Hebrew Lessons

The use of text in music is something of a quandary for me. In the large majority of vocal works with texts, either the music accompanies – illustrates, if you will – the words, or completely ignores them. Both approaches create a hierarchy that I find highly unsatisfactory. Hebrew Lessons was therefore conceived as a series of attempts at establishing a more egalitarian text-music relationship.   The texts for Hebrew Lessons were selected from the equally titled cycle by Israeli poet Hezi Leskeli. Leskeli’s poetry appeals to me for its whimsical nature, its internal sound structure, as well as its synesthetic mélange of words, sounds, imagery and sense. Furthermore, the cycle’s overall theme – that of exploring, gaining new perspective, recreating one’s own language – closely corresponds to the musical idea on which the piece is based.   In each movement the relationship between soprano and ensemble, and therefore between text and music, is varied. In some movements the text is uttered almost entirely by the players, in others it is “translated” to instrumental gestures, in others still the soprano plays a traditional role but emphasizes the unvoiced (and therefore non-lyrical) elements of the text. Premiered on 3.2.12, at WMP Concert Hall in New York City, by Lunatics at Large Ensemble