Folk Song versus High Modernism: Stefan Wolpe's Song of Songs Settings in the Context of the 'New Palestine'

摘要

Wolpe's stay in Palestine was marked by deep-seated ambivalence shared with many German emigrs who had come there in the 1930s and been cast back on their Jewishness by the National Socialists. It was only with reservations and reluctance that these assimilated Europeans could accept the Oriental land of the forefathers as their own. The way stations of Wolpe's years in Palestine (1934-1938) can be reconstructed from his correspondence, lectures and diary entries, not to mention concert reviews and the oral reports of his friends and pupils. These sources also shed light on the many and varied reasons for his subsequent departure, which included his quite personal and individual cast of mind, fervid enthusiasm for the socialist idea of the kibbutz, a ruthless final reckoning with the musical establishment and an artistic urge to set himself apart from his colleagues as a 'professional maximalist'. Historian Sinai Leichter introduced him to Hebrew language and literature and the Jewish tradition. In the Bible he discovered not only a muscular and original language, but texts that timelessly captured his sense of social and political commitment. Wolpe did not limit himself to a naive encounter with the music of the Middle East. Rather, he sought to acquire a practical and theoretical knowledge of it. He made several settings of texts from the Song of Songs. Analysis of 'Smolo tahat roshi' illustrates his approach to transforming elements of folklore into modernist material.