{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/2b8v980213/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["Bresnick, Martin "]},"logo":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/115/original/Boxed_Milken_Center_logo.png?1628711583","metadata":[{"label":{"en":["Preferred Citation"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eBresknick, Martin. 1998. Interview by Neil Levin. Milken Archive Oral History Project. 24 October.\u003c/p\u003e"]}},{"label":{"en":["Publisher"]},"value":{"en":["Milken Family Foundation"]}},{"label":{"en":["Rights Statement"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003e© Milken Family Foundation. Unauthorized use is prohibited. For inquiries, please contact info@milkenarchive.org.\u003c/p\u003e"]}},{"label":{"en":["Agent"]},"value":{"en":["Bresnick, Martin (Composer)","Levin, Neil (Interviewer)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Date"]},"value":{"en":["1998-10-24"]}},{"label":{"en":["Coverage"]},"value":{"en":["New York, New York (Place of Recording)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Language"]},"value":{"en":["English (Primary)","Yiddish (Secondary)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Description"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eOral history interview with Martin Bresnick focused on Der Signal, a large ensemble piece he composed in 1982 for his mother’s 60th birthday based on the Yiddish translation of a Russian children’s book by Vsevolod Garshin. Interview also encompasses Three Choral Songs on Poems of Amicha, his song Tikkun Olam, and discussion on his family and origins.\u003c/p\u003e"]}},{"label":{"en":["Format"]},"value":{"en":["Beta SP"]}},{"label":{"en":["Subject"]},"value":{"en":["Jews -- Music (Topical Term)","Classical Music (Topical Term)","Oral Histories (genre/form)","Garshin, V. M. (Vsevolod Mikhaĭlovich), 1855-1888 (Person or Corporate Body)","Workmen's Circle/Arbeter Ring (Person or Corporate Body)","Amichai, Yehuda--Musical settings. (Topical Term)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Keyword"]},"value":{"en":["Alan Bold (1943-1998), Arbeter Ring, Bundism, Carol Kozak Ward, Connecticut Hebrew Choral, Der Signal, Kaufman Music Center(New York, New York), Maggie Brooks, Merkin Concert Hall (New York, New York), Owen Hughes, Phyllis Burke, Surprise Lake Camp (Cold Spring, New York), T. Carmi (1925-1994), The Penguin Book of Socialist Verse (1970), Vsevolod Garshin (1855-1888), Workmen’s Circle, Yale Camarata (New Haven, Connecticut), Yehuda Amichai (1924-2000)"]}}],"summary":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eOral history interview with Martin Bresnick focused on Der Signal, a large ensemble piece he composed in 1982 for his mother\u0026rsquo;s 60th birthday based on the Yiddish translation of a Russian children\u0026rsquo;s book by Vsevolod Garshin. Interview also encompasses Three Choral Songs on Poems of Amicha, his song Tikkun Olam, and discussion on his family and origins.\u003c/p\u003e"]},"requiredStatement":{"label":{"en":["Attribution"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003e\u0026copy; Milken Family Foundation. Unauthorized use is prohibited. For inquiries, please contact info@milkenarchive.org.\u003c/p\u003e"]}},"provider":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/aboutus","type":"Agent","label":{"en":["Lowell Milken Center for Music of American Jewish Experience"]},"homepage":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/","type":"Text","label":{"en":["Lowell Milken Center for Music of American Jewish Experience"]},"format":"text/html"}],"logo":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/115/original/Boxed_Milken_Center_logo.png?1628711583","type":"Image"}]}],"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/111/475/small/Bresnick.jpg?1621433786","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 1 - L1881_MA_Composer_Interview_Bresnick_1_Fixed.mp4"]},"duration":1870.67733,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/111/475/small/Bresnick.jpg?1621433786","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-milken.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/111/475/original/L1881_MA_Composer_Interview_Bresnick_1_Fixed.mp4?1618481317","type":"Video","format":"video/mp4","duration":1870.67733,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["Bresnick-Martin-08-22-2022 [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  Let’s talk about the choral pieces that were recorded, I think, that you know, was it…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK:  Yale Camarata recorded them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Yale Camarata.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK:  Yeah.  Marguerite Brooks.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  The title of the piece is what?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK:  The, well, there’s, called Three Choral Songs, and Poems of Yehuda Amichai.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Now, those are three settings of three…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=16.0,43.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/2","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBRESNICK:\u003c/strong\u003e Three independent — well, two of them are truly poems.  And the third one is really a sort of prose poem.  The one that is called B’Gan Kattan.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=43.0,53.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/3","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e Well, we’re going to come to that.  But how did you go about setting, in a language that you…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=53.0,70.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/4","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBRESNICK:\u003c/strong\u003e Well, I must say, I had read Amichai in translation, and I thought it was fantastic poetry at a, and absolutely the high, the highest levels that we have.  And I was curious to what it would actually sound like in the native language.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=70.0,83.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/5","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And I went to, I went to see a friend of mine who was working at Yale, named John Berger, who is, who lived in Israel for a while, and his wife is Israeli.  And I asked them to help me with these poems.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=83.0,100.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/6","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And what they did was, they scanned them for me.  They showed me where the accents fall.  They, they had me speak.  And I spoke it, and I tried it, and I tried to understand where the strong words were, where the strong stresses were. Hebrew is a complex language of stresses.  It’s not, it’s not always evident, where the stresses will fall.  And that turns out to be really important to me.  And finally, we did that.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=100.0,123.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/7","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e Have you had any contact with Amichai?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=123.0,142.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/8","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBRESNICK:\u003c/strong\u003e I have, indeed.  Yeah, I did.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI, well, when I first tried to get the rights to the poem, he was represented by Owen Hughes, who — that’s through his publisher, that was his agent.  And, as is typical in these matters, it was very, very difficult to reach her, to, to get her attention, to get her to focus on this problem.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd when I finally, I did purchase the rights from her for these works, with very — an insignificant amount of money.  But it was, took a long time to do.  Finally, it wasn’t clear to me, on the basis of the rights that she gave me, whether, what my rights were, in relationship to those rights.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=142.0,177.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/9","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And so, when I finally met Amichai, I had a conversation with him.  And he said, “I, she doesn’t represent me anymore.”  And he scribbled on a piece of paper, “You now have the rights to do whatever you want with this material.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd, I must say, I, I treasure that piece of paper, because I, I think Amichai’s a great poet, and because I was so delighted that he — because he heard them.  And he felt that this was fine to do.  And I kept the, I have, for my own archive, I have that little paper safely tucked away.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Who coached the Yale chorus?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK:  Well, in, in the Hebrew language, or…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  The…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=177.0,207.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/10","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK:  Well, you, you know, the work was not originally written for the, for Yale.  It was written for the Connecticut Hebrew Chorale, which was a group directed by a woman named Carol Kozak Ward, who I think has since moved to Israel, actually.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  I haven’t heard that name in a while.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK:  Well, you may never hear it again.  She’s a very, she was a very gifted student of Maggie Brooks, who commissioned the project for this new chorus which was designed to do Jewish music.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=207.0,235.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/11","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  Do they still exist?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK:  They existed for a while.  I think they’ve faded out, now.  They existed for about eight or nine years, with a number of different directors.  Now, they’re gone.  But that’s the way it originally came to be.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThey, Carol herself spoke Hebrew and was able to coach her choir.  And once I heard her do that, I, I got a feeling for how that would go.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=235.0,254.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/12","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e It’s a capella?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=254.0,279.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/13","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK:  It’s a capella.  There’s a piano part written underneath, as a guide.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK:  But, rehearsal help.  But it should be sung, done a capella.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  So the inspiration for these pieces came from your attraction to Amichai?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=279.0,290.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/14","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBRESNICK:\u003c/strong\u003e I, you know, I, I came across an Amichai poem — which, again, Amichai is such a unique character.  It was barely a poem.  It was about five lines in a very strange book called The Penguin Book of Socialist Verse, edited by Alan Bold.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=290.0,307.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/15","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e But in any case, how was that constructed musically?  I mean, what would you want to describe to us, in both texture, tonality?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=307.0,339.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/16","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBRESNICK:\u003c/strong\u003e Well, you know, I wrote these works over a period from around 1985 until around nineteen eighty — the first, the first two were completed rather quickly, in ’85 and ’86.  Then the last one — it took us a little longer to finish the final one, in ’88.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=339.0,355.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/17","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And they are constructed a little bit unusual for me, in that they, these three movements form a, a kind of spiral.  That, that is, it starts with the first, the first one, Roshi, Roshi — My Head, My Head — and goes from there to B’Gan Kattan, and then from there, spirals out even further, to the, the final one, the, the appendix for The Prophecy of Peace — Lo LeHafseik.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=355.0,383.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/18","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"It’s not an obvious connection between the poems, and I try to make it work by suggesting that the poems begin with a meditation on the self.  The first one, about myself, my, my head, my limbs, my door, your hand — all these very concrete elements of com, communication.  In the second, the, the poet wanders out into a, into a courtyard and sees the names of dead soldiers on a, on a, on a plaque.  And, and then, the final one, it’s a broader generalization.  So it goes from the specific to the general.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=383.0,419.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/19","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e Would you say they are contrapuntal?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=419.0,441.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/20","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBRESNICK:\u003c/strong\u003e They are very strongly contrapuntal.  And some of them have a unique — well, the second one particularly has almost a 12-tone subject that the people sing.  But they do so in such a way that it’s, they sing fragments that sound quasi-tonal.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=441.0,455.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/21","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Yeah, it’s a, it’s a single line that passes throughout the entire choir, and individuals break off from it.  So, and as they break off, they sing little repetitive cycles, so that a single line goes from beginning to end of the song, but these little eddies of repetitions develop.  And as the piece goes on, the eddies build up bigger and bigger, until, at the end, you realize that as the, the text has ended, what these eddies turn out to be are the names that I have extracted from the Hebrew itself.  And these names suggest the names of the dead soldiers who, whose names are, are on the plaque in the yard outside that.  So that’s a rather unusual one.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=455.0,496.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/22","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e What is an almost D-major chord?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=496.0,513.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/23","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK:  Well, it’s a D-major chord with a, with, it has plus, it has, it’s a D-major chord that has a G-sharp fixed.  It’s a kind of Lydian D-major with a fixed G-sharp. And that tri-tone relationship is very important to me.  It’s important in all the songs.  And it really emerges very forcefully in the final song, which I, which I have had to…. You know, I have a very friend in, in Israel named Elizabeth Freund, who, who, who has lived in Jerusalem for many, many years, and is a great fan of Amichai.  And she, she really loved the songs.  I was very delighted that she did.  And, and she talked to the poet Carmi — I don’t know if you know this…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Yeah.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=513.0,551.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/24","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK:  He’s a wonderful poet.  And he actually thrilled me by letting me know that he could actually understand the, the text when it was sung.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut Elizabeth sort of felt that I made the last movement less, less demure than it might be.  I made it more, more like a, a, a, a placard, or something like that.  But that’s fine.  That’s what I wanted to do.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  I want to now talk about your background, in terms of Yiddish.  Do I gather that you come from a Yiddishist background?  Your parents…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=551.0,584.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/25","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBRESNICK:\u003c/strong\u003e I come a very, very strong Yiddishist family.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy, my grandparents — well, you see, my mother was born in Russia.  I’m fairly — in, and, at least on my, my, my maternal side, which is a much more dominant side in my family, the family is all from White — Byelorusse, Byelorussia, as they would say in the old days.  And so, and they were very strong Yiddishists.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=584.0,607.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/26","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"My mother, to this day, is a story-teller in Yiddish.  She travels around the country, has published books about that, and, and tells stories of the shtetl, and where she came from.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=607.0,617.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/27","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  But you were born in America?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK:  I was born in America.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  And they, where — in the New York area, or…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK:  In the Bronx.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  So they were New York.  So let me guess — were they, the orientation.  Workmen's Circle…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=617.0,630.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/28","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK:  Yes.  We were the — no, we were not — we were, well, you see, we considered ourselves basically socialists with anarchist tendencies, I would say.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  So that’s a little left of Workmen.  That’s more like…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=630.0,642.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/29","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK:  Well, we were not the — we had fights with the communists at the coop, you know.  We were not the, we, we — my family only had one wing.  It was a left wing.  We sort of flew in circles. I think the farthest right we went were the Liberal Democrats.  I think we had a few of those in the family.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  The Liberal Party, in other words.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK:  The Liberal Party.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWe eventually had some total renegades.  A distant cousin of mine worked as a press secretary for Gerald Ford, which we considered almost beyond the pale.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Well, that’s — yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK:  You know.  But no.  We were very, it was very left.  Very anti-authoritarian, very, very much in the bund — they have a kind of a bundist tradition.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  For example, did you go to the Workmen's Circle school?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=642.0,677.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/30","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK:  I went to Workmen’s School, I went to the Yud Lamed Peretz (I. L. Peretz) Arbeter Ring Shul Drei, in the Bronx.  I, I, I didn’t quite go to mittl shul, but I, I can read and write Yiddish.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Did you go to any summer camps?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=677.0,691.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/31","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK:  I went to Surprise Lake Camp, which was a, a, a sort of a Jewish camp, but not a political one.  It was not one of the…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Not Kinderring…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK:  No.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  …or Kindervelt Bund?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=691.0,701.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/32","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK:  No.  I never went there.  I, because I was a musician, my parents sent me, as soon as I was — you know, we would, didn’t have a lot of money, and this was a way for me to get out of the city.  I was an oboe player and a, and a waiter in a camp up in the, in the Adirondacks, at Lake Placid, which was a music camp.  So I didn’t do that political camp thing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Any choruses?  Did you ever sing in any of the choruses?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=701.0,724.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/33","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK:  I did sing in the mittl shul chorus for a little while.  And I know the Mloteks very well, because they are, they are neighborhood people.  Since the neighborhood I come from is the Amalgamated.  Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  So you wrote this piece, to which I’m leading up, with this Yiddishist background, you wrote this piece, Der Signal, which we just talked about a minute ago.  I want to talk about it…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK:  Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  …afresh here.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK:  Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  But is that — have you written other things in Yiddish?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK:  I have, I wrote a song.  That’s, that’s true.  I wrote a song, which my aunt, who is a, who is a professional Yiddish singer, who sings Yiddish all over, and has recorded it…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  What’s her name?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=724.0,762.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/34","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK:  Her name is Phyllis Burke.  And she’s on the circuit, though she’s aging a bit now.  Her voice is not quite what it was when she was in her 30s and 40s.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut I wrote a song called Tikkun Olam, which actually, with, despite the Hebrew title, is a Yiddish song that my mother wrote the text to.  And I think we, we were, we, we entered it in the Yiddish folk song, the Yiddish song competition that ran out of North Carolina some eight or nine years ago.  And I think we were somewhat…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Is that summer camp, the Jewish summer camp?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK:  I’m not sure.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=762.0,794.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/35","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  The music of Bob Abelson.  Do you know Bob Abelson?  He goes somewhere in North Carolina.  He’s a Yiddishist…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK:  He’s a Yiddishist?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Not Yiddishist.  But he’s a cantor, but he’s really sort of devoted a lot of his career to Yiddish lieder.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK:  I see.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Especially Lazar Weiner’s things and all that.  And he, he goes somewhere in North Carolina in the summer.  There is some festival or something there.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=794.0,812.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/36","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK:  I see.  Well, we, we won a prize.  We didn’t win first prize, but we won a prize for this little song.  And that’s about it.  There’s the…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Would you say it’s an artsong?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK:  Oh, it really is an artsong.  And I think probably that’s why it didn’t do better.  I think they were looking for new Yiddish folk songs, and it’s not.  It’s sort of an anthem-like thing, in the style of \"Un zol vee vayt nokh zayn dee tsayt.\"  You know, that kind of style of thing, from the Workmen’s Circle Songbook kind of thing.  It’s a little higher level — you know, higher is not right.  But a little more sophisticated than a folk song.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Would it fit in in a presentation of Kunstlieder?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=812.0,849.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/37","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK:  Yeah.  Oh, definitely.  Because it’s an arrangement for sort of mezzo-soprano and cello and piano.  That’s the kind of piece.  It’s not really a folk song.  Although it has a verse of, verse structure and a certain degree of simplicity about it.  But it’s…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  So does Schubert.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=849.0,860.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/38","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK:  It’s, it’s in that Schubertian style.  I mean, a kind of a simple style, that style.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  What else?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK:  And that’s it.  I mean, there is the, there is the Der Signal, which was the, which is this extensive…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  That’s a big piece.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=860.0,873.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/39","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK:  That’s a bigger or a sort of oratorio kind of piece.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  But I mean, in Yiddish.  No choral, never did anything in choral music?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK:  Nothing.  Just a little song, Der Signal, and then in…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  A song cycle in Yiddish?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK:  I, yeah, I’ve thought about it.  And I would certainly do it, if I had the, you know, if I had the occasion.  If the occasion arose, I would do it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=873.0,889.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/40","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"It’s not — Yiddish is a funny thing.  When I was working on Der Signal, I had this terrible feeling like I was working on a corpse, as it were.  And it’s…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Well, Der Signal is really a passé…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK:  It’s a, it’s a period that…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=889.0,903.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/41","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  I mean, textually.  That is, but there are Yiddish lieder that are, that have nothing to do with politics, anyway.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK:  See, I just don’t know the newer…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=903.0,912.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/42","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  No, it wouldn’t be newer.  Although there is some fine Yiddish poetry.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK:  I’m sure.  I have no doubt.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: I mean, if you look at, here, you have a, solo art song repertoire of Bugatch. I don’t know if you know Shmuel Bugatch.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=912.0,924.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/43","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK: No.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Uh, these are all an addition to Weiner, you see. Jacob Bimal, Israel Alter. Israel Alter was a songwriter and very, very famous cantor from…nobody knows these people.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=924.0,937.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/44","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK: I don’t know these people.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: That’s the point.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK: That’s just the Shostakovich materials I know.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: No, no, I’m talking about Yiddish art songs, strictly art songs.  The trouble is Lazar Weiner, everybody knows. But the ideal here is to, there was a whole continuum, there was a… Solomon Golub, who wrote five volumes of art songs. They are much simpler than Lazar Weiner.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=937.0,954.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/45","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBRESNICK:\u003c/strong\u003e Well, as Ned (?), is want to say, the whole tradition of the art song is very much in retreat, or in decline. It’s going to take a lot of effort to restore the notion of a vocal recital anyway. And then we’re going to write a vocal recital, which is a small form. We’re going to do it in a language that absolutely nobody understands, I don’t know. I mean I, I suffer from it because I know the language, I know how beautiful the language is. It’s not as though I want to do anything about it and to make it less.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=954.0,982.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/46","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e I know. I think if you can be persuaded since, especially since you’re very rare in the sense of being a composer on the level that you are with a Yiddish background, that’s very rare. You know, pick three poems and start it, and write. It doesn’t have to be a 12-song cycle.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=982.0,998.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/47","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBRESNICK:\u003c/strong\u003e It comes to, I mean the Tikkun Olam song, for example, that I wrote for my aunt. But most of the, for most of the people interested in Yiddish who have more of an ideological position in relationship to that than an aesthetic one , that poem was an opera for them. That setting was an operatic setting. Everybody said ‘Oh, that’s very beautiful. That’s an opera.’ It’s not an opera, it’s just a little song. On the other hand, Der Signal , which was attempting to reengage the, essentially, the art side of a populist art tradition, it’s like writing for an audience of the dead. I mean, there just isn’t anybody there who really… well, anyway. I experienced a sense of terrible, unnecessary sorrow in relationship to that work.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=998.0,1043.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/48","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: To Der Signal?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK: Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: How long is it?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK: Der Signal, it seems longer than it is, because so much happens, it’s about 16 minutes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: That so?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1043.0,1052.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/49","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: Um, tell me about that. First, tell me about how it arose.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK: Der Signal, my mother was turning 60, and I wanted to surprise her with a special gift for her 60th birthday. And so I, my mother had a favorite story called Der Signal, which appeared in a book that the Bund passed out in Russia and Poland. It was a book for children, a children’s primer full of uplifting tales of sacrifice and education and humanitarianism and yadayada.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1052.0,1084.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/50","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And it turned out, I was very delighted to discover that my grandmother, who was still then alive, had kept the original copy of the book that she had brought over, it was one of the few things that she brought over with her when she left the old county, the Alta Haym. And, so I went to my Bubbie’s house in Amalgamated and put a microphone down, not as fancy as the one I’m wearing now, and I put it on the table and I said ‘Okay Bubbie, you read this, you read this to me. And I just want to hear you read this, just like you used to read it to Momma like you used to read it to Momma. And she started to read this Yiddish story, which she doesn’t know the origin, she know the book, she know a part of her life, but I actually found out many things about this story, which are really fascinating.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1084.0,1126.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/51","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"But she starts to read it, and it’s astonishing as she reads, she’s reading words that are actually in Yiddish but aren’t used very often in Yiddish, there actually old Russian words for one thing. For another thing, as she is reading, she’ll make funny errors, where she’ll see Yiddish word and she’ll read the English equivalent of that word. She’s looking at. Yiddish but instead of saying ‘nor’, she said ‘but’. She’s supposed to say \"nor der machinist hot im shoyn bemerkt,\" but she says, \"but the mashi--mashinist.\" Her brain is already so bilingual that sometimes she doesn’t know which language it is that she is speaking. I feel like this is incredibly wonderful.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1126.0,1167.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/52","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"So I took this tape and I began to edit it, and I took everything that she said, but I realized that no audience, I couldn’t imagine an audience that would understand it. So what I did, I had the text printed in three languages- English, Russian, and in Yiddish. And I had the singers, I had three singers sing the story, they begin singing in a mixture of Yiddish and Russian. And then as the cycle goes on, the Russian goes away and they begin singing in a mixture of Yiddish and English, which is the natural experience of what my mother and grandmother did as they came to this country.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1167.0,1200.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/53","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"So I had, it was a concert at Merkin, and it was very funny. We printed this nice booklet that goes along with it with pictures. We passed it out to everybody in the audience. It has wonderful pictures of my now ex-wife, drew and printed. My brother has since, by the way, made a shadow puppet show of this, and we’ve produced this as a shadow puppet theater with great effect, I must say.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1200.0,1227.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/54","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: What is the story?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK: Der Signal is actually not a Yiddish story. It’s a Russian story by a Russian author by the name of Vsevolod Garshin, who is a contemporary of Tolstoy, who wrote uplifting Tolstoian literature. And the Jews of this region took this story and translated it into Yiddish. So originally it was in Russian. And that’s interesting, I’ll tell you a little footnote to that only because, for example, the title Der Signal.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1227.0,1253.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/55","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"If you talk to Germans and say Der Signal, they say that sounds weird because it should be Das Signal. So why is it Der Signal? Well, it’s Der Signal because when the Jews translated it from Russian to Yiddish, the noun Signal in Russian is masculine, so when they took it, they made it Der Signal, it’s not a neuter. So that’s the occasion for this linguistic thing. So, what is the story? The story is a story of a railroad watchman whose name is Simyon, who comes upon a railroad track, in which someone has stolen parts of the railroad track.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1253.0,1288.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/56","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"He sees the guy actually stealing pieces of the railroad track, bending the track, and taking the hardware from the track. And he can't believe it, and he tries to run after the guy, but the guy runs away. And as he is doing that, he realizes that there is a train coming. And the train will come through this spot where the rail of the track is broken, and he has no way to warn the engineer of the train that the train is broken.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1288.0,1314.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/57","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"He doesn't have anything with him. He doesn’t have his red flag, he doesn’t have any flags to flag down the train. So he, that’s the end of the first act, that realization. And the second act, he suddenly imagines what will happen. He can imagine, it’s ten to six, all these people are coming home from the factory after hard work. All of the poor people, the third-class compartments are crowded. It’s all kind of the socialists idealized workers coming home from a hard day at work, all of the women and children, and the train is coming around the track. And he can imagine in his own mind, it hits the broken rail, and it's going to fall into this ditch, which is a ditch of at least 11 klafta.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1314.0,1353.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/58","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And I remember asking, what is a klafta? Because a klafter is no unit of measurement that we have either in English or, it’s a Russian unit of measurement, I don’t know exactly how much it is, but it’s deep. Whatever it is, a meter, I don’t know, whatever, what a klafter is. And so, the railroad watchmen thinks, ‘My God, what am I going to do about this?’, that’s the end of the second act. And the third act, he decides that he has a plan. He runs back to his little shed. He goes into the shed.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1353.0,1380.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/59","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"He sees a bunch of sticks, he doesn’t have a flag, he takes a stick, he runs back toward the train. He goes back to the train. He takes his kerchief off. And then in another great pure Russian Yiddish moment, he takes from cholova a messa. And I said to Bubbie, ‘What is a cholova?’ Again, these are words, nouns, that, do you know what a cholova is? What’s a cholova? A cholova is a place in your boot where you keep a knife. Now, there’s a word, who still knows what a cholova is? But it’s the place where you keep your knife In your boot. If you’re a peasant, you don’t where it around your waist, you have a place in your boot you keep a little knife.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1380.0,1421.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/60","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"So, he takes the cholova from his boot; from the cholova he takes a knife, and he takes this and he cuts his arm. And he bleeds over this white shirt, kerchief until it becomes soaked with blood. And he ties it to the stick, he stands in the track, and he waves this red flag. And of course, the wound is very deep and he starts to lose consciousness, and he waves the flag and he waves the flag, and the train comes around the corner. And he starts to get very dizzy, but he stays there waving it. All of this symbolism, as blatant as you could possibly get. It’s wonderfully naive, it’s absolutely fantastic.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1421.0,1460.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/61","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"It’s a little bit like the symbolism that struck me in Bertolucci’s 1900, where the Padronian, the little boys dare each other, who has the curse to lie under the train. At the beginning of that great movie, they both lie under the train while the train passes over them. The train being the early 20th-century symbol of progress and the future, the irrevocable motion of progress. Anyway, he stands on the track and he is waving his flags and he starts to faint, and he faints. And the music gets very mysterious at that point.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1460.0,1492.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/62","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And all of the children, because it is really a children’s story. And the train stops, and the people jump out and see this guy lying in a pool of blood on the floor, on the ground. And next to him, a \"farblutikte shmate ofy a shteken,\" a bloody rag on a stick, which is a wonderful image, it’s just a wonderful image. And I remember saying to Bubbie at the end of this I said to her, I said to my mother first, ‘Mom, this was your favorite story, what do you think happened at the end? Did Simyon live or did he die. What happened to Simyon? The story doesn’t say.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1492.0,1528.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/63","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"She said ‘Oh no, it’s really clear.’ I said ‘Clear? How, what? She said,’ Well, the people, they jump out, and they pick him up and they carry him back to town and he’s a hero, he survives. And I said to Bubbie, ‘What do you think happened to Simyon? He lived or he died?’ And she said, ‘Oh he died, for sure. No question about it, he’s dead. I know that he’s dead. He cut his arm and he died.’ So it’s very interesting generational image of this, but I think actually my grandmother is probably right.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1528.0,1558.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/64","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Because, this I almost a Christian symbol of the sacrifice, the great sacrifice, the moral sacrifice for the communal good. And that’s, Jews have such an image too, but it’s a very, Russian, symbolic, iconic quality, I think, comes through there. And anyways, so that’s the end of the thing. It ends in this, you know, you hear the train stops. That is one of my pieces closest to my heart. And I will tell you one last story about it if you’ll bear with me. And that is that, when we did it at Merkin, my mother was hugely delighted and surprised by this event, and she was very, very thrilled by it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1558.0,1598.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/65","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"She was so delighted and thrilled that she didn’t noticed that I had dedicated it to her until years later when she actually gave her the score, which I gave her. She doesn’t read music, no idea, but she liked the whole event, anyway. And my grandmother, who was still alive and came to this thing. At the end, I was called to the stage. There as a lot of noise, and I motioned to the audience, and my Bubbie, who at the point had no show business experience of any kind, got up and took numerous bows, in a very, gracious way.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1598.0,1626.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/66","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"This 80-something-year-old woman. And then she button-holed me in the lobby after and she said, ‘What, you didn’t tell me you were gonna do this with this material.’ And I said ‘Well, no I didn’t tell you, it’s a surprise.’ She said, ‘Well if you had told me, I would’ve read much better.’ And I thought, ‘ You know, Bubbie, you read great. It was a great, great, great tape. She did a great job. Anyway, that’s the story of Der Signal.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1626.0,1654.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/67","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: What are the forces here? This is for…?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK: This is for a small, almost Klezmer ensemble\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: What does that mean? Almost Klezmer ensemble.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK: It lacks, I was very anxious not to have the Fiddler on the Roof. So it’s viola, bass, cello, clarinet, doubling saxophone, cornet, not a trumpet but a cornet, percussion, and three singers. Two soprano, a mezzo-soprano, a soloist, and an alto singer.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1654.0,1691.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/68","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: A mezzo?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK: A mezzo-soprano, and a sort of a low, a lower voice, even than a mezzo. The mezzo is the soloist.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Contralto maybe…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK: And you have a narrator, you have a tape, which can either be done live, I’ve done it myself life, or you can use the tape of my grandmother, whose Yiddish is exquisite. A real Litvak Yiddish, right from the pure wells of good literary Yiddish. And she reads in this kind of brilliant, almost deadpan style, which is perfect for this material.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1691.0,1720.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/69","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: So you could use an existing track?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK: It exists. I’ve made a copy. It’s on digitized.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: But the singers, if you did that then you’d still, you’d have a mezzo, you have a contralto\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK: Yeah, it doesn’t have to be very low, it’s just a lower voice. And a soprano.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: And a soprano. Now you obviously had a recording at some point. I heard something.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK: I have a recording, I have a nice recording.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: But do you have a good recording?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK: I do. It’s almost ready for, you could probably get away with it. There’s one trumpet, we made a recording but we really didn’t have time to redo it since the trumpet cracks on one note, but otherwise, it’s perfect.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1720.0,1755.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/70","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: The sonic?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK: It’s terrific. It’s done really great.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Could you send me another copy of it?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK: Sure.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: I have it somewhere.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK: You have the older one, this is a newer one. It’s a better performance than the other. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: I think that we should get that in here.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK: This is a document. A piece of anthropology, really.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: I’m glad we talked, because frankly, I forgot about it until I saw you this morning. I didn’t think it was your piece?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1755.0,1780.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/71","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK: That’s right. You should’ve seen the bewilderment of the Russians in the audience\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ewho came to see it. There were a lot of recent Russian immigrants. This piece of culture to them was completely un-understandable. First of all, it’s pre-revolutionary culture. It comes from before the Russian revolution.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Oh sure, it’s in the early days, and of course the red flag, and all that, you know it’s symbolic, and it’s good because it’s not overt that causes you to think it’s symbolism. It’s not a story of a political thing. There’s a wonderful song, which you probably know from Shula, but it was a long time ago. And the melody is really funny, too. In fact, let me see what you think of this. Oh, Gutta Friend. (sings)","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1780.0,1836.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/72","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK: I’ve heard that. I recognize that. Yeah absolutely, the Beethoven, the ‘Pathetique’, isn’t it?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: The Pathetique. And it’s too obvious, even with just one phrase. But it’s both the A and B phrases, it had to be.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1836.0,1857.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39442/annotation/73","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK: Yeah. It would be nice if you could do that.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: I think we should do it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK: That would be great.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1857.0,1870.67733"}]},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["08-15-2022 [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/74","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  Let’s talk about the choral pieces that were recorded, I think, that you know, was it…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK:  Yale Camarata recorded them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Yale Camarata.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK:  Yeah.  Marguerite Brooks.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  The title of the piece is what?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK:  The, well, there’s, called Three Choral Songs, and Poems of Yehuda Amichai.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Now, those are three settings of three…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=16.0,43.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/75","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBRESNICK:\u003c/strong\u003e Three independent — well, two of them are truly poems.  And the third one is really a sort of prose poem.  The one that is called B’Gan Kattan.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=43.0,53.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/76","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e Well, we’re going to come to that.  But how did you go about setting, in a language that you…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=53.0,70.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/77","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBRESNICK:\u003c/strong\u003e Well, I must say, I had read Amichai in translation, and I thought it was fantastic poetry at a, and absolutely the high, the highest levels that we have.  And I was curious to what it would actually sound like in the native language.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=70.0,83.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/78","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And I went to, I went to see a friend of mine who was working at Yale, named John Berger, who is, who lived in Israel for a while, and his wife is Israeli.  And I asked them to help me with these poems.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=83.0,100.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/79","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And what they did was, they scanned them for me.  They showed me where the accents fall.  They, they had me speak.  And I spoke it, and I tried it, and I tried to understand where the strong words were, where the strong stresses were. Hebrew is a complex language of stresses.  It’s not, it’s not always evident, where the stresses will fall.  And that turns out to be really important to me.  And finally, we did that.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=100.0,123.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/80","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e Have you had any contact with Amichai?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=123.0,142.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/81","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBRESNICK:\u003c/strong\u003e I have, indeed.  Yeah, I did.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI, well, when I first tried to get the rights to the poem, he was represented by Owen Hughes, who — that’s through his publisher, that was his agent.  And, as is typical in these matters, it was very, very difficult to reach her, to, to get her attention, to get her to focus on this problem.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd when I finally, I did purchase the rights from her for these works, with very — an insignificant amount of money.  But it was, took a long time to do.  Finally, it wasn’t clear to me, on the basis of the rights that she gave me, whether, what my rights were, in relationship to those rights.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=142.0,177.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/82","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And so, when I finally met Amichai, I had a conversation with him.  And he said, “I, she doesn’t represent me anymore.”  And he scribbled on a piece of paper, “You now have the rights to do whatever you want with this material.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd, I must say, I, I treasure that piece of paper, because I, I think Amichai’s a great poet, and because I was so delighted that he — because he heard them.  And he felt that this was fine to do.  And I kept the, I have, for my own archive, I have that little paper safely tucked away.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Who coached the Yale chorus?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK:  Well, in, in the Hebrew language, or…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  The…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=177.0,207.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/83","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK:  Well, you, you know, the work was not originally written for the, for Yale.  It was written for the Connecticut Hebrew Chorale, which was a group directed by a woman named Carol Kozak Ward, who I think has since moved to Israel, actually.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  I haven’t heard that name in a while.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK:  Well, you may never hear it again.  She’s a very, she was a very gifted student of Maggie Brooks, who commissioned the project for this new chorus which was designed to do Jewish music.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=207.0,235.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/84","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  Do they still exist?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK:  They existed for a while.  I think they’ve faded out, now.  They existed for about eight or nine years, with a number of different directors.  Now, they’re gone.  But that’s the way it originally came to be.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThey, Carol herself spoke Hebrew and was able to coach her choir.  And once I heard her do that, I, I got a feeling for how that would go.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=235.0,254.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/85","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e It’s a capella?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=254.0,279.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/86","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK:  It’s a capella.  There’s a piano part written underneath, as a guide.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK:  But, rehearsal help.  But it should be sung, done a capella.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  So the inspiration for these pieces came from your attraction to Amichai?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=279.0,290.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/87","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBRESNICK:\u003c/strong\u003e I, you know, I, I came across an Amichai poem — which, again, Amichai is such a unique character.  It was barely a poem.  It was about five lines in a very strange book called The Penguin Book of Socialist Verse, edited by Alan Bold.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=290.0,307.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/88","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e But in any case, how was that constructed musically?  I mean, what would you want to describe to us, in both texture, tonality?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=307.0,339.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/89","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBRESNICK:\u003c/strong\u003e Well, you know, I wrote these works over a period from around 1985 until around nineteen eighty — the first, the first two were completed rather quickly, in ’85 and ’86.  Then the last one — it took us a little longer to finish the final one, in ’88.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=339.0,355.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/90","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And they are constructed a little bit unusual for me, in that they, these three movements form a, a kind of spiral.  That, that is, it starts with the first, the first one, Roshi, Roshi — My Head, My Head — and goes from there to B’Gan Kattan, and then from there, spirals out even further, to the, the final one, the, the appendix for The Prophecy of Peace — Lo LeHafseik.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=355.0,383.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/91","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"It’s not an obvious connection between the poems, and I try to make it work by suggesting that the poems begin with a meditation on the self.  The first one, about myself, my, my head, my limbs, my door, your hand — all these very concrete elements of com, communication.  In the second, the, the poet wanders out into a, into a courtyard and sees the names of dead soldiers on a, on a, on a plaque.  And, and then, the final one, it’s a broader generalization.  So it goes from the specific to the general.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=383.0,419.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/92","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e Would you say they are contrapuntal?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=419.0,441.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/93","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBRESNICK:\u003c/strong\u003e They are very strongly contrapuntal.  And some of them have a unique — well, the second one particularly has almost a 12-tone subject that the people sing.  But they do so in such a way that it’s, they sing fragments that sound quasi-tonal.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=441.0,455.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/94","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Yeah, it’s a, it’s a single line that passes throughout the entire choir, and individuals break off from it.  So, and as they break off, they sing little repetitive cycles, so that a single line goes from beginning to end of the song, but these little eddies of repetitions develop.  And as the piece goes on, the eddies build up bigger and bigger, until, at the end, you realize that as the, the text has ended, what these eddies turn out to be are the names that I have extracted from the Hebrew itself.  And these names suggest the names of the dead soldiers who, whose names are, are on the plaque in the yard outside that.  So that’s a rather unusual one.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=455.0,496.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/95","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e What is an almost D-major chord?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=496.0,513.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/96","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK:  Well, it’s a D-major chord with a, with, it has plus, it has, it’s a D-major chord that has a G-sharp fixed.  It’s a kind of Lydian D-major with a fixed G-sharp. And that tri-tone relationship is very important to me.  It’s important in all the songs.  And it really emerges very forcefully in the final song, which I, which I have had to…. You know, I have a very friend in, in Israel named Elizabeth Freund, who, who, who has lived in Jerusalem for many, many years, and is a great fan of Amichai.  And she, she really loved the songs.  I was very delighted that she did.  And, and she talked to the poet Carmi — I don’t know if you know this…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Yeah.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=513.0,551.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/97","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK:  He’s a wonderful poet.  And he actually thrilled me by letting me know that he could actually understand the, the text when it was sung.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut Elizabeth sort of felt that I made the last movement less, less demure than it might be.  I made it more, more like a, a, a, a placard, or something like that.  But that’s fine.  That’s what I wanted to do.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  I want to now talk about your background, in terms of Yiddish.  Do I gather that you come from a Yiddishist background?  Your parents…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=551.0,584.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/98","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBRESNICK:\u003c/strong\u003e I come a very, very strong Yiddishist family.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy, my grandparents — well, you see, my mother was born in Russia.  I’m fairly — in, and, at least on my, my, my maternal side, which is a much more dominant side in my family, the family is all from White — Byelorusse, Byelorussia, as they would say in the old days.  And so, and they were very strong Yiddishists.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=584.0,607.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/99","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"My mother, to this day, is a story-teller in Yiddish.  She travels around the country, has published books about that, and, and tells stories of the shtetl, and where she came from.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=607.0,617.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/100","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  But you were born in America?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK:  I was born in America.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  And they, where — in the New York area, or…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK:  In the Bronx.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  So they were New York.  So let me guess — were they, the orientation.  Workmen's Circle…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=617.0,630.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/101","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK:  Yes.  We were the — no, we were not — we were, well, you see, we considered ourselves basically socialists with anarchist tendencies, I would say.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  So that’s a little left of Workmen.  That’s more like…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=630.0,642.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/102","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK:  Well, we were not the — we had fights with the communists at the coop, you know.  We were not the, we, we — my family only had one wing.  It was a left wing.  We sort of flew in circles. I think the farthest right we went were the Liberal Democrats.  I think we had a few of those in the family.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  The Liberal Party, in other words.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK:  The Liberal Party.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWe eventually had some total renegades.  A distant cousin of mine worked as a press secretary for Gerald Ford, which we considered almost beyond the pale.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Well, that’s — yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK:  You know.  But no.  We were very, it was very left.  Very anti-authoritarian, very, very much in the bund — they have a kind of a bundist tradition.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  For example, did you go to the Workmen's Circle school?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=642.0,677.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/103","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK:  I went to Workmen’s School, I went to the Yud Lamed Peretz (I. L. Peretz) Arbeter Ring Shul Drei, in the Bronx.  I, I, I didn’t quite go to mittl shul, but I, I can read and write Yiddish.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Did you go to any summer camps?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=677.0,691.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/104","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK:  I went to Surprise Lake Camp, which was a, a, a sort of a Jewish camp, but not a political one.  It was not one of the…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Not Kinderring…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK:  No.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  …or Kindervelt Bund?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=691.0,701.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/105","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK:  No.  I never went there.  I, because I was a musician, my parents sent me, as soon as I was — you know, we would, didn’t have a lot of money, and this was a way for me to get out of the city.  I was an oboe player and a, and a waiter in a camp up in the, in the Adirondacks, at Lake Placid, which was a music camp.  So I didn’t do that political camp thing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Any choruses?  Did you ever sing in any of the choruses?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=701.0,724.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/106","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK:  I did sing in the mittl shul chorus for a little while.  And I know the Mloteks very well, because they are, they are neighborhood people.  Since the neighborhood I come from is the Amalgamated.  Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  So you wrote this piece, to which I’m leading up, with this Yiddishist background, you wrote this piece, Der Signal, which we just talked about a minute ago.  I want to talk about it…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK:  Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  …afresh here.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK:  Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  But is that — have you written other things in Yiddish?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK:  I have, I wrote a song.  That’s, that’s true.  I wrote a song, which my aunt, who is a, who is a professional Yiddish singer, who sings Yiddish all over, and has recorded it…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  What’s her name?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=724.0,762.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/107","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK:  Her name is Phyllis Burke.  And she’s on the circuit, though she’s aging a bit now.  Her voice is not quite what it was when she was in her 30s and 40s.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut I wrote a song called Tikkun Olam, which actually, with, despite the Hebrew title, is a Yiddish song that my mother wrote the text to.  And I think we, we were, we, we entered it in the Yiddish folk song, the Yiddish song competition that ran out of North Carolina some eight or nine years ago.  And I think we were somewhat…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Is that summer camp, the Jewish summer camp?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK:  I’m not sure.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=762.0,794.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/108","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  The music of Bob Abelson.  Do you know Bob Abelson?  He goes somewhere in North Carolina.  He’s a Yiddishist…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK:  He’s a Yiddishist?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Not Yiddishist.  But he’s a cantor, but he’s really sort of devoted a lot of his career to Yiddish lieder.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK:  I see.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Especially Lazar Weiner’s things and all that.  And he, he goes somewhere in North Carolina in the summer.  There is some festival or something there.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=794.0,812.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/109","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK:  I see.  Well, we, we won a prize.  We didn’t win first prize, but we won a prize for this little song.  And that’s about it.  There’s the…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Would you say it’s an artsong?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK:  Oh, it really is an artsong.  And I think probably that’s why it didn’t do better.  I think they were looking for new Yiddish folk songs, and it’s not.  It’s sort of an anthem-like thing, in the style of \"Und so wie weit noch nie die zeit.\"  You know, that kind of style of thing, from the Workmen’s Circle Songbook kind of thing.  It’s a little higher level — you know, higher is not right.  But a little more sophisticated than a folk song.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Would it fit in in a presentation of Kunstlieder?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=812.0,849.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/110","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK:  Yeah.  Oh, definitely.  Because it’s an arrangement for sort of mezzo-soprano and cello and piano.  That’s the kind of piece.  It’s not really a folk song.  Although it has a verse of, verse structure and a certain degree of simplicity about it.  But it’s…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  So does Schubert.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=849.0,860.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/111","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK:  It’s, it’s in that Schubertian style.  I mean, a kind of a simple style, that style.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  What else?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK:  And that’s it.  I mean, there is the, there is the Der Signal, which was the, which is this extensive…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  That’s a big piece.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=860.0,873.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/112","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK:  That’s a bigger or a sort of oratorio kind of piece.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  But I mean, in Yiddish.  No choral, never did anything in choral music?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK:  Nothing.  Just a little song, Der Signal, and then in…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  A song cycle in Yiddish?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK:  I, yeah, I’ve thought about it.  And I would certainly do it, if I had the, you know, if I had the occasion.  If the occasion arose, I would do it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=873.0,889.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/113","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"It’s not — Yiddish is a funny thing.  When I was working on Der Signal, I had this terrible feeling like I was working on a corpse, as it were.  And it’s…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Well, Der Signal is really a passé…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK:  It’s a, it’s a period that…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=889.0,903.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/114","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  I mean, textually.  That is, but there are Yiddish lieder that are, that have nothing to do with politics, anyway.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK:  See, I just don’t know the newer…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=903.0,912.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/115","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  No, it wouldn’t be newer.  Although there is some fine Yiddish poetry.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK:  I’m sure.  I have no doubt.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: I mean, if you look at, here, you have a, solo art song repertoire of Bugatch. I don’t know if you know Shmuel Bugatch.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=912.0,924.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/116","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK: No.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Uh, these are all an addition to Weiner, you see. Jacob Bimal, Israel Alter. Israel Alter was a songwriter and very, very famous cantor from…nobody knows these people.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=924.0,937.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/117","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK: I don’t know these people.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: That’s the point.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK: That’s just the Shostakovich materials I know.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: No, no, I’m talking about Yiddish art songs, strictly art songs.  The trouble is Lazar Weiner, everybody knows. But the ideal here is to, there was a whole continuum, there was a… Solomon Golub, who wrote five volumes of art songs. They are much simpler than Lazar Weiner.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=937.0,954.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/118","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBRESNICK:\u003c/strong\u003e Well, as Ned (?), is want to say, the whole tradition of the art song is very much in retreat, or in decline. It’s going to take a lot of effort to restore the notion of a vocal recital anyway. And then we’re going to write a vocal recital, which is a small form. We’re going to do it in a language that absolutely nobody understands, I don’t know. I mean I, I suffer from it because I know the language, I know how beautiful the language is. It’s not as though I want to do anything about it and to make it less.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=954.0,982.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/119","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e I know. I think if you can be persuaded since, especially since you’re very rare in the sense of being a composer on the level that you are with a Yiddish background, that’s very rare. You know, pick three poems and start it, and write. It doesn’t have to be a 12-song cycle.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=982.0,998.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/120","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eBRESNICK:\u003c/strong\u003e It comes to, I mean the Tikkun Olam song, for example, that I wrote for my aunt. But most of the, for most of the people interested in Yiddish who have more of an ideological position in relationship to that than an aesthetic one , that poem was an opera for them. That setting was an operatic setting. Everybody said ‘Oh, that’s very beautiful. That’s an opera.’ It’s not an opera, it’s just a little song. On the other hand, Der Signal , which was attempting to reengage the, essentially, the art side of a populist art tradition, it’s like writing for an audience of the dead. I mean, there just isn’t anybody there who really… well, anyway. I experienced a sense of terrible, unnecessary sorrow in relationship to that work.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=998.0,1043.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/121","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: To Der Signal?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK: Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: How long is it?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK: Der Signal, it seems longer than it is, because so much happens, it’s about 16 minutes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: That so?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1043.0,1052.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/122","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: Um, tell me about that. First, tell me about how it arose.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK: Der Signal, my mother was turning 60, and I wanted to surprise her with a special gift for her 60th birthday. And so I, my mother had a favorite story called Der Signal, which appeared in a book that the Bund passed out in Russia and Poland. It was a book for children, a children’s primer full of uplifting tales of sacrifice and education and humanitarianism and yadayada.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1052.0,1084.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/123","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And it turned out, I was very delighted to discover that my grandmother, who was still then alive, had kept the original copy of the book that she had brought over, it was one of the few things that she brought over with her when she left the old county, the Alta Haym. And, so I went to my Bubbie’s house in Amalgamated and put a microphone down, not as fancy as the one I’m wearing now, and I put it on the table and I said ‘Okay Bubbie, you read this, you read this to me. And I just want to hear you read this, just like you used to read it to Momma like you used to read it to Momma. And she started to read this Yiddish story, which she doesn’t know the origin, she know the book, she know a part of her life, but I actually found out many things about this story, which are really fascinating.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1084.0,1126.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/124","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"But she starts to read it, and it’s astonishing as she reads, she’s reading words that are actually in Yiddish but aren’t used very often in Yiddish, there actually old Russian words for one thing. For another thing, as she is reading, she’ll make funny errors, where she’ll see Yiddish word and she’ll read the English equivalent of that word. She’s looking at. Yiddish but instead of saying ‘nor’, she said ‘but’. She’s supposed to say \"nor der machinist hot im shoyn bemerkt,\" but she says, \"but the mashi--mashinist.\" Her brain is already so bilingual that sometimes she doesn’t know which language it is that she is speaking. I feel like this is incredibly wonderful.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1126.0,1167.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/125","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"So I took this tape and I began to edit it, and I took everything that she said, but I realized that no audience, I couldn’t imagine an audience that would understand it. So what I did, I had the text printed in three languages- English, Russian, and in Yiddish. And I had the singers, I had three singers sing the story, they begin singing in a mixture of Yiddish and Russian. And then as the cycle goes on, the Russian goes away and they begin singing in a mixture of Yiddish and English, which is the natural experience of what my mother and grandmother did as they came to this country.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1167.0,1200.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/126","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"So I had, it was a concert at Merkin, and it was very funny. We printed this nice booklet that goes along with it with pictures. We passed it out to everybody in the audience. It has wonderful pictures of my now ex-wife, drew and printed. My brother has since, by the way, made a shadow puppet show of this, and we’ve produced this as a shadow puppet theater with great effect, I must say.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1200.0,1227.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/127","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: What is the story?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK: Der Signal is actually not a Yiddish story. It’s a Russian story by a Russian author by the name of Vsevolod Garshin, who is a contemporary of Tolstoy, who wrote uplifting Tolstoian literature. And the Jews of this region took this story and translated it into Yiddish. So originally it was in Russian. And that’s interesting, I’ll tell you a little footnote to that only because, for example, the title Der Signal.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1227.0,1253.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/128","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"If you talk to Germans and say Der Signal, they say that sounds weird because it should be Das Signal. So why is it Der Signal? Well, it’s Der Signal because when the Jews translated it from Russian to Yiddish, the noun Signal in Russian is masculine, so when they took it, they made it Der Signal, it’s not a neuter. So that’s the occasion for this linguistic thing. So, what is the story? The story is a story of a railroad watchman whose name is Simyon, who comes upon a railroad track, in which someone has stolen parts of the railroad track.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1253.0,1288.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/129","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"He sees the guy actually stealing pieces of the railroad track, bending the track, and taking the hardware from the track. And he can't believe it, and he tries to run after the guy, but the guy runs away. And as he is doing that, he realizes that there is a train coming. And the train will come through this spot where the rail of the track is broken, and he has no way to warn the engineer of the train that the train is broken.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1288.0,1314.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/130","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"He doesn't have anything with him. He doesn’t have his red flag, he doesn’t have any flags to flag down the train. So he, that’s the end of the first act, that realization. And the second act, he suddenly imagines what will happen. He can imagine, it’s ten to six, all these people are coming home from the factory after hard work. All of the poor people, the third-class compartments are crowded. It’s all kind of the socialists idealized workers coming home from a hard day at work, all of the women and children, and the train is coming around the track. And he can imagine in his own mind, it hits the broken rail, and it's going to fall into this ditch, which is a ditch of at least 11 klafta.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1314.0,1353.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/131","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And I remember asking, what is a klafta? Because a klafter is no unit of measurement that we have either in English or, it’s a Russian unit of measurement, I don’t know exactly how much it is, but it’s deep. Whatever it is, a meter, I don’t know, whatever, what a klafter is. And so, the railroad watchmen thinks, ‘My God, what am I going to do about this?’, that’s the end of the second act. And the third act, he decides that he has a plan. He runs back to his little shed. He goes into the shed.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1353.0,1380.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/132","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"He sees a bunch of sticks, he doesn’t have a flag, he takes a stick, he runs back toward the train. He goes back to the train. He takes his kerchief off. And then in another great pure Russian Yiddish moment, he takes from cholova a messa. And I said to Bubbie, ‘What is a cholova?’ Again, these are words, nouns, that, do you know what a cholova is? What’s a cholova? A cholova is a place in your boot where you keep a knife. Now, there’s a word, who still knows what a cholova is? But it’s the place where you keep your knife In your boot. If you’re a peasant, you don’t where it around your waist, you have a place in your boot you keep a little knife.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1380.0,1421.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/133","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"So, he takes the cholova from his boot; from the cholova he takes a knife, and he takes this and he cuts his arm. And he bleeds over this white shirt, kerchief until it becomes soaked with blood. And he ties it to the stick, he stands in the track, and he waves this red flag. And of course, the wound is very deep and he starts to lose consciousness, and he waves the flag and he waves the flag, and the train comes around the corner. And he starts to get very dizzy, but he stays there waving it. All of this symbolism, as blatant as you could possibly get. It’s wonderfully naive, it’s absolutely fantastic.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1421.0,1460.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/134","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"It’s a little bit like the symbolism that struck me in Bertolucci’s 1900, where the Padronian, the little boys dare each other, who has the curse to lie under the train. At the beginning of that great movie, they both lie under the train while the train passes over them. The train being the early 20th-century symbol of progress and the future, the irrevocable motion of progress. Anyway, he stands on the track and he is waving his flags and he starts to faint, and he faints. And the music gets very mysterious at that point.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1460.0,1492.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/135","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And all of the children, because it is really a children’s story. And the train stops, and the people jump out and see this guy lying in a pool of blood on the floor, on the ground. And next to him, a \"farblutikte shmate ofy a shteken,\" a bloody rag on a stick, which is a wonderful image, it’s just a wonderful image. And I remember saying to Bubbie at the end of this I said to her, I said to my mother first, ‘Mom, this was your favorite story, what do you think happened at the end? Did Simyon live or did he die. What happened to Simyon? The story doesn’t say.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1492.0,1528.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/136","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"She said ‘Oh no, it’s really clear.’ I said ‘Clear? How, what? She said,’ Well, the people, they jump out, and they pick him up and they carry him back to town and he’s a hero, he survives. And I said to Bubbie, ‘What do you think happened to Simyon? He lived or he died?’ And she said, ‘Oh he died, for sure. No question about it, he’s dead. I know that he’s dead. He cut his arm and he died.’ So it’s very interesting generational image of this, but I think actually my grandmother is probably right.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1528.0,1558.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/137","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Because, this I almost a Christian symbol of the sacrifice, the great sacrifice, the moral sacrifice for the communal good. And that’s, Jews have such an image too, but it’s a very, Russian, symbolic, iconic quality, I think, comes through there. And anyways, so that’s the end of the thing. It ends in this, you know, you hear the train stops. That is one of my pieces closest to my heart. And I will tell you one last story about it if you’ll bear with me. And that is that, when we did it at Merkin, my mother was hugely delighted and surprised by this event, and she was very, very thrilled by it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1558.0,1598.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/138","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"She was so delighted and thrilled that she didn’t noticed that I had dedicated it to her until years later when she actually gave her the score, which I gave her. She doesn’t read music, no idea, but she liked the whole event, anyway. And my grandmother, who was still alive and came to this thing. At the end, I was called to the stage. There as a lot of noise, and I motioned to the audience, and my Bubbie, who at the point had no show business experience of any kind, got up and took numerous bows, in a very, gracious way.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1598.0,1626.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/139","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"This 80-something-year-old woman. And then she button-holed me in the lobby after and she said, ‘What, you didn’t tell me you were gonna do this with this material.’ And I said ‘Well, no I didn’t tell you, it’s a surprise.’ She said, ‘Well if you had told me, I would’ve read much better.’ And I thought, ‘ You know, Bubbie, you read great. It was a great, great, great tape. She did a great job. Anyway, that’s the story of Der Signal.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1626.0,1654.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/140","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: What are the forces here? This is for…?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK: This is for a small, almost Klezmer ensemble\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: What does that mean? Almost Klezmer ensemble.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK: It lacks, I was very anxious not to have the Fiddler on the Roof. So it’s viola, bass, cello, clarinet, doubling saxophone, cornet, not a trumpet but a cornet, percussion, and three singers. Two soprano, a mezzo-soprano, a soloist, and an alto singer.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1654.0,1691.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/141","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: A mezzo?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK: A mezzo-soprano, and a sort of a low, a lower voice, even than a mezzo. The mezzo is the soloist.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Contralto maybe…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK: And you have a narrator, you have a tape, which can either be done live, I’ve done it myself life, or you can use the tape of my grandmother, whose Yiddish is exquisite. A real Litvak Yiddish, right from the pure wells of good literary Yiddish. And she reads in this kind of brilliant, almost deadpan style, which is perfect for this material.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1691.0,1720.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/142","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: So you could use an existing track?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK: It exists. I’ve made a copy. It’s on digitized.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: But the singers, if you did that then you’d still, you’d have a mezzo, you have a contralto\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK: Yeah, it doesn’t have to be very low, it’s just a lower voice. And a soprano.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: And a soprano. Now you obviously had a recording at some point. I heard something.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK: I have a recording, I have a nice recording.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: But do you have a good recording?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK: I do. It’s almost ready for, you could probably get away with it. There’s one trumpet, we made a recording but we really didn’t have time to redo it since the trumpet cracks on one note, but otherwise, it’s perfect.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1720.0,1755.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/143","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: The sonic?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK: It’s terrific. It’s done really great.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Could you send me another copy of it?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK: Sure.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: I have it somewhere.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK: You have the older one, this is a newer one. It’s a better performance than the other. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: I think that we should get that in here.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK: This is a document. A piece of anthropology, really.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: I’m glad we talked, because frankly, I forgot about it until I saw you this morning. I didn’t think it was your piece?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1755.0,1780.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/144","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK: That’s right. You should’ve seen the bewilderment of the Russians in the audience\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ewho came to see it. There were a lot of recent Russian immigrants. This piece of culture to them was completely un-understandable. First of all, it’s pre-revolutionary culture. It comes from before the Russian revolution.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Oh sure, it’s in the early days, and of course the red flag, and all that, you know it’s symbolic, and it’s good because it’s not overt that causes you to think it’s symbolism. It’s not a story of a political thing. There’s a wonderful song, which you probably know from Shula, but it was a long time ago. And the melody is really funny, too. In fact, let me see what you think of this. Oh, Gutta Friend. (sings)","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1780.0,1836.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/145","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK: I’ve heard that. I recognize that. Yeah absolutely, the Beethoven, the ‘Pathetique’, isn’t it?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: The Pathetique. And it’s too obvious, even with just one phrase. But it’s both the A and B phrases, it had to be.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1836.0,1857.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/39310/annotation/146","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK: Yeah. It would be nice if you could do that.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: I think we should do it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBRESNICK: That would be great.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1857.0,1870.67733"}]},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["Martin Bresnick Transcript [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/147","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  Let’s talk about the choral pieces that were recorded, I think, that you know, was it…\n\nBRESNICK:  Yale Camarata recorded them.\n\nLEVIN:  Yale Camarata.\n\nBRESNICK:  Yeah.  Marguerite Brooks.\n\nLEVIN:  The title of the piece is what?\n\nBRESNICK:  The, well, there’s, called Three Choral Songs, and Poems of Yehuda Amichai.\n\nLEVIN:  Now, those are three settings of three…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=16.0,43.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/148","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK:  Three independent — well, two of them are truly poems.  And the third one is really a sort of prose poem.  The one that is called B’Gan Kattan.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=43.0,53.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/149","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"I should say at the outset that I, I don’t, I don’t speak Hebrew.  The only Hebrew I, I knew I learned by rote, when I was bar mitzvahed.  But I, it’s not a language that I’m familiar with. Yiddish I know quite well.  Because I studied Yiddish.  But…\n\nLEVIN:  Well, we’re going to come to that.  But how did you go about setting, in a language that you…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=53.0,70.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/150","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK:  Well, I must say, I had read Amichai in translation, and I thought it was fantastic poetry at a, and absolutely the high, the highest levels that we have.  And I was curious to what it would actually sound like in the native language.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=70.0,83.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/151","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And I went to, I went to see a friend of mine who was working at Yale, named John Berger, who is, who lived in Israel for a while, and his wife is Israeli.  And I asked them to help me with these poems.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=83.0,100.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/152","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And what they did was, they scanned them for me.  They showed me where the accents fall.  They, they had me speak.  And I spoke it, and I tried it, and I tried to understand where the strong words were, where the strong stresses were. Hebrew is a complex language of stresses.  It’s not, it’s not always evident, where the stresses will fall.  And that turns out to be really important to me.  And finally, we did that.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=100.0,123.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/153","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And I — it’s funny, because I’ve never actually heard — I’ve heard Amichai read on any number of occasions, but not in Hebrew.  So I’ve not, I’ve not heard him read those poems in Hebrew.  I’ve heard him read one of them in, in English.  But not in Hebrew.\n\nLEVIN:  Have you had any contact with Amichai?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=123.0,142.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/154","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK:  I have, indeed.  Yeah, I did.\n\nI, well, when I first tried to get the rights to the poem, he was represented by Owen Hughes, who — that’s through his publisher, that was his agent.  And, as is typical in these matters, it was very, very difficult to reach her, to, to get her attention, to get her to focus on this problem.\n\nAnd when I finally, I did purchase the rights from her for these works, with very — an insignificant amount of money.  But it was, took a long time to do.  Finally, it wasn’t clear to me, on the basis of the rights that she gave me, whether, what my rights were, in relationship to those rights.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=142.0,177.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/155","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And so, when I finally met Amichai, I had a conversation with him.  And he said, “I, she doesn’t represent me anymore.”  And he scribbled on a piece of paper, “You now have the rights to do whatever you want with this material.”\n\nAnd, I must say, I, I treasure that piece of paper, because I, I think Amichai’s a great poet, and because I was so delighted that he — because he heard them.  And he felt that this was fine to do.  And I kept the, I have, for my own archive, I have that little paper safely tucked away.\n\nLEVIN:  Who coached the Yale chorus?\n\nBRESNICK:  Well, in, in the Hebrew language, or…\n\nLEVIN:  The…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=177.0,207.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/156","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK:  Well, you, you know, the work was not originally written for the, for Yale.  It was written for the Connecticut Hebrew Chorale, which was a group directed by a woman named Carol Kozak Ward, who I think has since moved to Israel, actually.\n\nLEVIN:  I haven’t heard that name in a while.\n\nBRESNICK:  Well, you may never hear it again.  She’s a very, she was a very gifted student of Maggie Brooks, who commissioned the project for this new chorus which was designed to do Jewish music.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=207.0,235.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/157","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  Do they still exist?\n\nBRESNICK:  They existed for a while.  I think they’ve faded out, now.  They existed for about eight or nine years, with a number of different directors.  Now, they’re gone.  But that’s the way it originally came to be.\n\nThey, Carol herself spoke Hebrew and was able to coach her choir.  And once I heard her do that, I, I got a feeling for how that would go.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=235.0,254.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/158","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"But I’ve, there are many subtleties, and I have since adjusted to some of them, and helped to, to do that better.\n\nThese works actually will probably be published, in fact, by a commercial publisher, within the next year.  So the situation around them may change slightly.  We should obviously stay in touch about them.  I’ve been self-published since I was published in Germany.  I have my own publish — I’ve had my own company for a while.\n\nLEVIN:  It’s a capella?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=254.0,279.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/159","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK:  It’s a capella.  There’s a piano part written underneath, as a guide.\n\nLEVIN:  Right.\n\nBRESNICK:  But, rehearsal help.  But it should be sung, done a capella.\n\nLEVIN:  So the inspiration for these pieces came from your attraction to Amichai?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=279.0,290.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/160","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK:  I, you know, I, I came across an Amichai poem — which, again, Amichai is such a unique character.  It was barely a poem.  It was about five lines in a very strange book called The Penguin Book of Socialist Verse, edited by Alan Bold.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=290.0,307.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/161","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And the poem of Amichai’s that was in the book was not a particularly left-wing poem of any kind.  It was about a — I won’t remember it, exactly, so I don’t want to wreck it.  But it was about a divorce.  He says something about the fact that they were man and wife, and they, they were like an airplane.  They, they even got off the ground, they even flew a little.  \n\nLEVIN: But in any case, how was that constructed musically?  I mean, what would you want to describe to us, in both texture, tonality?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=307.0,339.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/162","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK:  Well, you know, I wrote these works over a period from around 1985 until around nineteen eighty — the first, the first two were completed rather quickly, in ’85 and ’86.  Then the last one — it took us a little longer to finish the final one, in ’88.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=339.0,355.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/163","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And they are constructed a little bit unusual for me, in that they, these three movements form a, a kind of spiral.  That, that is, it starts with the first, the first one, Roshi, Roshi — My Head, My Head — and goes from there to B’Gan Kattan, and then from there, spirals out even further, to the, the final one, the, the appendix for The Prophecy of Peace — Lo LeHafseik.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=355.0,383.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/164","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"It’s not an obvious connection between the poems, and I try to make it work by suggesting that the poems begin with a meditation on the self.  The first one, about myself, my, my head, my limbs, my door, your hand — all these very concrete elements of com, communication.  In the second, the, the poet wanders out into a, into a courtyard and sees the names of dead soldiers on a, on a, on a plaque.  And, and then, the final one, it’s a broader generalization.  So it goes from the specific to the general.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=383.0,419.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/165","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Musically — which is what, I guess, what you’re asking me — well, there’s, they’re, they have tonal centers.  But they’re not strictly tonal.  Which is typical of my music.  It’s a long of process of development, in that way, for me.\n\nLEVIN:  Would you say they are contrapuntal?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=419.0,441.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/166","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK:  They are very strongly contrapuntal.  And some of them have a unique — well, the second one particularly has almost a 12-tone subject that the people sing.  But they do so in such a way that it’s, they sing fragments that sound quasi-tonal.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=441.0,455.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/167","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Yeah, it’s a, it’s a single line that passes throughout the entire choir, and individuals break off from it.  So, and as they break off, they sing little repetitive cycles, so that a single line goes from beginning to end of the song, but these little eddies of repetitions develop.  And as the piece goes on, the eddies build up bigger and bigger, until, at the end, you realize that as the, the text has ended, what these eddies turn out to be are the names that I have extracted from the Hebrew itself.  And these names suggest the names of the dead soldiers who, whose names are, are on the plaque in the yard outside that.  So that’s a rather unusual one.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=455.0,496.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/168","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And the last one, again, has a strong sense of tonal center, but it’s quite, quite dissonant.  Still, it ends in a, a chord that I think ordinary, you know, ordinary listeners will hear as a pretty strong, almost D-major chord, at the end.\n\nLEVIN:  What is an almost D-major chord?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=496.0,513.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/169","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK:  Well, it’s a D-major chord with a, with, it has plus, it has, it’s a D-major chord that has a G-sharp fixed.  It’s a kind of Lydian D-major with a fixed G-sharp. And that tri-tone relationship is very important to me.  It’s important in all the songs.  And it really emerges very forcefully in the final song, which I, which I have had to…. You know, I have a very friend in, in Israel named Elizabeth Freund, who, who, who has lived in Jerusalem for many, many years, and is a great fan of Amichai.  And she, she really loved the songs.  I was very delighted that she did.  And, and she talked to the poet Karmi — I don’t know if you know this…\n\nLEVIN:  Yeah.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=513.0,551.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/170","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK:  He’s a wonderful poet.  And he actually thrilled me by letting me know that he could actually understand the, the text when it was sung.\n\nBut Elizabeth sort of felt that I made the last movement less, less demure than it might be.  I made it more, more like a, a, a, a placard, or something like that.  But that’s fine.  That’s what I wanted to do.\n\nLEVIN:  I want to now talk about your background, in terms of Yiddish.  Do I gather that you come from a Yiddishist background?  Your parents…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=551.0,584.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/171","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK:  I come a very, very strong Yiddishist family.\n\nMy, my grandparents — well, you see, my mother was born in Russia.  I’m fairly — in, and, at least on my, my, my maternal side, which is a much more dominant side in my family, the family is all from White — Byelorusse, Byelorussia, as they would say in the old days.  And so, and they were very strong Yiddishists.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=584.0,607.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/172","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"My mother, to this day, is a story-teller in Yiddish.  She travels around the country, has published books about that, and, and tells stories of the shtetl, and where she came from.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=607.0,617.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/173","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  But you were born in America?\n\nBRESNICK:  I was born in America.\n\nLEVIN:  And they, where — in the New York area, or…\n\nBRESNICK:  In the Bronx.\n\nLEVIN:  So they were New York.  So let me guess — were they, the orientation.  Workmen's Circle…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=617.0,630.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/174","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK:  Yes.  We were the — no, we were not — we were, well, you see, we considered ourselves basically socialists with anarchist tendencies, I would say.\n\nLEVIN:  So that’s a little left of Workmen.  That’s more like…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=630.0,642.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/175","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK:  Well, we were not the — we had fights with the communists at the coop, you know.  We were not the, we, we — my family only had one wing.  It was a left wing.  We sort of flew in circles. I think the farthest right we went were the Liberal Democrats.  I think we had a few of those in the family.\n\nLEVIN:  The Liberal Party, in other words.\n\nBRESNICK:  The Liberal Party.\n\nWe eventually had some total renegades.  A distant cousin of mine worked as a press secretary for Gerald Ford, which we considered almost beyond the pale.\n\nLEVIN:  Well, that’s — yeah.\n\nBRESNICK:  You know.  But no.  We were very, it was very left.  Very anti-authoritarian, very, very much in the bund — they have a kind of a bundist tradition.\n\nLEVIN:  For example, did you go to the Workmen's Circle school?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=642.0,677.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/176","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK:  I went to Workmen’s School, I went to the Yud Lamed Peretz.  Arbiterring Shul Drei, in the Bronx.  I, I, I didn’t quite go to mittl shul, but I, I can read and write Yiddish.\n\nLEVIN:  Did you go to any summer camps?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=677.0,691.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/177","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK:  I went to Surprise Lake Camp, which was a, a, a sort of a Jewish camp, but not a political one.  It was not one of the…\n\nLEVIN:  Not Kinderring…\n\nBRESNICK:  No.\n\nLEVIN:  …or Kindervelt Bund?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=691.0,701.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/178","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK:  No.  I never went there.  I, because I was a musician, my parents sent me, as soon as I was — you know, we would, didn’t have a lot of money, and this was a way for me to get out of the city.  I was an oboe player and a, and a waiter in a camp up in the, in the Adirondacks, at Lake Placid, which was a music camp.  So I didn’t do that political camp thing.\n\nLEVIN:  Any choruses?  Did you ever sing in any of the choruses?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=701.0,724.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/179","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK:  I did sing in the mittl shul chorus for a little while.  And I know the Mloteks very well, because they are, they are neighborhood people.  Since the neighborhood I come from is the Amalgamated.  Yeah.\n\nLEVIN:  So you wrote this piece, to which I’m leading up, with this Yiddishist background, you wrote this piece, Der Signal, which we just talked about a minute ago.  I want to talk about it…\n\nBRESNICK:  Yeah.\n\nLEVIN:  …afresh here.\n\nBRESNICK:  Yeah.\n\nLEVIN:  But is that — have you written other things in Yiddish?\n\nBRESNICK:  I have, I wrote a song.  That’s, that’s true.  I wrote a song, which my aunt, who is a, who is a professional Yiddish singer, who sings Yiddish all over, and has recorded it…\n\nLEVIN:  What’s her name?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=724.0,762.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/180","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK:  Her name is Phyllis Burke.  And she’s on the circuit, though she’s aging a bit now.  Her voice is not quite what it was when she was in her 30s and 40s.\n\nBut I wrote a song called Tikkun Olam, which actually, with, despite the Hebrew title, is a Yiddish song that my mother wrote the text to.  And I think we, we were, we, we entered it in the Yiddish folk song, the Yiddish song competition that ran out of North Carolina some eight or nine years ago.  And I think we were somewhat…\n\nLEVIN:  Is that summer camp, the Jewish summer camp?\n\nBRESNICK:  I’m not sure.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=762.0,794.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/181","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  The music of Bob Abelson.  Do you know Bob Abelson?  He goes somewhere in North Carolina.  He’s a Yiddishist…\n\nBRESNICK:  He’s a Yiddishist?\n\nLEVIN:  Not Yiddishist.  But he’s a cantor, but he’s really sort of devoted a lot of his career to Yiddish lieder.\n\nBRESNICK:  I see.\n\nLEVIN:  Especially Lazar Weiner’s things and all that.  And he, he goes somewhere in North Carolina in the summer.  There is some festival or something there.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=794.0,812.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/182","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK:  I see.  Well, we, we won a prize.  We didn’t win first prize, but we won a prize for this little song.  And that’s about it.  There’s the…\n\nLEVIN:  Would you say it’s an artsong?\n\nBRESNICK:  Oh, it really is an artsong.  And I think probably that’s why it didn’t do better.  I think they were looking for new Yiddish folk songs, and it’s not.  It’s sort of an anthem-like thing, in the style of Unzovey Weidnich Zein Yitzhreit(?).  You know, that kind of style of thing, from the Workmen’s Circle Songbook kind of thing.  It’s a little higher level — you know, higher is not right.  But a little more sophisticated than a folk song.\n\nLEVIN:  Would it fit in in a presentation of Kunstlieder?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=812.0,849.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/183","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK:  Yeah.  Oh, definitely.  Because it’s an arrangement for sort of mezzo-soprano and cello and piano.  That’s the kind of piece.  It’s not really a folk song.  Although it has a verse of, verse structure and a certain degree of simplicity about it.  But it’s…\n\nLEVIN:  So does Schubert.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=849.0,860.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/184","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK:  It’s, it’s in that Schubertian style.  I mean, a kind of a simple style, that style.\n\nLEVIN:  What else?\n\nBRESNICK:  And that’s it.  I mean, there is the, there is the Der Signal, which was the, which is this extensive…\n\nLEVIN:  That’s a big piece.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=860.0,873.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/185","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK:  That’s a bigger or a sort of oratorio kind of piece.\n\nLEVIN:  But I mean, in Yiddish.  No choral, never did anything in choral music?\n\nBRESNICK:  Nothing.  Just a little song, Der Signal, and then in…\n\nLEVIN:  A song cycle in Yiddish?\n\nBRESNICK:  I, yeah, I’ve thought about it.  And I would certainly do it, if I had the, you know, if I had the occasion.  If the occasion arose, I would do it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=873.0,889.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/186","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"It’s not — Yiddish is a funny thing.  When I was working on Der Signal, I had this terrible feeling like I was working on a corpse, as it were.  And it’s…\n\nLEVIN:  Well, Der Signal is really a passé…\n\nBRESNICK:  It’s a, it’s a period that…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=889.0,903.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/187","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  I mean, textually.  That is, but there are Yiddish lieder that are, that have nothing to do with politics, anyway.\n\nBRESNICK:  See, I just don’t know the newer…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=903.0,912.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/188","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  No, it wouldn’t be newer.  Although there is some fine Yiddish poetry.\n\nBRESNICK:  I’m sure.  I have no doubt.\n\nLEVIN: I mean, if you look at, here, you have a, solo art song repertoire of Bugatch. I don’t know if you know Shmuel Bugatch.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=912.0,924.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/189","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK: No.\n\nLEVIN: Uh, these are all an addition to Weiner, you see. Jacob Bimal, Israel Alter. Israel Altar was a songwriter and very, very famous cantor from…nobody knows these people.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=924.0,937.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/190","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK: I don’t know these people.\n\nLEVIN: That’s the point.\n\nBRESNICK: That’s just the Shostakovich materials I know.\n\nLEVIN: No, no, I’m talking about Yiddish art songs, strictly art songs.  The trouble is Lazar Weiner, everybody knows. But the ideal here is to, there was a whole continuum, there was a… Solomon Golub, who wrote five volumes of art songs. They are much simpler than Lazar Weiner.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=937.0,954.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/191","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK: Well, as Ned (?), is want to say, the whole tradition of the art song is very much in retreat, or in decline. It’s going to take a lot of effort to restore the notion of a vocal recital anyway. And then we’re going to write a vocal recital, which is a small form. We’re going to do it in a language that absolutely nobody understands, I don’t know. I mean I, I suffer from it because I know the language, I know how beautiful the language is. It’s not as though I want to do anything about it and to make it less.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=954.0,982.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/192","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: I know. I think if you can be persuaded since, especially since you’re very rare in the sense of being a composer on the level that you are with a Yiddish background, that’s very rare. You know, pick three poems and start it, and write. It doesn’t have to be a 12-song cycle.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=982.0,998.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/193","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK: It comes to, I mean the (?) song, for example, that I wrote for my aunt. But most of the, for most of the people interested in Yiddish who have more of an ideological position in relationship to that than an aesthetic one , that poem was an opera for them. That setting was an operatic setting. Everybody said ‘Oh, that’s very beautiful. That’s an opera.’ It’s not an opera, it’s just a little song. On the other hand, Der Signal , which was attempting to reengage the, essentially, the art side of a populist art tradition, it’s like writing for an audience of the dead. I mean, there just isn’t anybody there who really… well, anyway. I experienced a sense of terrible, unnecessary sorrow in relationship to that work.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=998.0,1043.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/194","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: To Der Signal?\n\nBRESNICK: Yeah.\n\nLEVIN: How long is it?\n\nBRESNICK: Der Signal, it seems longer than it is, because so much happens, it’s about 16 minutes.\n\nLEVIN: That so?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1043.0,1052.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/195","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: Um, tell me about that. First, tell me about how it arose.\n\nBRESNICK: Der Signal, my mother was turning 60, and I wanted to surprise her with a special gift for her 60th birthday. And so I, my mother had a favorite story called Der Signal, which appeared in a book that the Bund passed out in Russia and Poland. It was a book for children, a children’s primer full of uplifting tales of sacrifice and education and humanitarianism and yadayada.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1052.0,1084.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/196","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And it turned out, I was very delighted to discover that my grandmother, who was still then alive, had kept the original copy of the book that she had brought over, it was one of the few things that she brought over with her when she left the old county, the Alta Haim. And, so I went to my Bubbie’s house in Amalgamated and put a microphone down, not as fancy as the one I’m wearing now, and I put it on the table and I said ‘Okay Bubbie, you read this, you read this to me. And I just want to hear you read this, just like you used to read it to Momma like you used to read it to Momma. And she started to read this Yiddish story, which she doesn’t know the origin, she know the book, she know a part of her life, but I actually found out many things about this story, which are really fascinating.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1084.0,1126.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/197","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"But she starts to read it, and it’s astonishing as she reads, she’s reading words that are actually in Yiddish but aren’t used very often in Yiddish, there actually old Russian words for one thing. For another thing, as she is reading, she’ll make funny errors, where she’ll see Yiddish word and she’ll read the English equivalent of that word. She’s looking at. Yiddish but instead of saying ‘nor’, she said ‘but’. She’s supposed to say (Yiddish), but she says (Yiddish/mix). Her brain is already so bilingual that sometimes she doesn’t know which language it is that she is speaking. I feel like this is incredibly wonderful.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1126.0,1167.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/198","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"So I took this tape and I began to edit it, and I took everything that she said, but I realized that no audience, I couldn’t imagine an audience that would understand it. So what I did, I had the text printed in three languages- English, Russian, and in Yiddish. And I had the singers, I had three singers sing the story, they begin singing in a mixture of Yiddish and Russian. And then as the cycle goes on, the Russian goes away and they begin singing in a mixture of Yiddish and English, which is the natural experience of what my mother and grandmother did as they came to this country.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1167.0,1200.03"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/199","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"So I had, it was a concert at Merkin, and it was very funny. We printed this nice booklet that goes along with it with pictures. We passed it out to everybody in the audience. It has wonderful pictures of my now ex-wife, drew and printed. My brother has since, by the way, made a shadow puppet show of this, and we’ve produced this as a shadow puppet theater with great effect, I must say.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1200.03,1227.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/200","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: What is the story?\n\nBRESNICK: Der Signal is actually not a Yiddish story. It’s a Russian story by a Russian author by the name of Vsevolod Garshin, who is a contemporary of Tolstoy, who wrote uplifting Tolstoian literature. And the Jews of this region took this story and translated it into Yiddish. So originally it was in Russian. And that’s interesting, I’ll tell you a little footnote to that only because, for example, the title Der Signal.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1227.0,1253.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/201","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"If you talk to Germans and say Der Signal, they say that sounds weird because it should be Das Signal. So why is it Der Signal? Well, it’s Der Signal because when the Jews translated it from Russian to Yiddish, the noun Signal in Russian is masculine, so when they took it, they made it Der Signal, it’s not a neuter. So that’s the occasion for this linguistic thing. So, what is the story? The story is a story of a railroad watchman whose name is Simyon, who comes upon a railroad track, in which someone has stolen parts of the railroad track.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1253.0,1288.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/202","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"He sees the guy actually stealing pieces of the railroad track, bending the track, and taking the hardware from the track. And he can't believe it, and he tries to run after the guy, but the guy runs away. And as he is doing that, he realizes that there is a train coming. And the train will come through this spot where the rail of the track is broken, and he has no way to warn the engineer of the train that the train is broken.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1288.0,1314.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/203","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"He doesn't have anything with him. He doesn’t have his red flag, he doesn’t have any flags to flag down the train. So he, that’s the end of the first act, that realization. And the second act, he suddenly imagines what will happen. He can imagine, it’s ten to six, all these people are coming home from the factory after hard work. All of the poor people, the third-class compartments are crowded. It’s all kind of the socialists idealized workers coming home from a hard day at work, all of the women and children, and the train is coming around the track. And he can imagine in his own mind, it hits the broken rail, and it's going to fall into this ditch, which is a ditch of at least 11 klafta.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1314.0,1353.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/204","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And I remember asking, what is a klafta? Because a klafter is no unit of measurement that we have either in English or, it’s a Russian unit of measurement, I don’t know exactly how much it is, but it’s deep. Whatever it is, a meter, I don’t know, whatever, what a klafter is. And so, the railroad watchmen thinks, ‘My God, what am I going to do about this?’, that’s the end of the second act. And the third act, he decides that he has a plan. He runs back to his little shed. He goes into the shed.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1353.0,1380.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/205","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"He sees a bunch of sticks, he doesn’t have a flag, he takes a stick, he runs back toward the train. He goes back to the train. He takes his kerchief off. And then in another great pure Russian Yiddish moment, he takes from cholova a messa. And I said to Bubbie, ‘What is a cholova?’ Again, these are words, nouns, that, do you know what a cholova is? What’s a cholova? A cholova is a place in your boot where you keep a knife. Now, there’s a word, who still knows what a cholova is? But it’s the place where you keep your knife In your boot. If you’re a peasant, you don’t where it around your waist, you have a place in your boot you keep a little knife.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1380.0,1421.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/206","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"So, he takes the cholova from his boot; from the cholova he takes a knife, and he takes this and he cuts his arm. And he bleeds over this white shirt, kerchief until it becomes soaked with blood. And he ties it to the stick, he stands in the track, and he waves this red flag. And of course, the wound is very deep and he starts to lose consciousness, and he waves the flag and he waves the flag, and the train comes around the corner. And he starts to get very dizzy, but he stays there waving it. All of this symbolism, as blatant as you could possibly get. It’s wonderfully naive, it’s absolutely fantastic.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1421.0,1460.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/207","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"It’s a little bit like the symbolism that struck me in Bertolucci’s 1900, where the Padronian, the little boys dare each other, who has the curse to lie under the train. At the beginning of that great movie, they both lie under the train while the train passes over them. The train being the early 20th-century symbol of progress and the future, the irrevocable motion of progress. Anyway, he stands on the track and he is waving his flags and he starts to faint, and he faints. And the music gets very mysterious at that point.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1460.0,1492.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/208","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And all of the children, because it is really a children’s story. And the train stops, and the people jump out and see this guy lying in a pool of blood on the floor, on the ground. And next to him, a (Yiddish), a bloody rag on a stick, which is a wonderful image, it’s just a wonderful image. And I remember saying to Bubbie at the end of this I said to her, I said to my mother first, ‘Mom, this was your favorite story, what do you think happened at the end? Did Simyon live or did he die. What happened to Simyon? The story doesn’t say.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1492.0,1528.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/209","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"She said ‘Oh no, it’s really clear.’ I said ‘Clear? How, what? She said,’ Well, the people, they jump out, and they pick him up and they carry him back to town and he’s a hero, he survives. And I said to Bubbie, ‘What do you think happened to Simyon? He lived or he died?’ And she said, ‘Oh he died, for sure. No question about it, he’s dead. I know that he’s dead. He cut his arm and he died.’ So it’s very interesting generational image of this, but I think actually my grandmother is probably right.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1528.0,1558.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/210","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Because, this I almost a Christian symbol of the sacrifice, the great sacrifice, the moral sacrifice for the communal good. And that’s, Jews have such an image too, but it’s a very, Russian, symbolic, iconic quality, I think, comes through there. And anyways, so that’s the end of the thing. It ends in this, you know, you hear the train stops. That is one of my pieces closest to my heart. And I will tell you one last story about it if you’ll bear with me. And that is that, when we did it at Merkin, my mother was hugely delighted and surprised by this event, and she was very, very thrilled by it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1558.0,1598.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/211","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"She was so delighted and thrilled that she didn’t noticed that I had dedicated it to her until years later when she actually gave her the score, which I gave her. She doesn’t read music, no idea, but she liked the whole event, anyway. And my grandmother, who was still alive and came to this thing. At the end, I was called to the stage. There as a lot of noise, and I motioned to the audience, and my Bubbie, who at the point had no show business experience of any kind, got up and took numerous bows, in a very, gracious way.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1598.0,1626.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/212","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"This 80-something-year-old woman. And then she button-holed me in the lobby after and she said, ‘What, you didn’t tell me you were gonna do this with this material.’ And I said ‘Well, no I didn’t tell you, it’s a surprise.’ She said, ‘Well if you had told me, I would’ve read much better.’ And I thought, ‘ You know, Bubbie, you read great. It was a great, great, great tape. She did a great job. Anyway, that’s the story of Der Signal.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1626.0,1654.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/213","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: What are the forces here? This is for…?\n\nBRESNICK: This is for a small, almost Klezmer ensemble\n\nLEVIN: What does that mean? Almost Klezmer ensemble.\n\nBRESNICK: It lacks, I was very anxious not to have the Fiddler on the Roof. So it’s viola, bass, cello, clarinet, doubling saxophone, cornet, not a trumpet but a cornet, percussion, and three singers. Two soprano, a mezzo-soprano, a soloist, and an alto singer.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1654.0,1691.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/214","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: A mezzo?\n\nBRESNICK: A mezzo-soprano, and a sort of a low, a lower voice, even than a mezzo. The mezzo is the soloist.\n\nLEVIN: Contralto maybe…\n\nBRESNICK: And you have a narrator, you have a tape, which can either be done live, I’ve done it myself life, or you can use the tape of my grandmother, whose Yiddish is exquisite. A real Litvak Yiddish, right from the pure wells of good literary Yiddish. And she reads in this kind of brilliant, almost deadpan style, which is perfect for this material.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1691.0,1720.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/215","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: So you could use an existing track?\n\nBRESNICK: It exists. I’ve made a copy. It’s on digitized.\n\nLEVIN: But the singers, if you did that then you’d still, you’d have a mezzo, you have a contralto\n\nBRESNICK: Yeah, it doesn’t have to be very low, it’s just a lower voice. And a soprano.\n\nLEVIN: And a soprano. Now you obviously had a recording at some point. I heard something.\n\nBRESNICK: I have a recording, I have a nice recording.\n\nLEVIN: But do you have a good recording?\n\nBRESNICK: I do. It’s almost ready for, you could probably get away with it. There’s one trumpet, we made a recording but we really didn’t have time to redo it since the trumpet cracks on one note, but otherwise, it’s perfect.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1720.0,1755.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/216","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: The sonic?\n\nBRESNICK: It’s terrific. It’s done really great.\n\nLEVIN: Could you send me another copy of it?\n\nBRESNICK: Sure.\n\nLEVIN: I have it somewhere.\n\nBRESNICK: You have the older one, this is a newer one. It’s a better performance than the other. \n\nLEVIN: I think that we should get that in here.\n\nBRESNICK: This is a document. A piece of anthropology, really.\n\nLEVIN: I’m glad we talked, because frankly, I forgot about it until I saw you this morning. I didn’t think it was your piece?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1755.0,1780.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/217","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK: That’s right. You should’ve seen the bewilderment of the Russians in the audience\n\nwho came to see it. There were a lot of recent Russian immigrants. This piece of culture to them was completely un-understandable. First of all, it’s pre-revolutionary culture. It comes from before the Russian revolution.\n\nLEVIN: Oh sure, it’s in the early days, and of course the red flag, and all that, you know it’s symbolic, and it’s good because it’s not overt that causes you to think it’s symbolism. It’s not a story of a political thing. There’s a wonderful song, which you probably know from Shula, but it was a long time ago. And the melody is really funny, too. In fact, let me see what you think of this. Oh, Gutta Friend. (sings)","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1780.0,1836.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/218","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK: I’ve heard that. I recognize that. Yeah absolutely, the Beethoven, the ‘Pathetique’, isn’t it?\n\nLEVIN: The Pathetique. And it’s too obvious, even with just one phrase. But it’s both the A and B phrases, it had to be.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1836.0,1857.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475/transcript/24981/annotation/219","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"BRESNICK: Yeah. It would be nice if you could do that.\n\nLEVIN: I think we should do it.\n\nBRESNICK: That would be great.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39872/file/111475#t=1857.0,1870.67733"}]}]}]}