament not only to the resilience of the Jewish people, but to the power of the human spirit to survive and to seek out hope. Springing from the innocent voices of children, moving through the adult choirs, the orchestra and eventually to the major players themselves, comes the innocent and hope filled “da da da…” theme. I think she quite successfully “resolves the tension” with the powerful closing resound which made at least my eyes full of the tears of both pain, and hope!
I agree with this response. The Oratorio is a message of hope with no hidden agenda.
As a faculty member who is fortunate enough to be a member of the Vanier College Choir and so was able to participate in this thrilling Montreal performance, I wish to add my comments. First, I believe that the blogger’s remarks about the final movement trivialize the piece and the composer’s intentions. It’s as though a listener were to criticize Beethoven for writing his “Ode to Joy” because it failed to end human suffering. We can all reluctantly admit that no piece of music will bring the victims of the Holocaust back to life. Fazal knows this. No piece of music that has ever been written will answer fundamental and agonizing questions about how how God could have permitted such a terrible event to occur. Fazal know this too. Like the first responder, I see it as an expression of pure hope–or rather, an expression of the emotional equivalent of such hope–flung out against the weight of despair ( thus resolving, for a moment, the tension expressed earlier in Birdsongs I and II). Yes, it’s whistling–or rather da-da-ing–in the dark–it won’t change history– but the movement transcends the specific situation–the children singing are now all children, anywhere, anytime–and so expresses the necessity of hope for everyone.
Second, a slight correction. The “well-known” hymn Fazal makes use of is by Bach, not Handel. At this point in “God is a Refuge for Us”–a movement which begins with the nun-like women’s voices chanting this phrase– the brass section plays a fragment of “A Mighty Fortress is Our God” while the male voices ask “How long, how long, how long shall the wicked exult?” and call upon God to enact vengeance against the evil-doers. The use of Bach’s melody , which is ironic here, alludes to the fact that the Church did not do enough to help the victims of the Holocaust; the brief disagreement during rehearsal between Fazal and Maestro Edwards had to do only with the tone the brass players were supposed to employ, not the essential message. Fazal is a Christian who knows the Church had much to answer for in this dark period of history.
“A Mighty Fortress is Our G-d” was written by Martin Luther (check on Google). Although this Reformation Hymn became universally loved by Christians and was indeed rearranged by Bach and Mendelssohn, it has become tainted in Jewish eyes because Luther wrote vile diatribes against the Jews late in his career (google “The Jews and their Lies”) because they were unwilling to convert to Lutheran Christianity. My thanks to Maestro Edwards for his efforts to do something creative with this tragic slice of musical history.
i love your blog, great !
this is such a great read,I appreciate you sharing this information. thank you.