Shana tova! Wishing a sweet 5786 to all who celebrate.
As a classical music radio host, I’ve had many opportunities to broadcast selections from a fascinating 50-CD box set assembled from the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music for Naxos Records. (I believe these were also issued separately.) I do not own the box, but over the years, I’ve managed to collect most of the individual discs for my own library. Of course, the set was not intended to be comprehensive – how could it be? – but Milken (founded in 1990) continues its mission to document, preserve, and disseminate a vast body of music related to the American Jewish experience – including, among others, historical and traditional music associated with synagogue and seder, songs of a more secular nature for the Yiddish theater, and classical concert music.
One Milken revelation was a string quartet by Darius Milhaud, best known in classical music circles as one of the group of iconoclastic French composers that gained notoriety in Paris in the 1920s as “Les Six.” This loose collective followed in the footsteps of Erik Satie in subverting the pretensions of the concert hall. Les Six pushed back against miasmic Wagnerism of the fin de siècle era, employing the lighter textures and lucid forms of neoclassicism, and often emulating the breezy, contemporary ambience of café, boulevard, and circus. In Milhaud’s case, he also really leaned into the popular music of Brazil, which he encountered while serving as secretary to ambassador Paul Claudel. Another enthusiasm was the music of his native Provence (hence, the “Suite provençale”).
Less well-known is his connection to his Jewish heritage. Milhaud was born into a long-established family of the Comtat Venaissin (County of Venaissin, an enclave surrounding the city of Avignon), with roots traceable to the Middle Ages. The Comtat’s Carpentras synagogue, built in the 14th century, is the oldest in France. Interestingly, Milhaud’s lineage on his father’s side was neither Ashkenazi nor Sephardi, but rather uniquely Provençal – possessing its own historical and cultural traditions – as the settlement dates to the early Common Era. Milhaud’s mother was partly Sephardi on HER father’s side, by way of an Italian forebear.
Milhaud wrote several works on Jewish themes. His “Études sur des themes liturgiques du Comtat Venaissin” (“Studies on Comtat Venaissin Liturgical Themes”) incorporates melodies from the region’s Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur observances. It was composed on a commission from the Braemer Foundation of Philadelphia. In light of his unusual heritage, Milhaud was asked to distill his memories of family celebrations and services at the synagogue in Aix-en-Provence into a string quartet. The work received its premiere at Congregation Adath Jeshurun in Elkins Park, just outside Philadelphia, in 1973. Milhaud died in 1974 at the age of 81.
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