{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/bc3st7fd83/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["Karchin, Louis"]},"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\u003eKarchin, Louis. 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":["Karchin, Louis (Composer)","Levin, Neil (Interviewer)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Date"]},"value":{"en":["1998-10-24 (recorded)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Coverage"]},"value":{"en":["New York City, New York (Place of Recording)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Language"]},"value":{"en":["English (Primary)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Description"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eDiscussion of Karchin’s compositional process for his piece \u003cem\u003eA Way Separate\u003c/em\u003e, commissioned as part of a cantata but also written to function as a standalone song cycle. \u003cem\u003eA Way Separate\u003c/em\u003e is based on the story of Jewish martyr Hannah Senesh and Karchin draws inspiration from composer Charles Wuorinen.\u003c/p\u003e (Summary)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Format"]},"value":{"en":["Beta SP"]}},{"label":{"en":["Subject"]},"value":{"en":["Jews -- Music (Topical Term)","Senesh, Hannah, 1921-1944 (Person or Corporate Body)","Warsaw (Poland)--History--Uprising, 1944 (Topical Term)","Atonality (Topical Term)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Keyword"]},"value":{"en":["A Way Separate (work), Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951), Charles Wuorinen (1938-2020), David Gilbert (1967-present), Hannah Senesh (1921-1944), Holocaust, Merkin Hall (New York, New York), Morris Rosenzweig (1952-), New World Records (New York, New York), Rochester Hillel Foundation (Rochester, New York), Pierrot Ensemble, Ruth Whitman (1922-1999), Samuel Adler (1928-), Sheryl Marshall (soprano), Twelve-Tone Composition, Warsaw Uprising (1944), Yevgeny Yevtushenko (1932-2017)"]}}],"summary":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eDiscussion of Karchin\u0026rsquo;s compositional process for his piece \u003cem\u003eA Way Separate\u003c/em\u003e, commissioned as part of a cantata but also written to function as a standalone song cycle. \u003cem\u003eA Way Separate\u003c/em\u003e is based on the story of Jewish martyr Hannah Senesh and Karchin draws inspiration from composer Charles Wuorinen.\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/000/110/773/small/Louis-Karchin.jpg?1618940863","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 1 - X2811_Louis_Karchin.mp4"]},"duration":961.7265,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/110/773/small/Louis-Karchin.jpg?1618940863","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-milken.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/110/773/original/X2811_Louis_Karchin.mp4?1616077078","type":"Video","format":"video/mp4","duration":961.7265,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39443","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["Karchin-Louis-08-22-2022 [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39443/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  Mr. Karchin, we’re here to talk about your piece that is going to be part — that is part — of the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music.  And the piece is called…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  A Way Separate.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  A Way Separate.  What is the way and what is the separate?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  Okay.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWell, the piece is based on the story of Hannah Senesh, who was a Jewish martyr who is not nearly as well-known as, say, Anne Frank.  In fact, I didn’t know of her until I began looking through some writings on the Holocaust.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=15.0,53.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39443/annotation/2","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And I did this in response to a commission from the University of Rochester, which was initiated — the project was initiated — by Samuel Adler, who has written an extraordinary amount of very good music for religious settings.  And the project that he had in mind was the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd he asked — through the Rochester Hillel Foundation — ten composers to write short works which would be part of a cantata.  And the works could be performed either together as a group — as they were at the premiere of this work — or separately.  And I designed A Way Separate so that it really could be a part of a larger piece, or it could stand alone by itself.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=53.0,109.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39443/annotation/3","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And so I began looking through a lot of Holocaust literature.  And I was very fascinated by the story of Hannah Senesh.  And I found the story, actually, in a setting of poems by the American poet Ruth Whitman.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe wrote a series of vignettes — maybe 12 or 15 vignettes.  And each one was a small fragment of Hannah Senesh’s life.  And of course, it’s a very, very interesting life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe had left Hungary at a, before World War II.  She had immigrated to Palestine.  And then she decided to help the Hungarian partisans.  She was trained by the British to do this.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=109.0,153.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39443/annotation/4","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"She found herself parachuted back into Hungary, to save both Jewish lives and, actually, British soldiers who had been stranded behind enemy lines.  But she was captured by the Germans.  She was tortured by the Gestapo and she died soon, soon afterwards, in prison.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBecause the, the song cycle had to be short, I was only able to use snippets of her life in the setting.  And yet I did manage to work three separate songs into this short work of, of eight minutes or so.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe first song is one of Ruth Whitman’s vignettes, which describes Hannah Senesh’s feelings after she has just been parachuted into Hungary behind the lines.  The second setting is on a poem of Hannah Senesh’s herself.  And the third poem describes after she has been captured and she’s in prison and she’s awaiting death.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSo three short snippets from, from her life comprise the song cycle.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=153.0,222.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39443/annotation/5","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  Is Eili, Eili one of the poems?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  No.  The second poem — the one by Hannah Senesh — is, is more of a prayer.  And it’s a, it’s just a kind of fervent, fervent, fervent statement, really.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  I ask that only because that’s what she’s most known by — is the Hannah Senesh Eili, Eili, which — that’s the, the poem which she wrote.  Which is very different, of course, from the Yiddish Eili, Eili that everybody knew a generation or two generations earlier.  And then this song that, the melody that, to which it was set by an Israeli songwriter.  But this will open up a lot wider the knowledge of Hannah Senesh.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=222.0,269.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39443/annotation/6","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Is — the piece is for what forces?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  It’s for a ensemble which has been used quite a bit in new music.  In fact, people call it a “Pierrot Ensemble,” because it was the ensemble that Schoenberg used to write Pierrot Lunaire.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt’s for flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano and soprano voice.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  And the soprano is the, sings the texts that you described…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  Hmmm-mmm.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  …just described.  And has this piece been performed?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=269.0,300.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39443/annotation/7","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"KARCHIN:  Yes.  It was performed at the presentation of the cantata as a whole at the University of Rochester.  And then, shortly after that, it was performed in Merkin Hall in New York.  And then, it’s also been performed at the University of Utah.  And so far, those are the three performances that I know about.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  When was the premiere?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  The premiere, I believe, was in 1994.  I guess we could figure it out.  It was very close to the actual date of the 50th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto.  So we could find out exactly, by looking it up.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  It’s about — I’m trying to remember myself.  Yeah, Warsaw Ghetto was — it was the ’94-’95 season.  So I don’t remember whether it was the spring ’95 or the actual — so that’s right.  That would be…. And the Merkin Hall performance?  That was even more recently then?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=300.0,360.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39443/annotation/8","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"KARCHIN:  Well, the Merkin Hall performance took place about a year after the performance at Rochester.  I’m not sure of the exact date.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Who sang the…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  The premiere was done by a doctoral student at Eastman.  I don’t know the name of the student now.  Again, this could easily be looked up.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor the New York performance, Sheryl Marshall, a very wonderful soprano, did the vocal part.  David Gilbert, a very wonderful conductor, conducted.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  So it requires a conductor, then?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  Yes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Yeah.  And how did you get Utah?  Was that…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  That was through a composer who had also written another song in the cantata like this one.  And decided to program it with his own group, which he runs at the University of Utah.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=360.0,414.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39443/annotation/9","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  Is that Morris Rosenzweig?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  Morris Rosenzweig.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Tell me about the recording that’s planned now.  It’s been, has it been recorded?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  The work has been recorded for New World Records on a CD which will contain five other pieces of mine.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Not Judaically related in any way.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  Not Judaically related.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAlthough I should mention that one of the pieces — perhaps the longest piece in the recording — is a set of songs based on poetry of the Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko, who certainly has had some relationship with Judaism, writing the famous Babi Yar poem that Shashtakovich used in the setting of his 13th Symphony.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  And who’s singing on the recording?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  Oh, Sheryl Marshall, Sheryl Marshall is singing on the recording.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=414.0,465.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39443/annotation/10","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  That was recorded in New York?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  That was recorded here.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Also with Gilbert?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  With David Gilbert.  The same group of players that did it in Merkin Hall did the recording.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Recorded — not live?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  No.  In a…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Studio.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  …a studio recording.  We recorded it at SUNY Purchase.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Yeah.  That’s the best place to record around.  Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTell me about the piece now from a structural point of view, a musical point of view, harmonic, so forth.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=465.0,493.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39443/annotation/11","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eKARCHIN:\u003c/strong\u003e I had been thinking about the influences of Jewish melodies on music that Jewish composers write.  And of course, you can really ignore Jewish melodies and simply write music.  Or you can try to incorporate some of the flavor into the piece.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI think, in the Hannah Senesh music, I did both.  The opening — there is an opening introduction which also comes back at the end.  And I think that in that, I did very much try to bring in a little bit of Middle Eastern influence.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut the rest of the piece, I don’t think — I tried to keep it appropriately reverent.  But apart from that, I don’t think that there are Jewish — things that you would associate with Jewish music particularly evident in the work.  I think things like that that exist are perhaps very much in the background. Structurally the most intense part of the work, I think, is Hannah Senesh's own prayer, which is the second part. And the third part, which is really a song about death, I tried to make appropriate to the setting. The first song is more ruminative, trying to get the feeling of someone who has suddenly been thrust into a situation in which she's not sure what is going to happen and she's reminiscing about her past and where she was previously.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=493.0,553.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39443/annotation/12","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e What about the tonal aspects, and harmonic language?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=553.0,603.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39443/annotation/13","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eKARCHIN:\u003c/strong\u003e Well, my music has always been somewhat atonal, but has incorporated large aspects of tonality, which I and other composers have often felt have been unnecessarily discarded, when composers began writing atonally.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd in talking about harmony and in talking about musical language, I sometimes come back to a quote that Schoenberg made when he first invented the 12-tone system, which was that, he said, “In the early stages of atonal writing, it will be necessary for composers to abandon all possible relationships with tonality, all possible influence of, influences of tonality.”  But it’s interesting that he qualified that by saying, “in the early stages of atonal writing.”","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=603.0,656.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39443/annotation/14","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And Schoenberg himself came back to introducing tonal elements into music, in such works as The Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte and others that he wrote later in life.  And other composers — even very definitely 12-tone ones, such as Charles Wuorinen, for example, whose music I’ve studied a great deal and written some articles on — have been very great proponents of reintroducing the idea of pitch centers into music and making these pitch centers function very much the way tonal centers did in, in tonal music.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=656.0,694.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39443/annotation/15","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And so my music very much picks up on those areas of trying to find a meshing of atonal and tonal ideas.  I think most people would basically consider it still atonal.  And yet there are a lot of references to the past.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  How much do you rely on contrapuntal technique?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  In this particular piece, there is some contrapuntal technique, in the first movement in particular.  Not so much in the second and third.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut in my move — in my music in general, there is often a great deal of counterpoint.  The counterpoint comes out of the motivic ideas of the piece.  And it’s usually used in developmental sections of the work.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=694.0,743.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39443/annotation/16","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"I like to state ideas simply, and then develop them in perhaps a more complex, but hopefully, still understandable way.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  What else, if anything, would you want to say about the piece, for people who might be listening to the piece and hearing this introduction first or afterwards?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  I hope that the piece actually does bring out the, the elements of the text as well as possible.  That, that’s always what I strive to do in text setting.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=743.0,779.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39443/annotation/17","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And I, I’ve written quite a few song cycles.  And the — setting text is, is a, is a wonderful thing.  It allows your imagination to work in ways which it simply cannot do, just writing instrumentally.  Having the, having the words there as a catalyst is a, is a tremendous feeling and a tremendous inspiration.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSo I hope I’ve also been able to return the favor to the poet by, by adding something that will, will make the poetry vibrant in a musical setting.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=779.0,814.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39443/annotation/18","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e Would you — I mean, the inspiration for this came because of a particular occasion for which to write.  But you got into it from that.  I mean, as you worked on it, how much of the inspiration came from the incident itself, as opposed to the deadline of finishing the piece, and things like that?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=814.0,846.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39443/annotation/19","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"KARCHIN:  Well, the incident certainly is a very powerful and, and moving one.  And I think the, the, the story of Hannah Senesh, as well as the poetry that related the story, I think they were both equal — equal in weight in, in, in influencing the music, certainly, I would say.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  You’ve never set anything in Hebrew yet, have you?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  No, I haven’t.  I, I would like to.  The, I guess the, the appropriate occasion hasn’t presented itself yet.  But I would certainly like to write something in a Hebrew text sometime.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=846.0,881.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39443/annotation/20","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  Secular or poetry or liturgical texts?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  I suppose it, it could be either.  Certainly the Bible itself has some very dramatic stories that one could set.  And certainly one could, could try to set them in, in Hebrew.  It would have a very powerful effect.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut contemporary poetry in Hebrew might be very fascinating, as well.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  I think we’ve covered this section here.  Is there anything else that you want to add?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  I suppose not.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=881.0,917.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39443/annotation/21","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  About the project, or about anything that you want to say about you as a composer in relation to this notion of Jewish musical experience or the Jewish experience in America, feel free to add it.  If not…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  Well, the project seems like a very worthwhile one.  It seems like it will produce a fascinating document. But beyond that, I think we’ve, we, we probably covered, you know, most of, most everything.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Okay.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=917.0,961.7265"}]},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39307","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["Karchin-Louis-08-13-2022 [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39307/annotation/22","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  Mr. Karchin, we’re here to talk about your piece that is going to be part — that is part — of the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music.  And the piece is called…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  A Way Separate.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  A Way Separate.  What is the way and what is the separate?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  Okay.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWell, the piece is based on the story of Hannah Senesh, who was a Jewish martyr who is not nearly as well-known as, say, Anne Frank.  In fact, I didn’t know of her until I began looking through some writings on the Holocaust.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=15.0,53.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39307/annotation/23","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And I did this in response to a commission from the University of Rochester, which was initiated — the project was initiated — by Samuel Adler, who has written an extraordinary amount of very good music for religious settings.  And the project that he had in mind was the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd he asked — through the Rochester Hillel Foundation — ten composers to write short works which would be part of a cantata.  And the works could be performed either together as a group — as they were at the premiere of this work — or separately.  And I designed A Way Separate so that it really could be a part of a larger piece, or it could stand alone by itself.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=53.0,109.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39307/annotation/24","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And so I began looking through a lot of Holocaust literature.  And I was very fascinated by the story of Hannah Senesh.  And I found the story, actually, in a setting of poems by the American poet Ruth Whitman.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe wrote a series of vignettes — maybe 12 or 15 vignettes.  And each one was a small fragment of Hannah Senesh’s life.  And of course, it’s a very, very interesting life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe had left Hungary at a, before World War II.  She had immigrated to Palestine.  And then she decided to help the Hungarian partisans.  She was trained by the British to do this.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=109.0,153.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39307/annotation/25","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"She found herself parachuted back into Hungary, to save both Jewish lives and, actually, British soldiers who had been stranded behind enemy lines.  But she was captured by the Germans.  She was tortured by the Gestapo and she died soon, soon afterwards, in prison.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBecause the, the song cycle had to be short, I was only able to use snippets of her life in the setting.  And yet I did manage to work three separate songs into this short work of, of eight minutes or so.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe first song is one of Ruth Whitman’s vignettes, which describes Hannah Senesh’s feelings after she has just been parachuted into Hungary behind the lines.  The second setting is on a poem of Hannah Senesh’s herself.  And the third poem describes after she has been captured and she’s in prison and she’s awaiting death.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSo three short snippets from, from her life comprise the song cycle.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=153.0,222.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39307/annotation/26","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  Is Eili, Eili one of the poems?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  No.  The second poem — the one by Hannah Senesh — is, is more of a prayer.  And it’s a, it’s just a kind of fervent, fervent, fervent statement, really.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  I ask that only because that’s what she’s most known by — is the Hannah Senesh Eili, Eili, which — that’s the, the poem which she wrote.  Which is very different, of course, from the Yiddish Eili, Eili that everybody knew a generation or two generations earlier.  And then this song that, the melody that, to which it was set by an Israeli songwriter.  But this will open up a lot wider the knowledge of Hannah Senesh.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=222.0,269.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39307/annotation/27","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Is — the piece is for what forces?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  It’s for a ensemble which has been used quite a bit in new music.  In fact, people call it a “Pierrot Ensemble,” because it was the ensemble that Schoenberg used to write Pierrot Lunaire.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt’s for flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano and soprano voice.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  And the soprano is the, sings the texts that you described…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  Hmmm-mmm.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  …just described.  And has this piece been performed?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=269.0,300.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39307/annotation/28","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"KARCHIN:  Yes.  It was performed at the presentation of the cantata as a whole at the University of Rochester.  And then, shortly after that, it was performed in Mirkin Hall in New York.  And then, it’s also been performed at the University of Utah.  And so far, those are the three performances that I know about.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  When was the premiere?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  The premiere, I believe, was in 1994.  I guess we could figure it out.  It was very close to the actual date of the 50th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto.  So we could find out exactly, by looking it up.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  It’s about — I’m trying to remember myself.  Yeah, Warsaw Ghetto was — it was the ’94-’95 season.  So I don’t remember whether it was the spring ’95 or the actual — so that’s right.  That would be…. And the Mirkin Hall performance?  That was even more recently then?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=300.0,360.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39307/annotation/29","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"KARCHIN:  Well, the Mirkin Hall performance took place about a year after the performance at Rochester.  I’m not sure of the exact date.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Who sang the…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  The premiere was done by a doctoral student at Eastman.  I don’t know the name of the student now.  Again, this could easily be looked up.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor the New York performance, Sheryl Marshall, a very wonderful soprano, did the vocal part.  David Gilbert, a very wonderful conductor, conducted.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  So it requires a conductor, then?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  Yes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Yeah.  And how did you get Utah?  Was that…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  That was through a composer who had also written another song in the cantata like this one.  And decided to program it with his own group, which he runs at the University of Utah.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=360.0,414.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39307/annotation/30","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  Is that Morris Rosenzweig?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  Morris Rosenzweig.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Tell me about the recording that’s planned now.  It’s been, has it been recorded?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  The work has been recorded for New World Records on a CD which will contain five other pieces of mine.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Not Judaically related in any way.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  Not Judaically related.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAlthough I should mention that one of the pieces — perhaps the longest piece in the recording — is a set of songs based on poetry of the Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko, who certainly has had some relationship with Judaism, writing the famous Babi Yar poem that Shashtakovich used in the setting of his 13th Symphony.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  And who’s singing on the recording?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  Oh, Sheryl Marshall, Sheryl Marshall is singing on the recording.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=414.0,465.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39307/annotation/31","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  That was recorded in New York?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  That was recorded here.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Also with Gilbert?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  With David Gilbert.  The same group of players that did it in Mirkin Hall did the recording.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Recorded — not live?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  No.  In a…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Studio.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  …a studio recording.  We recorded it at SUNY Purchase.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Yeah.  That’s the best place to record around.  Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTell me about the piece now from a structural point of view, a musical point of view, harmonic, so forth.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=465.0,493.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39307/annotation/32","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eKARCHIN:\u003c/strong\u003e I had been thinking about the influences of Jewish melodies on music that Jewish composers write.  And of course, you can really ignore Jewish melodies and simply write music.  Or you can try to incorporate some of the flavor into the piece.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI think, in the Hannah Senesh music, I did both.  The opening — there is an opening introduction which also comes back at the end.  And I think that in that, I did very much try to bring in a little bit of Middle Eastern influence.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut the rest of the piece, I don’t think — I tried to keep it appropriately reverent.  But apart from that, I don’t think that there are Jewish — things that you would associate with Jewish music particularly evident in the work.  I think things like that that exist are perhaps very much in the background. Structurally the most intense part of the work, I think, is Hannah Senesh's own prayer, which is the second part. And the third part, which is really a song about death, I tried to make appropriate to the setting. The first song is more ruminative, trying to get the feeling of someone who has suddenly been thrust into a situation in which she's not sure what is going to happen and she's reminiscing about her past and where she was previously.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=493.0,553.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39307/annotation/33","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e What about the tonal aspects, and harmonic language?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=553.0,603.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39307/annotation/34","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eKARCHIN:\u003c/strong\u003e Well, my music has always been somewhat atonal, but has incorporated large aspects of tonality, which I and other composers have often felt have been unnecessarily discarded, when composers began writing atonally.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd in talking about harmony and in talking about musical language, I sometimes come back to a quote that Schoenberg made when he first invented the 12-tone system, which was that, he said, “In the early stages of atonal writing, it will be necessary for composers to abandon all possible relationships with tonality, all possible influence of, influences of tonality.”  But it’s interesting that he qualified that by saying, “in the early stages of atonal writing.”","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=603.0,656.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39307/annotation/35","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And Schoenberg himself came back to introducing tonal elements into music, in such works as The Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte and others that he wrote later in life.  And other composers — even very definitely 12-tone ones, such as Charles Wuorinen, for example, whose music I’ve studied a great deal and written some articles on — have been very great proponents of reintroducing the idea of pitch centers into music and making these pitch centers function very much the way tonal centers did in, in tonal music.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=656.0,694.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39307/annotation/36","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And so my music very much picks up on those areas of trying to find a meshing of atonal and tonal ideas.  I think most people would basically consider it still atonal.  And yet there are a lot of references to the past.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  How much do you rely on contrapuntal technique?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  In this particular piece, there is some contrapuntal technique, in the first movement in particular.  Not so much in the second and third.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut in my move — in my music in general, there is often a great deal of counterpoint.  The counterpoint comes out of the motivic ideas of the piece.  And it’s usually used in developmental sections of the work.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=694.0,743.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39307/annotation/37","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"I like to state ideas simply, and then develop them in perhaps a more complex, but hopefully, still understandable way.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  What else, if anything, would you want to say about the piece, for people who might be listening to the piece and hearing this introduction first or afterwards?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  I hope that the piece actually does bring out the, the elements of the text as well as possible.  That, that’s always what I strive to do in text setting.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=743.0,779.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39307/annotation/38","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And I, I’ve written quite a few song cycles.  And the — setting text is, is a, is a wonderful thing.  It allows your imagination to work in ways which it simply cannot do, just writing instrumentally.  Having the, having the words there as a catalyst is a, is a tremendous feeling and a tremendous inspiration.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSo I hope I’ve also been able to return the favor to the poet by, by adding something that will, will make the poetry vibrant in a musical setting.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=779.0,814.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39307/annotation/39","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e Would you — I mean, the inspiration for this came because of a particular occasion for which to write.  But you got into it from that.  I mean, as you worked on it, how much of the inspiration came from the incident itself, as opposed to the deadline of finishing the piece, and things like that?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=814.0,846.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39307/annotation/40","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"KARCHIN:  Well, the incident certainly is a very powerful and, and moving one.  And I think the, the, the story of Hannah Senesh, as well as the poetry that related the story, I think they were both equal — equal in weight in, in, in influencing the music, certainly, I would say.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  You’ve never set anything in Hebrew yet, have you?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  No, I haven’t.  I, I would like to.  The, I guess the, the appropriate occasion hasn’t presented itself yet.  But I would certainly like to write something in a Hebrew text sometime.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=846.0,881.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39307/annotation/41","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  Secular or poetry or liturgical texts?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  I suppose it, it could be either.  Certainly the Bible itself has some very dramatic stories that one could set.  And certainly one could, could try to set them in, in Hebrew.  It would have a very powerful effect.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut contemporary poetry in Hebrew might be very fascinating, as well.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  I think we’ve covered this section here.  Is there anything else that you want to add?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  I suppose not.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=881.0,917.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39307/annotation/42","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  About the project, or about anything that you want to say about you as a composer in relation to this notion of Jewish musical experience or the Jewish experience in America, feel free to add it.  If not…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  Well, the project seems like a very worthwhile one.  It seems like it will produce a fascinating document. But beyond that, I think we’ve, we, we probably covered, you know, most of, most everything.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Okay.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=917.0,961.7265"}]},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39306","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["Karchin-Louis-08-13-2022 [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39306/annotation/43","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  Mr. Karchin, we’re here to talk about your piece that is going to be part — that is part — of the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music.  And the piece is called…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  A Way Separate.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  A Way Separate.  What is the way and what is the separate?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  Okay.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWell, the piece is based on the story of Hannah Senesh, who was a Jewish martyr who is not nearly as well-known as, say, Anne Frank.  In fact, I didn’t know of her until I began looking through some writings on the Holocaust.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=15.0,53.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39306/annotation/44","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And I did this in response to a commission from the University of Rochester, which was initiated — the project was initiated — by Samuel Adler, who has written an extraordinary amount of very good music for religious settings.  And the project that he had in mind was the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd he asked — through the Rochester Hillel Foundation — ten composers to write short works which would be part of a cantata.  And the works could be performed either together as a group — as they were at the premiere of this work — or separately.  And I designed A Way Separate so that it really could be a part of a larger piece, or it could stand alone by itself.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=53.0,109.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39306/annotation/45","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And so I began looking through a lot of Holocaust literature.  And I was very fascinated by the story of Hannah Senesh.  And I found the story, actually, in a setting of poems by the American poet Ruth Whitman.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe wrote a series of vignettes — maybe 12 or 15 vignettes.  And each one was a small fragment of Hannah Senesh’s life.  And of course, it’s a very, very interesting life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe had left Hungary at a, before World War II.  She had immigrated to Palestine.  And then she decided to help the Hungarian partisans.  She was trained by the British to do this.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=109.0,153.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39306/annotation/46","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"She found herself parachuted back into Hungary, to save both Jewish lives and, actually, British soldiers who had been stranded behind enemy lines.  But she was captured by the Germans.  She was tortured by the Gestapo and she died soon, soon afterwards, in prison.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBecause the, the song cycle had to be short, I was only able to use snippets of her life in the setting.  And yet I did manage to work three separate songs into this short work of, of eight minutes or so.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe first song is one of Ruth Whitman’s vignettes, which describes Hannah Senesh’s feelings after she has just been parachuted into Hungary behind the lines.  The second setting is on a poem of Hannah Senesh’s herself.  And the third poem describes after she has been captured and she’s in prison and she’s awaiting death.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSo three short snippets from, from her life comprise the song cycle.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=153.0,222.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39306/annotation/47","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  Is Eili, Eili one of the poems?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  No.  The second poem — the one by Hannah Senesh — is, is more of a prayer.  And it’s a, it’s just a kind of fervent, fervent, fervent statement, really.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  I ask that only because that’s what she’s most known by — is the Hannah Senesh Eili, Eili, which — that’s the, the poem which she wrote.  Which is very different, of course, from the Yiddish Eili, Eili that everybody knew a generation or two generations earlier.  And then this song that, the melody that, to which it was set by an Israeli songwriter.  But this will open up a lot wider the knowledge of Hannah Senesh.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=222.0,269.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39306/annotation/48","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Is — the piece is for what forces?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  It’s for a ensemble which has been used quite a bit in new music.  In fact, people call it a “Pierrot Ensemble,” because it was the ensemble that Schoenberg used to write Pierrot Lunaire.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt’s for flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano and soprano voice.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  And the soprano is the, sings the texts that you described…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  Hmmm-mmm.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  …just described.  And has this piece been performed?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=269.0,300.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39306/annotation/49","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"KARCHIN:  Yes.  It was performed at the presentation of the cantata as a whole at the University of Rochester.  And then, shortly after that, it was performed in Mirkin Hall in New York.  And then, it’s also been performed at the University of Utah.  And so far, those are the three performances that I know about.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  When was the premiere?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  The premiere, I believe, was in 1994.  I guess we could figure it out.  It was very close to the actual date of the 50th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto.  So we could find out exactly, by looking it up.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  It’s about — I’m trying to remember myself.  Yeah, Warsaw Ghetto was — it was the ’94-’95 season.  So I don’t remember whether it was the spring ’95 or the actual — so that’s right.  That would be…. And the Mirkin Hall performance?  That was even more recently then?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=300.0,360.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39306/annotation/50","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"KARCHIN:  Well, the Mirkin Hall performance took place about a year after the performance at Rochester.  I’m not sure of the exact date.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Who sang the…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  The premiere was done by a doctoral student at Eastman.  I don’t know the name of the student now.  Again, this could easily be looked up.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor the New York performance, Sheryl Marshall, a very wonderful soprano, did the vocal part.  David Gilbert, a very wonderful conductor, conducted.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  So it requires a conductor, then?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  Yes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Yeah.  And how did you get Utah?  Was that…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  That was through a composer who had also written another song in the cantata like this one.  And decided to program it with his own group, which he runs at the University of Utah.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=360.0,414.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39306/annotation/51","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  Is that Morris Rosenzweig?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  Morris Rosenzweig.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Tell me about the recording that’s planned now.  It’s been, has it been recorded?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  The work has been recorded for New World Records on a CD which will contain five other pieces of mine.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Not Judaically related in any way.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  Not Judaically related.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAlthough I should mention that one of the pieces — perhaps the longest piece in the recording — is a set of songs based on poetry of the Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko, who certainly has had some relationship with Judaism, writing the famous Babi Yar poem that Shashtakovich used in the setting of his 13th Symphony.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  And who’s singing on the recording?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  Oh, Sheryl Marshall, Sheryl Marshall is singing on the recording.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=414.0,465.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39306/annotation/52","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  That was recorded in New York?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  That was recorded here.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Also with Gilbert?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  With David Gilbert.  The same group of players that did it in Mirkin Hall did the recording.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Recorded — not live?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  No.  In a…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Studio.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  …a studio recording.  We recorded it at SUNY Purchase.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Yeah.  That’s the best place to record around.  Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTell me about the piece now from a structural point of view, a musical point of view, harmonic, so forth.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=465.0,493.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39306/annotation/53","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eKARCHIN:\u003c/strong\u003e I had been thinking about the influences of Jewish melodies on music that Jewish composers write.  And of course, you can really ignore Jewish melodies and simply write music.  Or you can try to incorporate some of the flavor into the piece.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI think, in the Hannah Senesh music, I did both.  The opening — there is an opening introduction which also comes back at the end.  And I think that in that, I did very much try to bring in a little bit of Middle Eastern influence.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut the rest of the piece, I don’t think — I tried to keep it appropriately reverent.  But apart from that, I don’t think that there are Jewish — things that you would associate with Jewish music particularly evident in the work.  I think things like that that exist are perhaps very much in the background.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=493.0,553.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39306/annotation/54","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e What about the tonal aspects, and harmonic language?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=553.0,603.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39306/annotation/55","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eKARCHIN:\u003c/strong\u003e Well, my music has always been somewhat atonal, but has incorporated large aspects of tonality, which I and other composers have often felt have been unnecessarily discarded, when composers began writing atonally.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd in talking about harmony and in talking about musical language, I sometimes come back to a quote that Schoenberg made when he first invented the 12-tone system, which was that, he said, “In the early stages of atonal writing, it will be necessary for composers to abandon all possible relationships with tonality, all possible influence of, influences of tonality.”  But it’s interesting that he qualified that by saying, “in the early stages of atonal writing.”","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=603.0,656.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39306/annotation/56","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And Schoenberg himself came back to introducing tonal elements into music, in such works as The Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte and others that he wrote later in life.  And other composers — even very definitely 12-tone ones, such as Charles Wuorinen, for example, whose music I’ve studied a great deal and written some articles on — have been very great proponents of reintroducing the idea of pitch centers into music and making these pitch centers function very much the way tonal centers did in, in tonal music.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=656.0,694.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39306/annotation/57","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And so my music very much picks up on those areas of trying to find a meshing of atonal and tonal ideas.  I think most people would basically consider it still atonal.  And yet there are a lot of references to the past.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  How much do you rely on contrapuntal technique?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  In this particular piece, there is some contrapuntal technique, in the first movement in particular.  Not so much in the second and third.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut in my move — in my music in general, there is often a great deal of counterpoint.  The counterpoint comes out of the motivic ideas of the piece.  And it’s usually used in developmental sections of the work.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=694.0,743.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39306/annotation/58","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"I like to state ideas simply, and then develop them in perhaps a more complex, but hopefully, still understandable way.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  What else, if anything, would you want to say about the piece, for people who might be listening to the piece and hearing this introduction first or afterwards?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  I hope that the piece actually does bring out the, the elements of the text as well as possible.  That, that’s always what I strive to do in text setting.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=743.0,779.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39306/annotation/59","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And I, I’ve written quite a few song cycles.  And the — setting text is, is a, is a wonderful thing.  It allows your imagination to work in ways which it simply cannot do, just writing instrumentally.  Having the, having the words there as a catalyst is a, is a tremendous feeling and a tremendous inspiration.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSo I hope I’ve also been able to return the favor to the poet by, by adding something that will, will make the poetry vibrant in a musical setting.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=779.0,814.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39306/annotation/60","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e Would you — I mean, the inspiration for this came because of a particular occasion for which to write.  But you got into it from that.  I mean, as you worked on it, how much of the inspiration came from the incident itself, as opposed to the deadline of finishing the piece, and things like that?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=814.0,846.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39306/annotation/61","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"KARCHIN:  Well, the incident certainly is a very powerful and, and moving one.  And I think the, the, the story of Hannah Senesh, as well as the poetry that related the story, I think they were both equal — equal in weight in, in, in influencing the music, certainly, I would say.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  You’ve never set anything in Hebrew yet, have you?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  No, I haven’t.  I, I would like to.  The, I guess the, the appropriate occasion hasn’t presented itself yet.  But I would certainly like to write something in a Hebrew text sometime.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=846.0,881.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39306/annotation/62","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  Secular or poetry or liturgical texts?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  I suppose it, it could be either.  Certainly the Bible itself has some very dramatic stories that one could set.  And certainly one could, could try to set them in, in Hebrew.  It would have a very powerful effect.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut contemporary poetry in Hebrew might be very fascinating, as well.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  I think we’ve covered this section here.  Is there anything else that you want to add?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  I suppose not.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=881.0,917.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/39306/annotation/63","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  About the project, or about anything that you want to say about you as a composer in relation to this notion of Jewish musical experience or the Jewish experience in America, feel free to add it.  If not…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  Well, the project seems like a very worthwhile one.  It seems like it will produce a fascinating document. But beyond that, I think we’ve, we, we probably covered, you know, most of, most everything.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Okay.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=917.0,961.7265"}]},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/24209","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["Edited Transcript [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/24209/annotation/64","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  Mr. Karchin, we’re here to talk about your piece that is going to be part — that is part — of the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music.  And the piece is called…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  A Way Separate.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  A Way Separate.  What is the way and what is the separate?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  Okay.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWell, the piece is based on the story of Hannah Senesh, who was a Jewish martyr who is not nearly as well-known as, say, Anne Frank.  In fact, I didn’t know of her until I began looking through some writings on the Holocaust.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=15.0,53.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/24209/annotation/65","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And I did this in response to a commission from the University of Rochester, which was initiated — the project was initiated — by Samuel Adler, who has written an extraordinary amount of very good music for religious settings.  And the project that he had in mind was the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd he asked — through the Rochester Hillel Foundation — ten composers to write short works which would be part of a cantata.  And the works could be performed either together as a group — as they were at the premiere of this work — or separately.  And I designed A Way Separate so that it really could be a part of a larger piece, or it could stand alone by itself.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=53.0,109.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/24209/annotation/66","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And so I began looking through a lot of Holocaust literature.  And I was very fascinated by the story of Hannah Senesh.  And I found the story, actually, in a setting of poems by the American poet Ruth Whitman.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe wrote a series of vignettes — maybe 12 or 15 vignettes.  And each one was a small fragment of Hannah Senesh’s life.  And of course, it’s a very, very interesting life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe had left Hungary at a, before World War II.  She had immigrated to Palestine.  And then she decided to help the Hungarian partisans.  She was trained by the British to do this.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=109.0,153.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/24209/annotation/67","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"She found herself parachuted back into Hungary, to save both Jewish lives and, actually, British soldiers who had been stranded behind enemy lines.  But she was captured by the Germans.  She was tortured by the Gestapo and she died soon, soon afterwards, in prison.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBecause the, the song cycle had to be short, I was only able to use snippets of her life in the setting.  And yet I did manage to work three separate songs into this short work of, of eight minutes or so.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe first song is one of Ruth Whitman’s vignettes, which describes Hannah Senesh’s feelings after she has just been parachuted into Hungary behind the lines.  The second setting is on a poem of Hannah Senesh’s herself.  And the third poem describes after she has been captured and she’s in prison and she’s awaiting death.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSo three short snippets from, from her life comprise the song cycle.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=153.0,222.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/24209/annotation/68","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  Is Eili, Eili one of the poems?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  No.  The second poem — the one by Hannah Senesh — is, is more of a prayer.  And it’s a, it’s just a kind of fervent, fervent, fervent statement, really.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  I ask that only because that’s what she’s most known by — is the Hannah Senesh Eili, Eili, which — that’s the, the poem which she wrote.  Which is very different, of course, from the Yiddish Eili, Eili that everybody knew a generation or two generations earlier.  And then this song that, the melody that, to which it was set by an Israeli songwriter.  But this will open up a lot wider the knowledge of Hannah Senesh.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=222.0,269.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/24209/annotation/69","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Is — the piece is for what forces?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  It’s for a ensemble which has been used quite a bit in new music.  In fact, people call it a “Pierrot Ensemble,” because it was the ensemble that Schoenberg used to write Pierrot Lunaire.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt’s for flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano and soprano voice.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  And the soprano is the, sings the texts that you described…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  Hmmm-mmm.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  …just described.  And has this piece been performed?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=269.0,300.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/24209/annotation/70","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"KARCHIN:  Yes.  It was performed at the presentation of the cantata as a whole at the University of Rochester.  And then, shortly after that, it was performed in Mirkin Hall in New York.  And then, it’s also been performed at the University of Utah.  And so far, those are the three performances that I know about.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  When was the premiere?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  The premiere, I believe, was in 1994.  I guess we could figure it out.  It was very close to the actual date of the 50th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto.  So we could find out exactly, by looking it up.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  It’s about — I’m trying to remember myself.  Yeah, Warsaw Ghetto was — it was the ’94-’95 season.  So I don’t remember whether it was the spring ’95 or the actual — so that’s right.  That would be…. And the Mirkin Hall performance?  That was even more recently then?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=300.0,360.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/24209/annotation/71","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"KARCHIN:  Well, the Mirkin Hall performance took place about a year after the performance at Rochester.  I’m not sure of the exact date.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Who sang the…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  The premiere was done by a doctoral student at Eastman.  I don’t know the name of the student now.  Again, this could easily be looked up.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor the New York performance, Sheryl Marshall, a very wonderful soprano, did the vocal part.  David Gilbert, a very wonderful conductor, conducted.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  So it requires a conductor, then?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  Yes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Yeah.  And how did you get Utah?  Was that…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  That was through a composer who had also written another song in the cantata like this one.  And decided to program it with his own group, which he runs at the University of Utah.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=360.0,414.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/24209/annotation/72","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  Is that Morris Rosenzweig?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  Morris Rosenzweig.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Tell me about the recording that’s planned now.  It’s been, has it been recorded?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  The work has been recorded for New World Records on a CD which will contain five other pieces of mine.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Not Judaically related in any way.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  Not Judaically related.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAlthough I should mention that one of the pieces — perhaps the longest piece in the recording — is a set of songs based on poetry of the Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko, who certainly has had some relationship with Judaism, writing the famous Babi Yar poem that Shashtakovich used in the setting of his 13th Symphony.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  And who’s singing on the recording?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  Oh, Sheryl Marshall, Sheryl Marshall is singing on the recording.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=414.0,465.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/24209/annotation/73","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  That was recorded in New York?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  That was recorded here.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Also with Gilbert?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  With David Gilbert.  The same group of players that did it in Mirkin Hall did the recording.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Recorded — not live?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  No.  In a…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Studio.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  …a studio recording.  We recorded it at SUNY Purchase.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Yeah.  That’s the best place to record around.  Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTell me about the piece now from a structural point of view, a musical point of view, harmonic, so forth.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=465.0,493.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/24209/annotation/74","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eKARCHIN:\u003c/strong\u003e I had been thinking about the influences of Jewish melodies on music that Jewish composers write.  And of course, you can really ignore Jewish melodies and simply write music.  Or you can try to incorporate some of the flavor into the piece.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI think, in the Hannah Senesh music, I did both.  The opening — there is an opening introduction which also comes back at the end.  And I think that in that, I did very much try to bring in a little bit of Middle Eastern influence.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut the rest of the piece, I don’t think — I tried to keep it appropriately reverent.  But apart from that, I don’t think that there are Jewish — things that you would associate with Jewish music particularly evident in the work.  I think things like that that exist are perhaps very much in the background.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=493.0,553.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/24209/annotation/75","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e What about the tonal aspects, and harmonic language?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=553.0,603.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/24209/annotation/76","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eKARCHIN:\u003c/strong\u003e Well, my music has always been somewhat atonal, but has incorporated large aspects of tonality, which I and other composers have often felt have been unnecessarily discarded, when composers began writing atonally.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd in talking about harmony and in talking about musical language, I sometimes come back to a quote that Schoenberg made when he first invented the 12-tone system, which was that, he said, “In the early stages of atonal writing, it will be necessary for composers to abandon all possible relationships with tonality, all possible influence of, influences of tonality.”  But it’s interesting that he qualified that by saying, “in the early stages of atonal writing.”","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=603.0,656.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/24209/annotation/77","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And Schoenberg himself came back to introducing tonal elements into music, in such works as The Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte and others that he wrote later in life.  And other composers — even very definitely 12-tone ones, such as Charles Winan, for example, whose music I’ve studied a great deal and written some articles on — have been very great proponents of reintroducing the idea of pitch centers into music and making these pitch centers function very much the way tonal centers did in, in tonal music.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=656.0,694.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/24209/annotation/78","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And so my music very much picks up on those areas of trying to find a meshing of atonal and tonal ideas.  I think most people would basically consider it still atonal.  And yet there are a lot of references to the past.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  How much do you rely on contrapuntal technique?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  In this particular piece, there is some contrapuntal technique, in the first movement in particular.  Not so much in the second and third.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut in my move — in my music in general, there is often a great deal of counterpoint.  The counterpoint comes out of the motivic ideas of the piece.  And it’s usually used in developmental sections of the work.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=694.0,743.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/24209/annotation/79","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"I like to state ideas simply, and then develop them in perhaps a more complex, but hopefully, still understandable way.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  What else, if anything, would you want to say about the piece, for people who might be listening to the piece and hearing this introduction first or afterwards?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  I hope that the piece actually does bring out the, the elements of the text as well as possible.  That, that’s always what I strive to do in text setting.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=743.0,779.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/24209/annotation/80","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And I, I’ve written quite a few song cycles.  And the — setting text is, is a, is a wonderful thing.  It allows your imagination to work in ways which it simply cannot do, just writing instrumentally.  Having the, having the words there as a catalyst is a, is a tremendous feeling and a tremendous inspiration.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSo I hope I’ve also been able to return the favor to the poet by, by adding something that will, will make the poetry vibrant in a musical setting.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=779.0,814.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/24209/annotation/81","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e Would you — I mean, the inspiration for this came because of a particular occasion for which to write.  But you got into it from that.  I mean, as you worked on it, how much of the inspiration came from the incident itself, as opposed to the deadline of finishing the piece, and things like that?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=814.0,846.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/24209/annotation/82","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"KARCHIN:  Well, the incident certainly is a very powerful and, and moving one.  And I think the, the, the story of Hannah Senesh, as well as the poetry that related the story, I think they were both equal — equal in weight in, in, in influencing the music, certainly, I would say.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  You’ve never set anything in Hebrew yet, have you?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  No, I haven’t.  I, I would like to.  The, I guess the, the appropriate occasion hasn’t presented itself yet.  But I would certainly like to write something in a Hebrew text sometime.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=846.0,881.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/24209/annotation/83","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  Secular or poetry or liturgical texts?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  I suppose it, it could be either.  Certainly the Bible itself has some very dramatic stories that one could set.  And certainly one could, could try to set them in, in Hebrew.  It would have a very powerful effect.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut contemporary poetry in Hebrew might be very fascinating, as well.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  I think we’ve covered this section here.  Is there anything else that you want to add?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  I suppose not.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=881.0,917.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773/transcript/24209/annotation/84","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  About the project, or about anything that you want to say about you as a composer in relation to this notion of Jewish musical experience or the Jewish experience in America, feel free to add it.  If not…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKARCHIN:  Well, the project seems like a very worthwhile one.  It seems like it will produce a fascinating document. But beyond that, I think we’ve, we, we probably covered, you know, most of, most everything.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Okay.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39397/file/110773#t=917.0,961.7265"}]}]}]}