Maurice Ravel, Deux Mélodies Hébraïques: Kaddisch (1914)

As International Holocaust Memorial Day approaches, imagine the world a generation before the shoah, in 1914: the state of affairs that had pertained in Europe and the Mediterranean since the Congress of Vienna is about to be violently undone, and all of Europe, including European Jewry, is about to be drawn into armed conflict. And yet, the world is eerily serene. In another Ravel composition from this period, “La Valse”, one can hear the gracious, courtly empires of the western world unraveling, as the waltz spins out of control. In this precarious world, with the Dreyfus Affair in living memory (Dreyfus himself, released and restored to his officer’s commission, is about to serve in the war), Ravel was commissioned by the soprano Alvina Alvi to write two settings of Jewish melodies, of which ‘Kaddisch’ is a remarkable fusion of the French Impressionist sound world with the traditional mode. Wishing you a Shabbat Shalom, and hoping this music aids in a profound remembrance of great loss. Music: Maurice Ravel, orchestration by Cantor Joseph Ness, Commissioned by PAS Music Center AV: Oscar Acevedo, Erik van Batavia, Justin Goodman Video Editor: Tami Shaham www.azischwartz.com