{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/g73707x93m/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["Amram, David and David Schiff"]},"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\u003eAmram, David and David Schiff. 2001. Interview by Neil W. Levin. Milken Archive Oral History Project. 29 January.\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":["Levin, Neil W. (Interviewer)","Amram, David (Composer)","Schiff, David (Composer)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Date"]},"value":{"en":["2001-01-29"]}},{"label":{"en":["Coverage"]},"value":{"en":["Ann Arbor, MI (Place of Recording)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Language"]},"value":{"en":["English (Primary)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Description"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eOral history with David Amram and David Schiff. The main topic is opera, namely the composers' operas that had recently been recorded by the Milken Archive, Amram's \u003cem\u003eThe Final Ingredient\u003c/em\u003e (1965) and Schiff's \u003cem\u003eGimpel the Fool\u003c/em\u003e (1975); the composers also detail their experiences originally writing and recording them. This leads to a discussion of opera as an art form and what drew the composers to it in the first place. The interview ends with a Q\u0026amp;A session with the moderator and members of the audience, at which point Amram talks about a new piece he's working on, \u003cem\u003eGiants of the Night\u003c/em\u003e (2002).\u003c/p\u003e"]}},{"label":{"en":["Format"]},"value":{"en":["Beta SP"]}},{"label":{"en":["Subject"]},"value":{"en":["Oral Histories (genre/form)","Jews — Music (Topical Term)","Holocaust (Topical Term)","Opera--20th century. (Topical Term)","Jewish Theological Seminary of America. American Jewish History Center (Person Or Corporate Body)","Rose, Reginald (Person or Corporate Body)","Bolcom, William (Person or Corporate Body)","Singer, Isaac Bashevis, 1904-1991 (Person or Corporate Body)","Amram, David (Person or Corporate Body)","Schiff, David (Person or Corporate Body)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Keyword"]},"value":{"en":["aesthetics, Al Pacino (b. 1940), American Broadcasting Company (ABC), Charlie Parker (1920-1955), conducting, Conversations, Dizzy Gillespie (1917-1993), Ellen Taffy Zwilich (b. 1939), Giants of the Night, Gimpel the Fool (opera), Hugo Weisgall (1912-1997), Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971), Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902-1991), Jack Kerouac (1922-1969), James Galway (b. 1939), jazz, Jewish Theological Seminary, klezmer, Kurt Weill (1900-1950), Manhattan School of Music, opera, Paul Schoenfield (b. 1947), Reginald Rose (1920-2002), Shakespeare in the Park,  Shir L’erev Shabbat (sacred service), The Final Ingredient (opera), The Holocaust, University of Michigan, William Bolcom (b. 1938), Yiddish, Yossele Rosenblatt (1882-1933)"]}}],"summary":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eOral history with David Amram and David Schiff. The main topic is opera, namely the composers' operas that had recently been recorded by the Milken Archive, Amram's \u003cem\u003eThe Final Ingredient\u003c/em\u003e (1965) and Schiff's \u003cem\u003eGimpel the Fool\u003c/em\u003e (1975); the composers also detail their experiences originally writing and recording them. This leads to a discussion of opera as an art form and what drew the composers to it in the first place. The interview ends with a Q\u0026amp;A session with the moderator and members of the audience, at which point Amram talks about a new piece he's working on, \u003cem\u003eGiants of the Night\u003c/em\u003e (2002).\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/000/110/768/small/DavidAmram-DavidSchiff.jpg?1618940714","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 1 - L3952_AMRAM_SCHIFF_4X3_MASTER.mp4"]},"duration":4926.656,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/110/768/small/DavidAmram-DavidSchiff.jpg?1618940714","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-milken.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/110/768/original/L3952_AMRAM_SCHIFF_4X3_MASTER.mp4?1616071028","type":"Video","format":"video/mp4","duration":4926.656,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["Edited Transcript [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"OPENING GRAPHIC","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=2.0,15.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/2","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eMODERATOR:\u003c/strong\u003e This is Neil Levin.  And next to Neil Levin is composer of one of the pieces we are recording — in fact, we finished recording it last night — the opera Gimpel the Fool.  This is David Schiff.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=15.0,29.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/3","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"SCREEN GOES BLACK FOR 2 SECONDS","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=29.0,33.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/4","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eMODERATOR:\u003c/strong\u003e And, and the composer of The Final Ingredient premiered in 1965, which we’re also recording.  This is David Amram.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=33.0,43.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/5","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eMODERATOR:\u003c/strong\u003e And in our audience today we have with us the composer of the work premiered by the St. Louis Symphony, the Opera Theater of St. Louis in 1999, the Merchant and the Pauper, Paul Schoenfield.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=43.0,60.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/6","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MODERATOR: Welcome to you.  Neil, I’ll let you begin.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Thank you very much.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMODERATOR:  Thank you all for being here.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=60.0,68.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/7","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e Thank you very much.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI will just briefly tell you how this recording of operas of a particular genre came into being.  We are engaged, as some of you may know, in a very large documentation and recording project known as the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music.  It is essentially a, a, a musical, as well as historical, documentation of music of Jewish relationship in some way, of, of, a Judaic connection in some way, in the American experience, from colonial America until today, of pretty much all types and all genres.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=68.0,118.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/8","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e So that we’re divided into 20 volumes.  And one volume may be liturgical music of one sort; another volume may be liturgical of another sort; another symphonic; another theater; and so forth.  And naturally, there is a volume devoted to opera of Jewish connection.  I want to begin by telling you that the, the very term “Jewish music,” let alone Jewish opera, is a, a very difficult one and one that I, I generally dismiss, except for a title, because it works, word-wise.  And we really mean, we really mean music of Jewish or Judaic experience.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=118.0,161.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/9","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e Because, as I often tell my students — I’m a professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, in the music school.  And I generally tell them the first day of class, the first incoming classes, that there is no such thing as Jewish music.  Because being, the essence of being something, that I don’t think any, is something that music can be.  Hugo Weisgall, who I hope some of you are familiar with, at least with his music and his name and so forth, used to say — he was my teacher and my mentor, one of them.  He always used to say, “Look.  There are only 12 pitches, after all, in, in Western music.”","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=161.0,198.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/10","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e And to, to assert that music itself — that some combination of pitches can be something in terms of essence, the way a person can be French or Jewish or Democrat or Republican or whatever it is that the person can be, it really doesn’t apply to music.  It is how the music is used.  Or how it came, or why it came into being, and therefore, really, it, in terms of its relation, in this respect, to the American Jewish experience.  Which means social, political, as well as religious, artistic, ethnic, and all of the, the parameters that might be brought to bear.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=198.0,238.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/11","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e We, we’re privileged to have with us three composers of the music on this opera volume of this, of, of, I think it will be two or three CDs, where we have done scenes from these operas.  I think that the, the first bit of discussion that, that we should enter into is, what draws a composer to opera in the first place?  Especially given the, the huge risks involved, perhaps more so — although maybe you feel differently — than, than, than the risks in composing other, other forms, in terms of, of, of getting performances, and so forth.  But what is it that drew each of you to write an opera, and then this particular opera?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=238.0,290.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/12","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e David — well, they’re both Davids here, so….  But I think, since your opera came first, chronologically, in terms of its origin, what, what drew you, and what do you think draws other composers today?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=290.0,305.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/13","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e Just before I answer the question — I’ll make it really brief — I want to thank you, I want to thank the Foundation, the school, Bill Bolcom, a friend of mine since the ‘50s.  You’re a great conductor.  You did such a phenomenal job.  You’re a great choral director.  And all the students who played and sang something I wrote 36 years ago.  I never thought I would live to see it even done by someone else so well.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=305.0,327.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/14","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e And to say, since we’re all here talking about this today, that Floyd Red Crow Westerman, the great Dakota singer, who I played with for 30 years, used to say, before he was in Dances With Wolves, when we played benefits for the American Indians, and more of us were in the band than were in the audience, “Ladies and gentlemen, this is a very small but select audience.”","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=327.0,347.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/15","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e So the fact that there’s a few of us here is even better, because small is beautiful.  And when you’re a composer, you’re dealing, usually, with your piece of music paper and the music in your dreams, and there’s nobody there.  So, anything more than one person is a crowd.  So, we’re glad that this many of you showed up, which equals most of our audiences for the first 30 or 40 years we were writing music.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=347.0,366.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/16","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e I just wanted to put that into, into the record, so when the Milken Foundation shows it’s not held at Yankee Stadium, or when I played with Willie Nelson for Farm Aid and there’s 40,000 people — that’s great, too.  But being here in this place, it is especially rewarding if anybody shows up.  So, we thank you all for coming, especially the students.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=366.0,384.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/17","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e In terms of writing an opera, writing anything, what I’ve done all my life and I still do at 70, is to try to get up each day and figure, after I’ve done the basic things, of how to get my children to school or pay my rent, is what I can do that day in the music to continue being a composer, to continue to feel creative, continue to feel positive and to try to pursue my dreams and even encourage other people to get into their own creativity.  And that’s what gives you the energy to even dare to compose, when everything in the peer culture says forget about it, give up, it’s unrealistic, it’s hopeless, it’s a waste of time.  Be a lab technician.  And that kind of thing that we all get as advice from our relatives and career counselors.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=384.0,424.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/18","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e In terms of writing an opera, I certainly wouldn’t recommend that as an instant way to achieve international success and be able to retire at the age of 23 and form your own entertainment corporation.  Which is what you are all faced with, growing up in the world of 2001, of what you’re supposed to be to even be worthwhile as a musician or an athlete or anything.  Writing an opera is simply a way of taking experiences outside the realm of applied music — life itself — which can inspire you to write certain kinds of sounds to portray those feelings.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=424.0,459.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/19","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e But an opera not only uses that initiative to create something abstract in orchestral or instrumental music.  Opera is also telling a story in words, and telling a story on the stage.  And something that’s visual.  And something that combines the word, the music and drama so that when the opera is finally done, and you see it as the composer for the first time, it becomes something else that you can’t possibly dream of.  And eventually, you start to watch it as an event, of which your music is a part.  That was my own experience in the two operas that I wrote, and what made all the work in writing it worthwhile.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=459.0,503.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/20","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e And in this particular opera, I was asked by the, I believe it was the Jewish Theological Seminary, ABC Television wanted to do something about the Holocaust, and at that time, the Holocaust was something that was never discussed.  People that experienced that understandably were in denial.  And it was something that — there was no Schindler’s List, there was no public portrayal of that, except occasionally on, on news programs.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=503.0,530.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/21","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e And there was a wonderful play by Reginald Rose, called The Final Ingredient.  And someone at the Seminary thought that that would be a good idea.  Milton Krents was his name.  Milton Krents said, “You know, David, I’ve heard your music.  And I think” — he had heard my Sacred Service, that I wrote for the Park Avenue Synagogue and my music for Shakespeare in the Park, and other music I had written.  And he said, “I think you could deal with the subject and come up with something that would be meaningful to an audience.”","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=530.0,557.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/22","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e And I had written a, a Shakespeare opera.  And I have all this in my book, called Vibrations, which is in print, so I won’t bore you with it, but after spending, getting three-quarters of that written for Joseph Papp, we had had a backers’ audition that was a complete disaster, with some of the wealthiest people in New York City all coming and hearing this opera.  And after five minutes, when they realized they had to hear an opera instead of having, going to a cocktail party, they were infuriated, and they all walked out without contributing any money.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=557.0,582.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/23","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e So I put that in the drawer, and was going back to writing my other music and playing with Charles Mingus and working at the Post Office, and all the other things that I did to survive.  And I got called by the Jewish Theological Seminary.  And they said, “Have you ever thought of writing an opera?”  I said, “Well, you know, I just completed three-quarters of one that just got put in deep freeze.  I’m ready.”","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=582.0,601.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/24","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e So they presented me this beautiful story of Reginald Rose’s about people who experienced creating their own Passover service in a concentration camp, based on true stories.  And I read it and I was very touched.  And Arnold Weinstein, who is also the librettist for Bill Bolcom for the last 40 years — we were all friends — I thought of immediately to write the libretto.  And he looked at it, he said, “This is fantastic.”  He said, “They’ll have to change things around and make rhymes and…”.  So we sat down and started to work on it together.  And finally, he came up with a wonderful libretto.  He typed it up and he said, “It’s yours.  I’ll see you at the recording.”","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=601.0,641.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/25","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e And I sat down and wrote it in about four-and-a-half months of nonstop, round-the-clock working.  I didn’t have a family then, so I didn’t have to be responsible to my kids’ needs or anything.  And I was able to work about 16 hours a day.  And loved every minute of it, even though it drove the music copyists crazy and all my friends, because I wasn’t around.  I was just holed up some place out of town in this rat-infested beautiful little house in Nanuet, New York, writing music day and night.  And sometimes, when you do that, it’s so wonderful, you never want to emerge into the, into the world again.  So I don’t think, basically, it’s good for your health to do that round the clock, or you’d probably die at an early age.  Because you do need to be with people and have a regular kind of a life, too.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=641.0,687.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/26","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e But I immersed myself in doing it and finally got it done in time.  And then we had it performed by the ABC Orchestra, it was called.  With all these great free-lance players in New York who mostly played jingles and had Stradivarius violins and smoked cigars and never went out and played a concert, because they were too well-to-do and couldn’t afford to do that.  They were sort of like this secret army of monster great players, all of whom were soloists and that kind of thing.  And they were able to actually, in two hours, read through the whole opera, make a few corrections, and then we were ready for the singers to come in and record it with a two-hour rehearsal.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=687.0,724.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/27","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e I just say that to any of you who are composers, even if you use a computer — be sure to get the parts right.  Be sure to put in the metronome markings.  Be sure to make everything as specific as possible.  Because there’s not always time to be around for a month-and-a-half singing all the parts to everybody and telling them what you thought of.  Unless your father is a multimillionaire and you can pay for that, that will never happen.  So, everything has got to really be clear and be specific.  We had problems getting the proc copies, so I snuck in music copyists into ABC of my own and paid out of my pocket what was left over of my commission.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=724.0,758.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/28","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e They wanted to record it on a seven-and-a-half-inch machine.  And I said, “Well, 15 inches.  You’re going to have to use that, in order to get the fidelity.”  They said, “No.  Seven-and-a-half is good enough for Lawrence Welk.  It’s good enough for you.”  So, I snuck in two people from a recording studio dressed up as hot dog men, and they brought in the big hot dog tray, and got all dressed up in white coats with a 15-inch tape recorder and put that in the tape recorder.  And the, and the ABC engineers then surreptitiously took that out and we got it recorded.  And it actually came off very, very well.  They showed it for four years in a row on network television.  And then ABC decided all the black-and-white tapes — 30,000 — should be erased, with color television coming in, to make room.  And they erased not only my opera, but almost everything else.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=758.0,799.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/29","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e Miraculously, there was one tape left.  Finally, there was a CD put out of it that I conducted myself with great players and singers, that wasn’t up to the quality of what the Milken Foundation is doing.  And I was able to have a glorified demo to give to Mr. Levin and everyone else.  And by the blessings of the Lord, part of it is being done again, with a whole new generation of people playing it and singing it, actually better than we did it in 1965.  That’s a long story with a happy ending.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=799.0,828.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/30","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  Now, David, your — David Schiff — your experiences are somewhat different, with the genesis of this opera.  I mean, here we have what amounts to a commission, wouldn’t you say?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSCHIFF:  Right.  Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  I mean, you’re, the, finally, it amounts to a commission.  And its primary performance and its first performance was, was a broadcast.  In your case, it’s in some ways, if not the opposite, quite different.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=828.0,856.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/31","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSCHIFF:\u003c/strong\u003e It’s a, well, it’s a different story.  In a way, part of it is a school story.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut I’ll preface that by saying, if you ask me why I wrote an opera and why I would try to do it again, despite all the frustrations — which are endless — for me, it’s because I grew up going to Broadway musicals.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=856.0,877.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/32","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSCHIFF:\u003c/strong\u003e I grew up in New York.  My family didn’t know anything about music.  And I, I had never seen, I, I never saw the New York Philharmonic, I never saw the Metropolitan Opera until I got to college.  But I saw every Rodgers \u0026 Hammerstein show, from the cheapest seats in the house, all the way up.  And the magic of the theater, and particularly, the magic of music theater and the ability for, especially Rodgers \u0026 Hammerstein, to make people laugh and make people cry has always been my test of what real music should do.  And sometimes, if, if I’m writing a, a chamber music piece — and it’s a different situation, in terms of the audience.  The audience is more contemplative, in relation to the music, and they can sort of think about it and be there and not be there, but in the theater, you’re really working with the audience.  And that’s something.  Because I was sort of imbued with that at a very early age, and that kind of theater magic, that it’s always been something that meant a lot to me.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=877.0,937.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/33","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSCHIFF:\u003c/strong\u003e The way Gimpel got started, I was in, at Manhattan School of Music getting my master’s degree, and I took a course in opera composition with Nicholas Flagello.  And in fact, the whole course, in terms of what we were studying — we studied Salome for the whole term.  And Salome, it has very little to do with Gimpel.  But that was the course.  But as part of the course, we were required to write a libretto, and at the same time — talk about in terms of paying the rent — I, I was teaching music theory at Hebrew Union College, at the cantorial school, which will figure in the story a little bit later, and I was teaching music theory.  But at the beginning of the term, when I showed up to teach music theory, they said, “Oh, by the way, you’ll be teaching English literature, also.”  Because I have a background in that.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=937.0,989.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/34","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSCHIFF:\u003c/strong\u003e I said, okay, you know, I’ll do anything.  And I put together a reading list.  And one of the books I put on the reading list was by Isaac Bashevis Singer.  And I put it on the list because I had never read him.  And I needed an excuse to read him, so I figured well, this way, if I assign it to my students, I’ll have to show up having read the book.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=989.0,1008.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/35","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSCHIFF:\u003c/strong\u003e And I read Singer, and it revealed so much about parts of my — what I imagine to be my — family’s background. Like many Jewish families who came from Eastern Europe, my grandparents, who emigrated, never talked about it.  They, it was someplace they had come from, and they had no interest in going back there, either physically or emotionally, in any way.  It was a closed book.  They were happy to get out.  And so, I didn’t grow up with any sense of what their life would have been like, or let alone what their parents’ or, or grandparents’ life would have been like, and then I read Singer, and it was all there.  And especially since many of his stories take place in the area — in, in Galicia, Southern Poland, and in Warsaw — where my own family came from, it was a revelation.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=1008.0,1062.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/36","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSCHIFF:\u003c/strong\u003e So at that point, I, because I had this assignment for a class, I, I combined these two things and I wrote a, a sketch for a libretto based on Gimpel.  And one of the discoveries I made was that Gimpel, like all of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s writings, was originally published in the Yiddish newspaper, The Forward, in Yiddish.  And I had the idea of — and again, this kind of perverse way of getting it — it, it was really from Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex.  If you could have an opera in Latin, why not have an opera in Yiddish?  That you could do this, something different in that way.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=1062.0,1101.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/37","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSCHIFF:\u003c/strong\u003e And, and then I tracked down the actual text of the story in Yiddish.  And I, with my grandfather’s help and an uncle’s help, I learned to read it.  And I discovered that the original was much more pungent and earthy and wild and crazy than the translation by Saul Bellow, which is familiar to people.  And so I, I had an idea that if I proceeded with this, I would use Singer’s own words, in this form that most people were not familiar with.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=1101.0,1136.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/38","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSCHIFF:\u003c/strong\u003e And so, I waited, I, and I told some people I had sort of had this idea, and I had written a project for a class. And I think a year later, my parents’ synagogue decided to have a Yiddish weekend.  They invited Irving Howe and other people to come speak.  And the cantor of the congregation, whose voice I had grown up with — a great cantor named Lawrence Avery, who is still alive and singing — called me and said, “You know, we could, we could do Gimpel.”","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=1136.0,1169.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/39","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSCHIFF:\u003c/strong\u003e This was in, he called in June.  And this was for October.  And so it, but I was waiting for that.  So again, I was primed, also, to do it.  And so this would have been 1975, and just — this may sound curious to young composers here, but I had an experience that was very typical of my generation, at that point.  I was walking around, trying to figure out what idiom to use for this opera.  And one day, I was in midtown Manhattan and I was waiting to meet somebody.  I had an hour to kill and I had a music notebook, and I sat down at a little park called Paley Park, near the Museum of Modern Art, and the overture of Gimpel just fell on the page.  It just burst right out of me.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=1169.0,1217.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/40","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSCHIFF:\u003c/strong\u003e And it was the first piece in E-minor I had written since I was seven.  I was, I had been atonal for many, many years.  And this just amazed me — that something inside of me wanted to write tonal music, at that point — or what I thought was tonal music, at that point.  And, and I haven’t looked back since.  But in 1975, it felt like a very transgressive move, on, on my point — part — and I, I wasn’t sure, you know, do I really want to do this?  But it was an amazing thing, again it, it, sometimes you have this experience, when you’re composing.  That it, it’s not, doesn’t even feel like inspiration.  It’s just that the music is just there.  And it was a kind of music I didn’t even know was going to be there.  But once I had the overture, the rest of the music just came out.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=1217.0,1267.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/41","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSCHIFF:\u003c/strong\u003e Now, I’ll give you the very short version of what happened, because again, I think it’s instructive for composers.  Essentially, the opera evolved through a series of opportunities.  I got this call, and we, and we were able to put together the show.  I was able to do it easily, because my wife is a singer.  And she was a student at the cantorial school where I was teaching.  So, we were able to put the cast together from other students in the cantorial school.  And the original version of Gimpel was about a half an hour long, and, with a piano accompaniment.  And two months later, we did it in Manhattan, at the cantorial school itself, in the same form.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=1267.0,1309.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/42","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSCHIFF:\u003c/strong\u003e A couple of years later, we got a call from Boston, and a synagogue up there wanted to do it.  And because we were driving all the way up to Boston, I wanted to give the people in the chorus — the townspeople — something more to sing.  So, I added another 20 minutes or so to the opera.  I gave them all solo numbers.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=1309.0,1331.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/43","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSCHIFF:\u003c/strong\u003e And then, a, a couple of years later, I got a call from the 92nd Street Y, saying that they’d be interested in doing, in staging the opera.  So, at that point, I orchestrated it, and again, stretched it so it would fill more of an evening.  And it started very small and it was, I think that year — that was in 1979 — it, it was about an hour long.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=1331.0,1362.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/44","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSCHIFF:\u003c/strong\u003e Then I had a wonderful opportunity, that every opera composer should have, in that the Y revived it the following year, and they revived it five seasons later.  And each time they brought it back, I was able to correct my mistakes, improve on it.  And again, I think it goes back to my Broadway sense.  I was very aware of how this was working with the audience.  And, and if they weren’t crying when I wanted them to cry, and they weren’t laughing when I wanted them to laugh, I had to go fix it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=1362.0,1394.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/45","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"SCHIFF: In, for the last production, in, in ’85, I translated the entire text into English.  Again, in the interest of having it work in theater for most of the audience.  Before that, we had the Yiddish, but only a small part of the audience really could savor it, and it was kind of a barrier for the rest of them.  So, it really was an opera that just grew from a series of almost accidental opportunities. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  I think one of the, one of the things that probably concerns composers very much in this context — and, and later on, we’ll get a chance to open up for discussion.  But one of the things is the extent to which — if at all — an ethnically driven, or, or the, the ethnic particulars of the story, whether it’s Jewish or whether it’s Italian, or, or whatever it is, to, to what extent those factors drive anything, in terms of the compositional procedure.  Melodic material, preexistent ethnic material pertaining to that region in which the story takes place.  Or not.  Harmonic language.  Or not.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=1394.0,1470.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/46","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e I mean, I, I think the two operas, and, for that matter, the third opera that — Mr. Schoenfield’s opera, The, The Merchant and the Pauper — among all three, there are different approaches in this matter.  On the other hand, you take a situation such as Hugo Weisgall’s Esther, which some of you may be familiar with.  Esther was his last opera.  It was an enormous success at New York City Opera just a couple of years before he died.  And, and there is the Biblical story of Esther from a Judaic point of view, because just because it’s in the Bible doesn’t necessarily mean it’s, it’s any more Jewish than Christian.  But this particular one was.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=1470.0,1506.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/47","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e And yet, from the point of view of musical material, or any compositional approach, in, in Esther, there was nothing different from anything else that Weisgall had written.  And, and, and nothing else intended, in terms of his usual approach to chromaticism, and, and, and so forth.  Now, in, in these cases, how, how did you approach the, the, the particular story and the particular flavor, in terms of any relationship to compositional material?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=1506.0,1540.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/48","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e Well, in this particular opera, since it dealt with, with Holocaust survivors — and most of my family that was not lucky enough to come over here perished in the Holocaust.  I had one great-aunt who was able to escape, and another great-uncle who was hidden in a windmill by the Dutch for four years and then came over here.  They really never wanted to talk about it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=1540.0,1563.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/49","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e But finally, when my great-aunt spoke to me before she died, after one of our children was bar mitzvahed, she began to cry when I brought a child up.  And she said, “You know, I couldn’t even come to that, because I am afraid to be Jewish anymore.  Even though I’ve been living in this country for 35 years, I still have nightmares.  So I changed my religion and became an Episcopalian, so I, no one will ever come after me.”","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=1563.0,1586.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/50","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e And then she sang me some of the songs that she remembered, and sang for my child what she did as a child. And one of the people in, in our neighborhood, the Art Finch Delicatessen that I used to go to, was kind of one of my gurus.  Igor Sidarsky was his name.  I wrote about him in, in my book, Vibrations, because he was a great, great person.  He had been in a concentration camp and his wife had, and they survived and separated and found each other.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=1586.0,1611.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/51","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e And he said, “David,” he said, “I used to be a Communist.  And I never practiced Judaism.”  He said, “After I went through all this, I was sitting on a hill with my wife on a sunny day and I figured, if I had been put all through this, I’d better find out what Judaism is about.”  And he took a crash course in his own heritage, as many people did in that generation, and began to study.  And his little delicatessen was kind of a, a Jewish study centers for all kinds of people who lived in New York that didn’t go to temple anymore, that had kind of either retired or gone somewhere else and forgotten about their roots.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=1611.0,1647.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/52","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e So, he — and it kind of inspired me to go back and start studying what I had been brought up with as a child, and hearing the great records of the Cantor Yossele Rosenblatt, who was a fabulous, extraordinary singer, coming out of that Central European tradition.  And some of the music of the Middle East, that my uncle, who is a merchant seaman, introduced me to.  They’d also introduced me to jazz — the Philadelphia Orchestra, Duke Ellington, American Indian music, Latin music.  So, by the time I was 15 years old, I was exposed to all these musics, knew that they were all great.  And along with Bach chorales, I could appreciate all these other musics and study them with respect and learn to play them by living with those musics and even being able to perform with people who were born into those cultures.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=1647.0,1691.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/53","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e And because I had a sense that I was born into a culture, I was able to be respectful and realize every single human being on earth is a person of culture or cultures.  And I say that in an age of Burger King-ization and cyberspace, where everything is, is being mushed into one gigantic, super-homogenized free form of nothingness, for fast consumerism.  And then to be thrown into the slag heap because it’s, by definition, it’s worthless.  So that it doesn’t satisfy the appetite, nourish one, so that you have to keep going out and buying more and more stuff.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=1691.0,1724.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/54","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e As a composer, as a musician, as an artist, or as a regular, everyday person, we’re all faced with that, in terms of what materials can we glean from anything?  Whether we want to get breakfast cereals or write a symphony.  That it will have the good, nutritious roots that will give the vitamins to the soul to last.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=1724.0,1741.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/55","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e In the case of the Jewish tradition, it’s so enormous that most of us who deal in that music still couldn’t even give a definition of what Jewish music is, except we can say what it was for our families and what it was for those other people of the Jewish background that we come across who somehow manage to maintain something and have a certain slant on things.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=1741.0,1763.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/56","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e Just as every person has something that their parents or grandparents had in heritage, which was brought over here in the trauma of the boat when they arrived or when we arrived at Ellis Island, or however we came, people were told that’s not American, change that name, change that accent, change that food, change that language.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=1763.0,1783.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/57","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e The drum was stolen from the Native American people.  The drum was stolen from the African-American people.  And the languages, culture’s soul and history, were ripped off from the majority of the people who came here, including the so-called “Founding Fathers,” when they landed on Plymouth Rock and forgot about some of their own English heritage.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=1783.0,1798.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/58","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e So we’re living in a country where the most precious thing — what we call in Hebrew, the mitzvah, the gift of birth — is, is considered to be worthless.  And actually, it’s priceless.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=1798.0,1808.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/59","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e So all I did was try to delve in — when I was writing the piece, my Sacred Service for the Park Avenue Synagogue, or a piece I wrote with the great poet Langston Hughes, based on the Yizkor, or the symphony I wrote for Nashville, the second movement is called Mizmor Kadun — Song of Antiquity — I tried to go back into those feelings and embrace those feelings.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=1808.0,1829.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/60","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e And I want to mention, in conclusion, that since I’m 70, when I was coming up, the career advice you were given was, “Do not be too ethnic.  Don’t be ethnic.”  Which meant, whatever you are, don’t be a subhuman creep by taking your own precious family heritage and putting that into the main arena, especially of high art, so that if it doesn’t sound like it’s from the Austro-Hungarian empire, then you could be invited either to, to, to Leipzig, to, to see the head of state — all of whom disappeared 150 years ago — or get invited to Buckingham Palace or the White House, you’re a total failure as an artist, because you’re dealing in ethnicity, which is déclassé, and at best, low-class entertainment value.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=1829.0,1871.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/61","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e That’s changed in the last ten years, since multiculturalism, as it’s called, has suddenly been discovered.  And I’m considered to be a pioneer of that.  And all I ever tell people is, when I played with Dizzy Gillespie in ’51 or Charlie Parker in ’52, they spent half the night telling me to delve into my own Jewish heritage — to listen to Bartók, to listen to Delius as an orchestrator, to study Rembrandt and Picasso, and all kinds of things that were certainly outside of the stereotype of what a jazz musician was supposed to be interested in.  These were extraordinary, brilliant, educated, inclusive, magnificent people who celebrated all of the roots of all of the musics and all of the cultures, who thought that they were precious.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=1871.0,1909.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/62","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e So I think it’s good that you asked that question, because that’s something that applies not only to Jewish people — to rediscover themselves and ourselves — but all of us on the Earth, to rediscover ourselves and use those precious materials that are handed down from nothing, from our own family backgrounds, as the way of creating something new in the world by giving it the roots of the foundation of something that comes from inherited wisdom.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=1909.0,1936.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/63","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e Because all those traditions and those melodies — those ways of dealing with things — are the refinement of thousands of years of unrecorded history which was somehow maintained from generation to generation.  And by definition, if they’re that old, they’ve got to be strong.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=1936.0,1949.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/64","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e I think, actually, you make a very good point.  Because the, even the, even the term multiculturalism, which I, I don’t necessarily want to delve into this so much as I do in, in the, the term you use along with it, which is ethnicity or ethnic.  And, because that concept, I think, was something that we as musicians were aware of before it was politically current and popular.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=1949.0,1976.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/65","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e Because the, the, the whole interest in ethnomusicology, and for that matter, in ethnology, so in, in, in the larger academic world, preceded the, the, the political interest in, in, in the whole thing in a very legitimate and very deep way.  And I think that the use of ethnic materials in one’s music and — whether it, whether it was Mahler or whether it was Dvorak or so forth — is something that, that, that preceded the fashion here in America.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=1976.0,2003.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/66","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e But in, in, for example, an opera where you have an opportunity to seize upon a, a bit of folk material, or an opportunity to, to use a particular modality.  I noticed, for example — we talked about this just yesterday, David, maybe you want to expand upon this, that you, I mean, there is, on the one hand, in your opera, one very specific bit of actual folk tune — that little lullaby.  But beyond that, the whole opera appears to be very grounded in a kind of Eastern European Judaic modality.  And yet it’s, to what extent is it original?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=2003.0,2044.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/67","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSCHIFF:\u003c/strong\u003e Okay.  Let me just go back. I, I, I think, listening to David speak, you know, I think one of the great things about composing is it does involve imaginative time travel and imaginative cultural synthesis.  And, and we composers have been doing that way before multi-culti or, or anything that is — it’s just part of the job of, of composition.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=2044.0,2069.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/68","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSCHIFF:\u003c/strong\u003e And I, I think when I started working on the story of Gimpel, I, I quickly decided that one of the, the jobs I had to perform was to make the audience feel like they were in the world that this action took place in, which is kind of, it’s some time in 19th century Poland.  And I had to do that imaginatively, not as an ethnomusicologist.  I wasn’t reconstructing what music actually sounded like, but I had to some, somehow pull them into that world.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=2069.0,2100.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/69","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSCHIFF:\u003c/strong\u003e My own knowledge of, of Jewish music came from, I, my family, unlike some, who, people grow up in an assimilated family and have to discover their Judaism, I, I was in a very Jewish family and I just wanted to get out and get away from it.  But I did have this advantage of growing up with the sound of, of a really wonderful cantor in my ear.  And especially what was wonderful in a, in a Conservative synagogue, it was the voice singing without any accompaniment.  So, it was pure melody.  And, and also, pure melody responded to by the congregation in this improvisational way, where people would sing along and sometimes they’d sing in thirds, and sometimes they, they’d kind of sing a countermelody.  And it, it’s very unstructured, and it has a very spontaneous quality.  And that’s fundamental to my experience of Jewish music.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=2100.0,2157.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/70","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSCHIFF:\u003c/strong\u003e The other thing, which was more passive, is that every Sunday in our house, my father would put on WEVD in, in New York, which was the Yiddish station.  It’s named for Eugene V. Debs, by the way.  And there was a program called The Sunday Simcha, and that was on.  And it was Jewish music.  And essentially, most of the music they were playing is what’s called klezmer music today.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=2157.0,2186.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/71","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSCHIFF:\u003c/strong\u003e And in fact, when I started working on Gimpel, it was at the beginnings of the klezmer revival.  And I had heard some of the bands that were doing this music.  But I actually had been listening to this music in its older forms when I was growing up.  And that was the kind of music I was trying to write.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=2186.0,2206.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/72","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSCHIFF:\u003c/strong\u003e But when I heard especially some of the American klezmer bands, I was troubled by one thing about it.  It was that no matter how Jewish they were trying to sound, the beat was American.  That there was something always sort of jazzy about it, because that’s what we do in this country.  And I worried that, that if I was going to bring my audience to 19th century Poland, it couldn’t have that quality, except at select moments when I wanted it to be there.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=2206.0,2238.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/73","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSCHIFF:\u003c/strong\u003e So, I, I was looking for a, records, or at least models, of kind of klezmer-influenced music from Europe that weren’t Americanized in, in that way.  And if I had been trained as an ethnomusicologist, I would have gone to YIVO and listened to real stuff, but I was not that imaginative or disciplined.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=2238.0,2259.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/74","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSCHIFF:\u003c/strong\u003e And so I decided that if I wanted to hear what klezmer music sounded like in Europe, there were three people who could help me — Stravinsky, Mahler and Weill.  And I thought there is a lot of klezmer music in them.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=2259.0,2276.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/75","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSCHIFF:\u003c/strong\u003e We, and it’s interesting, you know, in terms of the evolution of things back then.  If you listen to the third movement of Mahler’s first symphony — now, everybody says, “Oh, there’s this klezmer episode in it.”  Well, back then, when Bruno Walter conducted it, nobody said it was klezmer music.  It was a peasant, it was peasant music.  And, and the notion that it was Jewish wasn’t even mentioned.  But I could tell, Mahler does a fantastic imitation of klezmer music, at that point.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=2276.0,2302.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/76","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSCHIFF:\u003c/strong\u003e I also heard — and again, this was just based on my instincts, not on any kind of scholarship or anything.  But when I heard Renard of Stravinsky, and even more, the original version of Les Nus, which is, has a large wind orchestra, I said, he was listening to klezmer music.  And that was another model.  And the other model I had was, was the sound of the orchestra in Three-Penny Opera, of, of Kurt Weill. So, these were maybe funny models for Jewish music, but that’s, in fact, what I used.  And, and in combination with my knowledge of cantorial music.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=2302.0,2336.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/77","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e I, I think, well, one of the, one of the challenges is, has to do — doesn’t it — with, with a kind of a responsibility of a composer to the audience?  And to what extent there is that in, in this kind of approach, because on the one hand, you’re dealing with a highly specific ethnic libretto, story, sensibility, a mind-set — all of those things — a certain type of humor.  As Isaac Bashevis Singer did.  I mean, who ever dreamt that he would receive the Nobel Prize, because it, it, it was, was, even, even as the best of its genre, was very specifically focused, ethnically.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=2336.0,2376.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/78","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e And on the other hand, if it’s opera, isn’t the goal — as high art, by definition — isn’t the goal a, a transcendental kind of universal appeal?  And how do you, how do you reconcile those two?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=2376.0,2392.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/79","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"SCHIFF:  I’ll, can I go first this time?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Sure.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSCHIFF:  You’re a hard act to follow, so now….","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=2392.0,2398.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/80","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSCHIFF:\u003c/strong\u003e I mean, I did, I didn’t have, I, I wasn’t thinking high art when I wrote Gimpel.  I mean, the, the framing thing for me is, is telling the story and getting it over to the audience and using whatever tools I had at, at my disposal to do that.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=2398.0,2418.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/81","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSCHIFF:\u003c/strong\u003e And I, you know, I think a lot about the audience, when I compose.  And as a composer, you’re in different relations to that audience.  When I write synagogue music — which I’m obliged to do, because I’m married to the mob, and my wife requires music of me, from time to time.  In that role, I feel I’ve really succeed if nobody knows I composed the piece.  And people come up to, come up to me and they say, “That’s a great folk melody,” you know?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=2418.0,2445.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/82","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSCHIFF:\u003c/strong\u003e And I say, okay.  Yeah, I did it, this time.  That’s great.  Because I don’t want to intrude on their worship experience.  I’m there to help them.  And I think, in theater, it’s somewhat similar.  That I’m very aware, I’m, I’m helping the audience get into the story.  And, and that’s how I’m, I’m thinking about what I’m doing.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=2445.0,2462.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/83","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e I’m, I’m thinking also, by — to just to go one step further — in terms of, of, of an audience who knows nothing or has no experience with this type of thing.  Because if you — let’s take it one step backward, let’s say it had been theater, a, a, a play, whether it was in Yiddish or in English, by Isaac, on an Isaac Bashevis Singer story, at one time would have been exclusively for not only a Jewish audience but a Jewish audience from Eastern Europe, or with Eastern European roots, who would have some, some connection, to whom it would resonate, in some way.  Otherwise, it’s totally sterile.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=2462.0,2500.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/84","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e Now, certainly, in, in the case of Gimpel the Fool, this does transcend that.  And I think what’s interesting is, is to ask, I mean, how or, or, or is it something that just happens?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=2500.0,2511.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/85","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"SCHIFF: Well, I think it, basically, it’s a very universal story.  It’s, it’s, although it has a Jewish setting, the idea of a man of faith who is a fool in the eyes of the world, it, that’s a figure that appears in every religion in the world.  And this is something that — I, I find Christians respond to the story immediately.  They know this story.  It’s a very familiar one.  So, in a way, the, the, the ethnic trappings of it are just one aspect of it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Do you feel the same way?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=2511.0,2564.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/86","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e Yeah.  When I was writing my Sacred Service, before I wrote the opera — in fact, part of my Sacred Service is in the opera, two sections of it.  And I had written everything except a Kaddish.  So they were going to do it in a temple in Newark, and the, the cantor — a wonderful cantor — said, “You know, David, you have to have a Kaddish.  Can you write one?”","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=2564.0,2553.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/87","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e I said, “I’d love to.” So, I wrote it, and I sat down.  And by an amazing coincidence, Jack Kerouac called me up and I went over to his place, and for seven hours, he told me this incredible story.  And while he was telling this story about what he was doing in France, I was copying the whole thing.  At 7:00 o’clock in the morning he was done, and I had the six pages copied.  And I sang it to him as best I could.  And he said, “Man,” he said, “that’s soulful.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSo, I thought, well, if he likes it, the people in the temple in Newark are going to freak out with ecstasy.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=2553.0,2581.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/88","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e So I went there, and they did the whole Sacred Service beautifully.  And they finally got to the Kaddish.  And I was so moved I even was in, quietly in tears.  And the person in front of me was a, apparently a regular congregant.  Turned to the woman he was with, and he said, “That sounds like Chinese music.”","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=2581.0,2598.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/89","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e So I realized, even though I was writing right from the heart, from my traditional thinking and my, all my ancestors, and everything I’d ever heard — Cantor Yossele Rosenblatt, all the people who had died, all the beautiful things I could summon up honoring the spirit of the dead.  Because it was a new piece and it wasn’t the particular — more to the, to the point, you know, I think, it wasn’t particularly the melody that people associated with that prayer that they’d been doing all their lives.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=2598.0,2626.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/90","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"AMRAM:  And there’s ten thousand different ways to sing the Kaddish.  My father’s side, who is Sephardic, has a whole different kind of music than, than is done in what they call the Ashkenazic tradition, which is different.  And I have both in my family, so I respect and love both, but this, because it was new to that particular person, sounded — when he said, “Chinese music,” which I doubt he was familiar with, either — to him, it was completely foreign.  When I heard Paul’s beautiful opera yesterday, the one that, that he — Paul Schoenfield…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  The Merchant and the Pauper?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=2626.0,2651.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/91","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e Yeah, when they were doing some of that after my recording, I stayed and heard this exquisite music, not only using the heckelphone, which is such a great instrument, but the whole opera.  I could relate to that immediately, on a first hearing.  First of all, it was beautifully written music.  And secondly, the feeling.  It captured a whole feeling.  It, it painted a whole picture of the milieu.  The opera The Golem does that, and of course, your opera does that.  And that’s something that you can dream of.  If you can paint that picture from your own experience, from your own soul, everybody is going to get it, in some way.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=2651.0,2683.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/92","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e I worked for Shakespeare in the Park, for Joe Papp, for 12 years, writing the music.  And they used to take the Shakespeare all around into the neighborhoods of New York, sometimes where English wasn’t even spoken.  And the neighborhoods where English was spoken, either people like myself, who fumbled through college.  I didn’t even know what half the text was about, because I still don’t know Elizabethan English that well.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=2683.0,2704.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/93","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e But you could sense the beauty of the whole experience.  You couldn’t miss it, even if you didn’t speak English, or you were an American still trying to learn how to speak English, like most of us.  Still, you could sense what Shakespeare was about.  You couldn’t miss it.  And the same is true with any kind of good music.  If it really comes from the heart, even if it’s dealing with a, with a culture that you’re not familiar with, you’ll get it, somehow.  Musically, in an abstract sense, and certainly, when it’s in an operatic or, or a dramatic context.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=2704.0,2731.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/94","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSCHIFF:\u003c/strong\u003e I think there’s an aspect of opera here that also, that, that connects with that. I, I was, you know, these days, when you’re teaching opera to undergraduates, it’s as foreign a thing, as foreign a culture, as anything else.  And so I was introducing students to opera, and I put on an aria from Lucia, and I didn’t tell them what the story was.  I didn’t tell them what she was saying.  I said, “You tell me.  What are you hearing?  Who is this person?”  And it doesn’t matter what she really is, but the music is, is going to speak to you.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=2731.0,2769.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/95","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSCHIFF:\u003c/strong\u003e And for me, I think that’s the way opera works.  You know, we, we can get all of the, the, the fine details and know how the text is mirroring this word or something like that.  But I think for most of us, opera works in, in a much more interesting and primal and direct way.  And we’re experiencing, it’s just the force of beautiful singing in drama on us.  And then, we work down from there to, to the details.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=2769.0,2794.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/96","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e But, could you remove — for example, I mean, in the past few decades and especially in the past 20 years, let’s say, I mean, there has been a, a kind of tendency in certain circles to reset an opera — or, for that matter, it could be a Shakespeare play, as well — to reset it into a, an era and, and a locale totally different from what was intended by the composer or the librettist or the author or whatever.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=2794.0,2825.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/97","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e Such as, for example, resetting The Ring in, in the hydroelectric plant in, in, in Central Europe.  A number of you remember that.  Or Rigoletto has been staged so as to be taking place down on Mulberry Street in New York in 1960, and so forth and so on.  We’re all familiar with that, I’m sure.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=2825.0,2845.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/98","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e Apart from the cutesiness factor and apart from the fact, from, from the question of whether that’s done for a legitimate artistic explorative, explorative reason, as opposed to just making some news, is that doable with either one of these operas?  I mean, can one take the story — and I don’t mean remove it to Brooklyn, in the Jewish community — let’s say, Gimpel.  I mean, take it out of any Jewish context whatsoever, and how much of the force of the opera will remain?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=2845.0,2879.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/99","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSCHIFF:\u003c/strong\u003e You know, I’ve seen so many imaginative productions of opera in the last ten years, where things take place — sometimes, you don’t know.  It’s completely abstract.  Or someplace they are totally removed.  And some of them work, and some of them don’t work.  And, you know, I’m, I’m always happy when people make my work better than it deserves to be, because, you know, they’re using their imagination with it.  So I, I don’t think, especially because as a composer, I’m, I’m not really a person who’s been a person of the theater very much.  And I’m always thrilled when directors talk about, oh, we can, I can see it this way, and we can do it this way.  Because it would never occur to me, and I don’t have that kind of, of visual imagination.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=2879.0,2919.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/100","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSCHIFF:\u003c/strong\u003e So I would not want to say you absolutely cannot move this story or do it in other, in another way, because that’s not my expertise.  I, I’ve sort of, of put it where it needs to be, in the music.  And I, I don’t, I’m not a Wagner, who, you know, in, has the whole picture in that way.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=2919.0,2938.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/101","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e Well, as a composer, I mean, keeping every note as it is, keeping every word as it is, because there’s also the universal part of the, of the message, which I, I think upon which we all agree.  I mean, how would you feel about it?  Whether it can, I mean, if it were, would, would you feel that it, that, that it in any way im, impacts negatively upon the opera or…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=2938.0,2962.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/102","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSCHIFF:\u003c/strong\u003e I’d have to see it. But again, in a, when we first put on Gimpel and I thought I had some sense of what I wanted to look at — it to look like — and my only sense is that I wanted a sense that, you know, that life in the shtetl was hard.  So I wanted, I wanted a production…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=2962.0,2978.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/103","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  You should explain.  Shtetl means a, a small village in that part of, of the…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSCHIFF:  Where people were very poor.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Yeah.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=2978.0,2985.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/104","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSCHIFF:\u003c/strong\u003e And life was very difficult.  And I had the idea that the, we shouldn’t romanticize that.  That the, the struggle of life at that time should be very visible on, on stage.  But that was as far as I could go with that, because I just don’t have that, my, my imagination doesn’t work that way.  And I was thrilled when a set designer came and knew what I was talking about and was able to turn it into something that I never could.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=2985.0,3011.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/105","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"SCHIFF:  And, and I think opera is a very collaborative form.  And it’s collaborative in its creation and it’s also collaborative in its life.  It, the life of an opera depends on singers — new singers — coming along and do it, doing it differently from the way it was done before.  And — just as all works of music depend on that, and, and I’m very comfortable with the notion that that will happen in terms of production, as well.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Yeah, but could you take the final ingredient out of the 19, early 1940s, out of your, out of the concentration camp, out of the century, and do it staged in Rwanda?  Could you do it staged in the 18th century, in a, in a worn-torn, torn zone?  Or something of that sort?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=3011.0,3055.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/106","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e Well, if you closed your eyes, it would still sound the same.  Because everything is written down.  That’s the one advantage I have, of having something recorded.  You can listen to it.  I worked out in the theater a lot, and when I would work for Shakespeare in the Park, Joe Papp fortunately tried to do Shakespeare pretty much the way Shakespeare wrote it down.  I think he felt that Shakespeare deserved that.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=3055.0,3078.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/107","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e But then I worked at the Stratford, Connecticut theater where they would have Shakespeare in cowboy suits.  They’d do everything they could to change it completely around — usually, I think, with the career goal in mind of someone that, that they did something that was completely outrageous and against everything the way it had ever been done, maybe they’d get enough attention in The New York Times to get a better gig.  Which is understandable, from a, a survival point of view, but I don’t think too honest or certainly too respectful of Shakespeare.  I always felt that Shakespeare is fine the way he wrote it.  You don’t need to have it in, in, the people wearing cowboy suits or that kind of thing, to try to make it relevant.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=3078.0,3112.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/108","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Secondly, I don’t think that the Brandenburg Concertos need a, an electric bass or a rhythm section, or that the B-minor Mass needs to have people that can’t sing singing it and changing all the words and changing the music.  There is enough ornamentation, there are enough subtle things.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=3112.0,3127.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/109","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e When Ken was conducting the opera, there are certain little things that he put in there that were him — his own take on just how to stretch this little thing and take a little breath, and little nuances and stuff that were so gorgeous, I went up and thanked him.  Because he made it sound better.  But those were subtle things that were within the parameters of, of what was there.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=3127.0,3147.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/110","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e Because I think in all the composers, we’re, who wrote the operas we’re celebrating now, we didn’t write down 18 pages of instructions and manifesto on the history of Western culture and then one page of notes, where everybody could do something else.  Which is fine, too.  If it sounds good, it doesn’t matter what you do.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=3147.0,3164.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/111","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e Ours was more like the old style, where you actually write everything out as clearly as possible.  Because the more perimeters you have and the more restrictions and limitations and clarity you have, the more space there is for someone picking it off the paper when you’re not around to give a big rap to go over it and over it.  And then suddenly, they’ll feel something.  And what they feel and what they put into it and their own soul is what makes it come across in the theater and in all kinds of music.  So I think it’s kind of better to do what the composer had in mind.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=3164.0,3196.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/112","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e When I conduct, I always try to figure what — I wonder what the composer wanted?  Rather than, I can take this and stretch it, turn it inside out, and, and change it all around.  And I, I think that it’s best to, without sounding like a big reactionary, kind of do the things the way they were intended.  And if they’re really good, they’re never going to go out of fashion.  We could do, see those old Greek dramas.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI worked with Al Pacino at the Actor’s Studio in a workshop production of Oedipus.  And I can tell you, it sure didn’t seem dated.  It was a mind-blower.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=3196.0,3229.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/113","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e Done in the, in its, in its original context?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=3229.0,3231.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/114","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e Yeah, he did — they weren’t wearing togas.  But they also weren’t doing where they were changing it around and, and trying to make it into The Godfather IV or, or changing all of, all of the, the, the characters.  He was trying to, to get the soul of the play.  And I think if you, if you approach it honestly and from the soul perspective, it’s always going to come out right.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=3231.0,3251.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/115","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e I think, we — yeah.  I think that there are people here who’d like to, to ask you some things, and…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=3251.0,3258.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/116","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eMODERATOR:\u003c/strong\u003e Yeah.  Let me begin, and then I hope other people will feel free to ask questions.  There are microphones in the aisles, if you’d like to go to one of those to ask your question, I think that would be helpful.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=3258.0,3269.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/117","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eMODERATOR:\u003c/strong\u003e A lot of discussion today about opera composing.  And that makes sense, because we’re recording operas and you’ve written operas.  The great musicologist, theorist, teacher, Julius Herford, used to say that composers — most composers — did their most extraordinary and maybe spiritually connected composition when they had a text.  Specifically, a sacred text.  But not necessarily so.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=3269.0,3297.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/118","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eMODERATOR:\u003c/strong\u003e How different is your process and the moment of, of beginning, when you have a text and when you don’t have a text?  Now, in both of these cases, you were commissioned to write something with, with a story.  But what is the process when it’s a piece of absolute music?  And, and how different is the process in your imagination?  And what happens as a result in, to the piece?  And are we expected to get from that piece as much or more as an audience, as a listener, as, as the listener, or, and as performers, as we are from a piece that gives us the text from which to derive our inspiration as well?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=3297.0,3340.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/119","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSCHIFF:\u003c/strong\u003e Should I just…. The, in my experience, whenever I’m composing, I have a text.  In some ways.  And sometimes, it’s conscious, and sometimes, it’s unconscious.  In other words, when I wrote a, a violin concerto or, or piano trio, I’m, I’m not the kind of composer who, who says, okay, violin concerto.  Three movements, fast-slow-fast, sonata form, you know, A-B-A, and stuff like that.  I, I have to have a sense of the story that I’m telling, just to give the work shape and also to stimulate my imagination.  And I give that a lot of thought so that in my mind, every piece I write is sort of text-based and, and is operatic.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=3340.0,3392.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/120","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSCHIFF:\u003c/strong\u003e Obviously, in a work which is instrumental, the audience is not going to know my explicit kind of nonsense that, that’s gone into that.  And as I said, sometimes I, I even don’t want to know it, that…   Once, I, I was writing a piece and I thought I knew what the story was, but there was a subtext that was there that I was not really aware of.  And about two-thirds of the way through the composition, it suddenly occurred to me what I was really writing about and who she was, and, you know, you don’t want to go into that.  And, and, and then it became very problematic.  You know, how, now that I knew what the piece was about in, in, in the gory details, you know, would I be able to finish it?  So sometimes, you don’t want to know.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=3392.0,3435.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/121","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSCHIFF:\u003c/strong\u003e But in terms of, I, I feel it’s very similar, and I don’t know if this is just idiosyncratic to me.  When the, the, when I’m composing, the, the aspect of composing that really appeals to me is the emotions that music can express.  And so, I like to challenge myself and say, okay, this piece is going to convey this feeling.  And, and, and I’m going to, I don’t know any piece that’s ever sort of dealt with this kind of experience.  And it doesn’t matter that the audience knows that that’s what I’m trying to get.  It’s kind of a test for me, to see if the music can do that.  And if, if I sense that the music worked that way, I, I feel I’ve succeeded.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=3435.0,3480.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/122","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSCHIFF:\u003c/strong\u003e Obviously, when you’re working with a, a sacred text or a, a classic literary text, then you have all sorts of responsibilities to this other party.  Then it’s no longer just about you.  And that’s a, another kind of complexity.  But it’s a very, it’s a related process, for me.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=3480.0,3497.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/123","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e I liked what you said about having a text ready.  The piece I’m just finishing now — in fact, I was working on the last 12 measures of it in one of your practice rooms — called Giants of the Night.  It’s a flute concerto for James Galway.  Who said, “I want something that sounds like jazz, but everything is written out.”  So I decided to make a piece the first movement dedicated to Charlie Parker, whom I met in 1952 and played with some.  Second to Jack Kerouac, whom I met in ’56 and played and accompanied with.  And Dizzy Gillespie, whom I met in ’51 and played with most of my life.  And each movement is dedicated to the spirit that they created in music.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=3497.0,3532.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/124","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e In the second movement, I used two old French-Canadian folk songs, Oh, Canadien Aron and another one, that Jack used to sing in the wee hours of the morning.  And even though no one would recognize them, and half the time got buried in the viola part, I just put those in with a little note saying what they were to players and the audience, so it would be honoring it, rather than stealing it, even if they’re public domain.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=3532.0,3553.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/125","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e If you steal something by not acknowledging it, then you’re a thief.  If you put down who taught it to you and what it is, then you’re honoring it.  And there is a difference.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn use, using that as a raison d’etre for the piece, it gave me a certain impetus in each movement to try to create an idiom that suggested what they played.  They don’t need a composer to write anything taking their material and trying to get an orchestra to play it as well, that’s something else.  This was just simply a thing of using people as for inspiration. My, in memory of Chano Pozo, I went to Cuba with Dizzy Gillespie and wrote a little sketch in a kaza honoring him.  I came back and wrote a symphony piece based on that experience of playing Afro Cuban music a lot of my life.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=3553.0,3594.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/126","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e My honor song for Sitting Bull and another piece I wrote for Philadelphia Orchestra Trail of Beauty was based with all the American Indian music I’ve learned over the last 50 years, playing as a backup player for American Indian people in all kinds of things.  But very often, I try to have some kind of an idea or a picture in what I’m writing.  But with the realization that it doesn’t make any difference, if the music isn’t good.  If the meat and potatoes of the music aren’t so well put together and each note such a winner…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=3594.0,3624.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/127","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e [SOUNDS LIKE Medus] Metropolis, my mentor, told me when I was a teenager, “David, I have pieces all the time dedicated to the greater good of humanity.  But if the music is no good, it doesn’t matter what the ideals of the composer are.”  It all has to be in the music.  So ultimately, it’s got to be in the music, or it will disappear, no matter how many write-ups you get or how much money you can sink into whatever it is you’re doing.  The music — actually, as Stravinsky said, the music has to express itself.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=3624.0,3651.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/128","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e So, I think anything that can help us…. Pictures at an Exhibition — perfect example.  It’s a magnificent piece.  So even if you’re not familiar with the text, even if you haven’t seen those paintings, it’s such a great piece of music that if you don’t even know the storyline, it’s still terrific.  If you don’t know the Pastorale symphony, or you haven’t read Mozart’s notes for the, Ignatz Leitsky, the, the cheese-monger whom he wrote his horn concertos from, it doesn’t take away the joy of the music.  It’s still just as good.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=3651.0,3677.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/129","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e But it’s interesting sometimes, to see what the composer got the idea from, or, as when you’re playing jazz, what the chord changes are that you take off from.  So I think a text is a point of departure.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=3677.0,3690.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/130","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e I, I think, you know, I kind of, I wouldn’t say opposite, but a, a totally different attitude.  It depends upon the composer.  I mean, I, I’ll just tell you one anecdote, and I, without mentioning his name.  He’s one of the most successful, most talented, the most famous musical theater composers of our time, who also had a completely and thorough rigorous classical music composition training, so you can figure out who it is.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=3690.0,3716.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/131","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e And I asked him once to, for, it was for a, it was an experiment for a, a conference in a, also a symposium.  And we were asking composers to take a — and you have to be Jewish as well — and take a Hebrew prayer text and see what would happen if we set it to music without any preconditions and, of any sort.  And his answer to me was that he wouldn’t know what to do with it, because it has no plot.  It has no storyline.  And it, and, and, and so, you, you, I think you’ve got different answers from, from different people that way.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=3716.0,3750.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/132","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eMODERATOR:\u003c/strong\u003e Well, I think also, with performers.  It’s very often the difference between the approach to a score by a choral conductor or an opera conductor, who is accustomed to working from the text, and an orchestral conductor, who is not accustomed to working with the text.  And how uncomfortable each can be, when doing the other one’s art.  The choral conductor one who’s, who’s, who is approached with, you know, he’s dealing with a, an orchestral score, and, and vice-versa.  But you know, you, you all mentioned — and David, you borderline almost, almost got there.  And then, so let me just lead you in, in this direction.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=3750.0,3787.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/133","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eMODERATOR:\u003c/strong\u003e It was, it was Bruno Walter who said that the ultimate goal of a performance is to be spiritual.  But that spirituality was impossible unless all the notes were in tune and in the right place at the right time.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=3787.0,3799.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/134","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eMODERATOR:\u003c/strong\u003e Now, when you’re writing — and you, you’ve mentioned the idea.  You’ve mentioned the text.  And we know what Stravinsky said about inspiration.  We’re talking about particularly music where you’ve, you’ve talked about your Jewishness in relating to this music.  And I’ve performed, and some of my students have performed, some music by people in this room who have written prefaces about their backgrounds and how their backgrounds influence their music, whether it’s the grandfather who sang a certain song, or somebody who showed them a picture, or, or whatever.  Where’s the spiritual moment for you?  Is it in the performance?  Is it delivered to you, somehow — this idea?  Is it all just craft?  Is there something beyond explanation that enters into it?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=3799.0,3851.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/135","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSCHIFF:\u003c/strong\u003e I’ll, I’ll tell a little story that will convince you that I should be institutionalized.  But it happened in the course of, of writing this.  I’m, I’m not prone to speaking about spiritual experiences very much, but I think everyone who composes has a sense…. I, I once heard a talk by a psychoanalyst who specialized in composers and studying composers.  And he was very interested in a phenomenon, that so many composers talk about music as — talk about composing as — a passive experience.  That they have a sense that somehow, the music is writing itself or that somebody is speaking the music to them, and they’re just writing it down.  And this is very common.  You go through a composer’s letters, and you hear that account of it.  And, so it, it’s a fairly universal experience.  And it’s hard to explain why that happens.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=3851.0,3913.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/136","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSCHIFF:\u003c/strong\u003e I’ve sometimes thought, in my more rational moments, that that’s because composers are always hearing music inside.  We’re hearing imaginary music.  And most sounds, most sounds we hear come from outside the brain.  And so we want to think that somehow, that sounds that are in the head have come from outside into us.  They’re not just sort of emerging that way.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=3913.0,3939.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/137","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSCHIFF:\u003c/strong\u003e Anyhow, as is typical, I, I think, in every composition, my, my friend Ellen Zwilig once said that when you’re composing, the first 75 percent of the time you have no idea what you’re doing.  And then there’s this, always this turning point — hopefully, it comes about two months before the deadline — when it becomes, where the piece automatic — seems to write itself.  And you go from a feeling of, of arbitrariness and, and to absolute certainty, where, where you sit down and pssh! the, the notes just come out and you’re not even thinking about it.  And it, it’s always an amazing moment, when that happens.  And so maybe there’s something to what you’re talking about there.  But I had a more explicit experience with Gimpel, which in fact you’ve dealt with last night.  And it’s not something that happened to me very much, but in, as I was working on the score for the first production, I was asleep.  And I, I do do a lot of my composing in my sleep.  I find I get up in the morning and things are, are written.  So that’s part of my process.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=3939.0,4005.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/138","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSCHIFF:\u003c/strong\u003e But I, I was sort of woken up and I heard a voice, I heard a voice speaking to me.  And it said, “Repeat from letter U to the letter B.”  And I, I had this — I, I warned you.  And but I had this very strong sense, you know, I, what it was, I was thinking about the piece so much and going through it in my unconscious mind and getting this sense of how to make, make it per, perfect, and how to make.  And, and there was that moment I, that I sensed the kind of imbalance in the architecture of the piece, and something was too short.  And so I repeated from letter U to letter B.  And the Lord spoke to me in that strange way.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=4005.0,4046.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/139","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e I remember once, Benny Golson, he wrote a wonderful song called Stablemates — a wonderful composer, a great tenor saxophonist and a brilliant musician.  I was playing with Oscar Pettiford’s band almost 40 years ago, and we were talking about that.  He said, “You know,” he said, “I always heard music in my dreams, too.”  And he said, “So I’ve decided one night to get a music paper and a pencil and put it right next to the bed.”  He said, “I heard the most gorgeous thing I can ever remember.”  He said, “I got up and I wrote it down and I went back to sleep, and the next morning I went up to play it on the piano, and it was the introduction to Stardust.”  So he said, after that, he’d decided just to write when he was awake.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=4046.0,4081.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/140","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e I think you, that you can, you can dream of things and very often, we can hear things, see things, and imagine things that we never would be able to, to put down.  And sometimes, the idea gives you the impetus to do it.  The wonderful flutist who’s in the room right now, who teaches here at the school, I haven’t seen since — what? — was it four years ago we did that?  Or five years ago?  For a piece called Conversations for a Flute, Violin, Viola, Cello and Piano for the Atlanta Chamber Players.  And when I was writing that, I decided I would have each movement for each of my three kids and try to capture something of their spirit and use that as a point of departure.  Now, obviously, people hearing the piece — and now it’s been recorded, and, and it gets played a lot of places — wouldn’t have the, the pleasure of meeting my children.  Especially when they were the age that I was honoring them for at that particular time.  But that gave me something to think about in writing the piece, as kind of a, putting a carrot of front of you.  Something to go for.  Some kind of an idea.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=4081.0,4146.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/141","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e And as far as the spiritual part, I think it’s all spiritual. The wonderful Debussy dance, you know, the piece for harp and strings — Dances Sacred and Profane.  I don’t think there really is anything profane in music.  I don’t think it can be.  There might be a certain profane way of looking at taking music and trying to drag it into someone’s personal sewer.  But that’s just exploitation.  That means that a, a sacred art form is being taken by exploitative people for some other reason.  But the music, when it comes from the right place, is always holy and is always spiritual.  And it’s about celebrating that spirit.  And if it doesn’t come from that from the composer or it doesn’t come from the player when they’re playing it, then it won’t be happening.  And when it does, it really gets to you.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=4146.0,4193.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/142","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e When you saw the Ken Burns wonderful series about jazz and you see some of the, just the faces of the people who were playing the music and the neighborhoods that they came from and what they had to go through to play that magnificent music and you hear the stories of the survivors from that period and you hear some of that glorious music, it’s all coming, in such a large part, from the church, from the sanctified church.  And it comes from the spiritual roots.  And I think all the truly beautiful music comes from those places.  And from there, we can take it as players, performers, singers, conductors, composers, and move it someplace else.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=4193.0,4229.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/143","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e But if it’s, if it’s not about that, then it’s not really going to last.  And I don’t think it will really do what music is here for, which has a certain medicinal, healing, socially redeeming, intellectually stimulating, important message for everyone, of how we can live and be together harmoniously on the Earth.  It’s some real heavy stuff.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=4229.0,4251.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/144","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e So all of us who are working in music are not in a dead industry.  When your career counselors tell you that, that’s understandable, and respect their own pain at their, at their lack of their joy in what they’re doing with their life.  But don’t ever be confused.  Because the reason we’re drawn into music as little kids and then spent our whole life doing it is, of course, we’re schizophrenic or masochists.  It’s because we’ve been drawn to something of a higher power.  Music is a sacred thing.  So spending your life in music is, is the best thing that you can do.  Even if you have to do other things to make a living, you’re not wasting a second by being in music.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=4251.0,4283.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/145","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFEMALE SPEAKER:\u003c/strong\u003e I have a question for David Schiff.  And that was, you mentioned that the Yiddish text of Gimpel was much more earthy and rich.  And I was wondering, with the English translation, do you feel like there’s something lacking of that earthiness?  And how does that balance with the accessibility that an English translation affords?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=4283.0,4305.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/146","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSCHIFF:\u003c/strong\u003e Well, I did my own English translation.  And I tried to get some of the sense, but Yiddish is notoriously untranslatable.  Yiddish is, is a language which summarizes centuries of experience.  And it doesn’t go into English well.  There was — Neil and I were talking yesterday about one line.  Because we were looking in the score and, and the, in the orchestral score, the Yiddish and the English are both there.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=4305.0,4340.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/147","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSCHIFF:\u003c/strong\u003e And Gimpel, when he’s coming home from the bakery and he hears the sound of two snores coming out of his house, so that he knows there are two people in there.  In the Yiddish — and this is Isaac Bashevis Singer’s phrase — he says, “Seiz meir finster in pupik.”  And the translation I had is, is, “My stomach is trembling,” which is totally inadequate to that, and it doesn’t have any of, of the humor.  Dr. Levin, if you’d care to try to open that up?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=4340.0,4373.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/148","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e No, I mean, it, it — look.  This is a problem for a symposium in itself.  The whole — 20 symposiums — the question of, of translation of opera, or translation of any theater, essentially, into a language other than the, the, what it was originally written in.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=4373.0,4385.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/149","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e But and we say, well, Yiddish is a highly idiomatic language.  Well, I, I don’t know to what extent it’s more idiomatic than French.  But I will say this — in, in order to understand French poetry or drama, you have to understand French culture.  We all know that.  So the same thing is therefore true of Yiddish.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=4385.0,4405.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/150","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e And to understand the idioms is very difficult to, in, in any translation.  I mean, Yiddish is, by its origin, a mixture of 12th-century German and Hebrew with, with maybe ten, 15 — somewhere percent — of Slavic languages in there.  But the, the idioms are, are very difficult.  Now, for example, finster in pupik or finster in pipik, if it was Southern Polish dialect, it literally means, you know, finster — dark, dark, black in, in, in the, in the stomach.  One could come up with something more pungent for it — that’s true.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=4405.0,4440.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/151","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e If you say in Yiddish gay in drerd — der erd — in German, if it’s from the German, der erd — in the Earth.  But it does not mean that.  It means go to hell.  You see?  I mean, it, it’s related, but that’s how you would translate it properly.  So to translate it into opera is yet, you know, a, a greater challenge, I think, than even just from, from poem to poem.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=4440.0,4462.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/152","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"AMRAM:  There is that wonderful expression, krecht.  I hope I’m saying it right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  It’s krechtz.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAMRAM:  Yeah.  Which means the tear in the voice.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Yeah.  A sigh, is what it really means.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=4462.0,4472.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/153","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e Now, and, and how can you — and but the tear in the voice, that’s, there was the only thing I ever heard like that was in the Taos Pueblo.  I was there, and I was working with these singers for a long time, and they would follow one another’s — the lead singer, so….  I said, “That’s so fantastic.  How do you do that?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=4472.0,4485.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/154","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e He said, “We call that tunquahay.” I said, “What’s that?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Tunquahay.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI said, “Can I write that down?” And he said, “Please.” So I wrote down tunquahay.  I said, “What does that mean?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe said, “Well, in the Taos language,” he said, “it’s hard to translate our stuff into English, but what it means” — and I wrote it down afterwards — “following in the shadow of the lead singer, always pressing onward.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd I said, “What?” And he said, “Following in the shadow of the lead singer, always pressing onward.”","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=4485.0,4513.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/155","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e And I wrote that down and realized that’s how you play ensemble music, when you’re just a hair behind, or you’re playing a Puccini opera or something and you’re that much behind.  The whole orchestra’s playing in unison with the singer and you’re that much behind — that gives it that fantastic sound.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=4513.0,4527.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/156","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e Yeah.  I, I think, I mean, this is, this will be more or less of a problem in, in, in, in various operas. But and the whole subject, of course, impacts upon the issue of whether opera should ever be — an Italian opera should be done in English, and so forth.  It depends how important the words or the expressions are.  But it isn’t, it isn’t unique.  I will tell you, it isn’t unique to Yiddish.  We like to think it is, sometimes.  And, and, and in some respects, it’s, it’s more pointed in, than, than others in the language.  But there are words in German that simply do not translate.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=4527.0,4555.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/157","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e And when I write an article, for example, on something, when it comes to the word zeitgeist, I’m not going to translate it.  I’m going to say zeitgeist.  Because there is no adequate translation from that German word, without going into two or three sentences, anyway.  And I suppose the same thing is true here.  The only question is, what can you do in an opera, where you, you can’t put a footnote in the opera?  It’s got, it’s got to be there.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=4555.0,4576.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/158","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"AMRAM:  Well, they have subtitles, though.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  But the subtitles aren’t going to explain that one word.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAMRAM:  Oh, right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  It isn’t going to have the power.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=4576.0,4580.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/159","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"AMRAM:  I just wish, in my opera, where it’s sung in Hebrew, in, in retrospect, or when they’ve done it on television and when they do it live again someday, they could have some, when this Hebrew part is sung, that they could have some kind of — they do that in operas now, where they have a little translation.  Which I think is terrific.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Super-titles.  Yeah.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=4580.0,4596.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/160","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eAMRAM:\u003c/strong\u003e Yeah.  Where they could have the, the Hebrew prayers in English, so that people that aren’t familiar with Hebrew — including a lot of Jewish people that have forgotten about it, or anybody, for that matter — they could see what the prayers actually mean.  Because I think it is important.  Not only the beautiful sound of the, of what you say.  But also the meaning of it, so that everyone can understand it.  And even translating in different languages.  I think that’s a terrific idea.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=4596.0,4618.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/161","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eMODERATOR:\u003c/strong\u003e I, I would like to offer a few comments in conclusion.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI would like to thank you for, for being with us.  And I’d like to do that by saying that the University of Michigan has a history, in terms of its composition department, which is a distinguished one.  We have many young composers here today whose careers are already becoming recognized throughout the nation and the world.  We have a distinguished composition faculty.  William Bolcom was here earlier.  Michael Dougherty is here, James Aikman.  We have others, we have some of their students.  We have a great history.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=4618.0,4658.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/162","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eMODERATOR:\u003c/strong\u003e And in that history, I think this has been part of the continuum.  And a distinguished part of the continuum. And I want, on behalf of the University of Michigan School of Music, to thank the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music and the Milken Family Foundation for making us a part of this historic and extraordinary project.  The only one of its kind — probably the only one thing like this in history.  To have this certain kind of music documented with 50 or 60 or 70 CDs — what it will ultimately be — and the video documentary and so forth.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=4658.0,4695.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/163","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eMODERATOR:\u003c/strong\u003e And the extraordinary, extraordinary amount of integrity involved and the research and the musicology and the preparation and bringing people together from all, all aspects of music-making — chamber music, wind ensemble, a capella chorus, orchestra, opera, and, and so on.  And I just want to thank you all on behalf of the School of Music for making us a part of it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=4695.0,4720.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/164","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MODERATOR:  And in another way, I’d like to just say another word of thanks, which is — and I hope the young conductors here who will, will take note.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMODERATOR:  We can’t do what we do without what they do.  And we live to be their advocates and at their service.  And we are conduits for what they do.  And our ego and our personality is to be reserved for our publicists and our families.  And otherwise, on the podium, all right, we let their music come through.  We invest ourselves.  Because otherwise, you know, everything would be without a human connection.  All right?  But, but I just want to say it’s such a privilege to conduct music and to open a score and look in the face of, of inspiration in the work and, and to know a composer.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=4720.0,4777.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/165","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eMODERATOR:\u003c/strong\u003e You know, I just met, met Paul Schoenfield out in the hallway.  He’s here.  I just met David Amram.  Although I was raised in Nanuet, New York, where you wrote this piece.  And, and I just met David Schiff.  But I feel as though I know them.  And I think someday — because of the study I’ve done of their music.  And I hope someday, that I’ll actually meet Brahms and Beethoven and Schubert, and be able to say the same thing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=4777.0,4802.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/166","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MODERATOR:  And I hope that all our young conductors will see themselves as at the serve, being at the service of those composers who are in this room and who will be writing for their careers.  And I’m sure you’ve had relationships with people begun with conductors and other kinds of performers that were begun when you were in the chair like this.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMODERATOR:  And so, on behalf of the School of Music, thank you to everyone Milken, and for everyone doing this, and we really appreciate it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=4802.0,4831.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/167","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e Now, on, on behalf of the Milken Foundation and of this project, of course, we want to thank you from the bottom of our hearts, not only for, for recording the music, but for the incredibly insightful interest that you’ve taken.  And, and that you, [SOUNDS LIKE Mr. Morris] has taken the preparation of the chorus and to all of those.  I don’t know how many of the people in this room are, are in the, any of the recordings and actual performances, but to all of them and to all of you, this has been one of the most heartwarming experiences of this project.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=4831.0,4875.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/168","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  We have been recording all over the world, literally — all over the Western world, Europe and the United States — you know, since just almost exactly three years ago.  With the, the Vienna Choir Boys, with the, Sir Neville Marinner and the Academy of St. Martin of the Fields, with the Barcelona Symphony, with the BBC Singers, at various universities around this country and so forth and so on.  And this has been one of the most rewarding experiences in this whole process so far, amplified all the more so, of course, by, by this kind of interchange and the possibilities of, of talking together.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  So, thank you very much and thanks to the University of Michigan Music Department.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=4875.0,4919.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768/transcript/24191/annotation/169","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"CLOSING GRAPHIC","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/39392/file/110768#t=4919.0,4926.656"}]}]}]}