Genesis Suite

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The Genesis Suite (1945) is a community composition in seven movements to recitations from the prehistory of the Bible (Genesis 1–11). It was created on the initiative of the American musician and composer Nathaniel Shilkret with the collaboration of Arnold Schönberg , Alexandre Tansman , Darius Milhaud , Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco , Ernst Toch and Igor Stravinsky .

overview

Arnold Schönberg (1874–1951) Prelude op. 44 for choir and orchestra
Nathaniel Shilkret (1889-1982) Creation for speakers, choir and orchestra Genesis 1,1-2,3 i. A.
Alexandre Tansman (1897-1986) Adam and Eve for speaker and orchestra Genesis 2,4b - 3,19 i. A.
Darius Milhaud (1892–1974) Cain and Abel op. 241 for speaker and orchestra Genesis 4: 1–16a
Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895–1968) The Flood (Noah's Ark) for speaker, choir and orchestra Genesis 6.5-8.13 i. A.
Ernst Toch (1887–1964) The Covenant (The Rainbow) for speaker and orchestra Genesis 8.15-9.17 i. A.
Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) Babel for speaker, two-part male choir and orchestra Genesis 11: 1-9

Emergence

Nathaniel Shilkret's goal was to compose and record a Bible album because he hoped the combination of Bible recitation and catchy music would generate high sales. The cast of the inland movements was already fixed in February 1944, at which time Shilkret was negotiating with Stravinsky, and for the opening movement he contacted Béla Bartók . Schönberg stepped in for Bartók in September 1945, so that the suite was premiered in November 1945.

For the composition of further movements Shilkret also had composers like Paul Hindemith , Manuel de Falla and Richard Strauss in mind, but the Genesis Suite was not continued.

Performances and recordings

The first performance of the Genesis Suite took place on November 18, 1945 at the Wilshire Ebell Theater in Los Angeles by the Janssen Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Werner Janssen . It was recorded in the same line-up and appeared on Artist Records in 1946 with recitations by Edward Arnold . Janssen conducted further performances in Salt Lake City and Portland / Oreg. In 1947, the same year the recording was broadcast on the radio station KFAC Los Angeles.

In 1951, the remaining copies of the first recording were pulped and a remix with recitations by Ted Osborne was released on Capital Records. This edition was released remastered in 2001 by Angel Records / EMI.

The performance material of the Genesis Suite (with the exception of the separately published contributions by Schönberg and Stravinsky) had been lost since a fire in Shilkret's house in 1973. Patrick Russ undertook a reconstruction of the score excerpts found in 1998 on behalf of the Milken Archive of Jewish Music, and in 2000 Gerard Schwarz was able to record the reconstructed version with the Ernst Senff Choir and the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra . It was published with recitations by Barbara Feldon , Tovah Feldshuh , David Margulies , Isaiah Sheffer and Fritz Weaver in the Milken Archive / Naxos in 2004. Schwarz also arranged for the first public performance of the reconstructed version in Seattle at the end of May 2008.

effect

The Genesis Suite is a pasticcio of various personal styles - from scores in the Hollywood sound (Shilkret, Castelnuovo-Tedesco) to the musical avant-garde (Schönberg, Stravinsky) and by no means a uniformly conceived work. The reaction of the audience was correspondingly divided.

Schönberg's Prelude was even considered incomprehensible by Shilkret. After the premiere, he wrote to his wife: "... even you with all your experience will think that the cat is just jumping all over the piano ...". Another sore point was the “open ending” of Stravinsky's Babel . Arnold Schönberg's biting comment has been passed down: “It didn't end, it just stopped.” But this may also be a reflection of the rivalry between the composers - Shilkret was worried about not letting them clash at rehearsals.

So Shilkret and Janssen decided to end Schönberg's contribution on the first recording as a postlude . In the new edition in 1951, it came first, but received the subtitle Earth was without form (which was not from Schönberg and was completely incorrect) . In return, Toch's The Covenant has now been moved to the end to allow the suite to end in a conciliatory manner. The recording of the reconstructed version from 2004 shows the original sequence for the first time.

In its many colors, however, the Genesis Suite is a unique contemporary document of the emigre society in exile in California in the 1940s, which Alexandre Tansman described as “Weimar contemporain”.

Literature and web links

Web links

Commons : Genesis Suite  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Letters / drafts of letters by N. Shilkret in the Commons Category
  2. ^ Nathaniel Shilkret, Barbara Shilkret, Niel Shell: Feast or Famine: Sixty Years in the Music Business . archival edition of Shilkret autobiography, 2001
  3. ↑ Catalog entry 7243 5 67729 22 on emiclassics.com
  4. ↑ Catalog entry 8.559442 on naxos.com
  5. ↑ Announcement of the performance of the Genesis Suite ( memento of the original from February 2, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on seattlesymphony.org  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.seattlesymphony.org
  6. ^ Letter from N. Shilkret to his wife Anne Shilkret from November 26, 1945, p. 2
  7. ↑ Quoted in Schwendener (see below), p. 4
  8. ↑ Quoted in Gérald Hugon, Art. Alexandre Tansman , on musimem.com