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Arguing with God is a sign of tremendous holiness in the Hebrew Bible. Abraham and Moses come to mind. Even the very name of Israel springs from Jacob's struggle with the angel. Jews have always kept faith by wrestling with God's teaching and asking tough questions about the most vexing parts of it.
Klemzer music itself is a very beautiful argument for the enduring vitality of a music whose people and culture were wiped out by the Nazis. Arguing with God strives to capture the joy, depth, and energy of Klezmer, whose richness is summed up so well in the name of our wonderful guest artists:
Brave is what the Jewish people must ever be in faithfully arguing with God.
Old is what the roots of our tradition are, made new in every generation.
World is that which we Jews are commanded to be a light unto.
A collision of two worlds--the classical concert hall and the shtetl (the Jewish town in Eastern Europe before the Holocaust)--is embodied in the concerto by an evolving relationship between the NCO and Brave Old World. The interaction of these musical landscapes, worked out in various ways, constitutes the drama and the musical argument of each of the concerto's three movements. The argument is not only with God; it is with Jewish music itself, with the classical music tradition also--really, with anyone who will listen! After all, what does it mean to be Jewish if not to argue, and to take the deepest delight in doing so? The more heated the argument, the happier we find ourselves. That's why we survive. I'm certain of it.
The titles of the three movements are drawn from various poets, both Christian and Jewish, including the prophet Amos and the Metaphysical Christian poet George Herbert. I especially like the first movement's title: Dark Enough to See (from a poem by Brooks Haxton). Practically speaking, when we consign our ideas to paper, we have to make sure that the ink or pencil is dark enough to be seen on the page. But the phrase "dark enough to see" may also be one way--vouchsafed by the Bible again and again--of entering into the presence of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, of Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah. Into what wildernesses must we wander in order to encounter the Holy One? How much dark risk are we called upon to take? If Torah and Prophets are to be read in all their fullness and strangeness, the answers to these questions seem very clear.
Michael Alec Rose – March, 2007
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