Darius Milhaud: Service Sacre (Milken Archive of American Jewish Music)
Darius Milhaud (1892-1974) was an extraordinarily versatile composer, master of many styles, able to absorb and integrate different influences, from synagogue chant to Brazilian folk music and American jazz. Born into a musically active Jewish family rooted in Provence since the 15th century, he grew up in Aix-en-Provence, where his grandfather founded the synagogue and his father the Musical Society. Milhaud began to compose as a child. He was one of the group of French composers called Les Six and produced an enormous amount of music in every genre, including several works on Judaic themes. In 1940, he emigrated to America with his wife and son and taught for many years in California and Aspen, Colorado. In 1947, he was commissioned by the musically forward-looking cantor of Temple Emanu-El in San Francisco to write a Hebrew Service Sacré for the Sabbath morning service, supplemented with several sections used in the Friday evening service. The score calls for chorus, orchestra, a baritone as cantor (sung here by the Israeli-born, European-trained Yaron Windmueller with just the right blend of drama and devoutness), and a speaker as rabbi who reads in both Hebrew and English. The text is taken from the Book of Common Prayer. For the music, Milhaud turned to the by then almost extinct liturgical tradition of his native French region, using some of its elements as thematic leitmotives, and giving the work a feeling of aesthetic unity. The orchestra provides interludes and a soft, static background to the cantorial and spoken passages; the chorus sings its own sections and engages in call and response with the soloist. The singing and playing are excellent; the music is beautiful, partly modal, partly tonal; modulating freely between tonalities, each section moves toward a final tonic chord. The work celebrates the Sabbath with prayers and hymns of thanks and exaltation. It also hints at the continuity of human faith, opening with the words found in Brahms' Requiem: "How lovely are your dwellings…" and concluding with the priestly blessing: "May the Lord bless thee and keep thee..."--Edith Eisler