Oratorio by Alan Bern & Diana Matut about the life of Glikl von Hameln
Now online! Watch the premiere performance of the Glikl-Oratorye (Glikl Oratorio), recorded live on March 30, 2022 in the Fürstensaal of the Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt in Weimar, Germany. With English subtitles.
Read online or download the extensive program notes for Glikl-oratorye (Glikl Oratorio), including entries by the composer, Alan Bern, and the librettist, Diana Matut, as well as a guide to the characters and story and a complete list of the cast and production team.
In 1689, Glikl von Hameln (1647-1724), a Jewish woman from Hamburg, began writing her memoirs in Western Yiddish. After the death of her husband, she wrote „to expel the melancholy thoughts“ and thus left us a unique testimony of Jewish life in Germany. We know her today as a successful businesswoman, a mother of 14 children, and one of the first non-noble women ever to leave very personal memoirs.
Librettist Diana Matut lets Glikl speak in her own words and adds three other Jewish women of different eras whose lives are interwoven in one way or another with Glikl’s. Through them, Glikl’s experiences are given a voice for our times.
Composer Alan Bern (USA/Berlin) gives each of the four women their own musical language through various instrumental ensembles inspired by Baroque, urban music of the Weimar period, Yiddish theater and Klezmer, and contemporary retro swing.
Conductor Marcelo Moguilevsky (Buenos Aires) leads the 35-piece international student project orchestra with choir and soloists through Bern’s score, expanding the oratorio with interludes of conducted orchestral improvisation to add unique, epoch-bending musical dimensions.
A project of the UNESCO Chair on Transcultural Music Studies at the FRANZ LISZT School of Music Weimar, sponsored by 321-2021: 1700 Years of Jewish Life in Germany e.V.
Alan Bern (Bloomington, Indiana, 1955) is an American composer, pianist, accordionist, educator and cultural activist, based in Berlin since 1987. He is the founding artistic director of Yiddish Summer Weimar and the Other Music Academy (OMA). He is internationally recognized for his contributions to the research, dissemination and creative renewal of Jewish music with Brave Old World, The Other Europeans and the Semer Ensemble, among others. He is the creator of Present-Time Composition, a musical and educational approach informed by cognitive science that integrates the methods of improvisation and composition.
Bern considers himself very fortunate to have studied with some of the major creative voices in music of the 20th century, including John Cage, Frederic Rzewski, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Anthony Braxton, among other artists whose work is a dialogue between historical precedents and new, creative impulses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Bern
Marcelo Moguilevsky (Argentina, 1961) received the Konex Award 2015 for best instrumentalist of the decade. He is a multi-instrumentalist, musician (clarinet, bass clarinet, soprano saxophone, recorders, harmonica and piano), composer and teacher. With Cesar Lerner he created a duo known worldwide for its personal stamp on klezmer music. He was part of the quintet Puente Celeste, one of the best crossover music bands in Argentina (Konex Award 2005: Jazz Group). In 2009 he won the Condor de plata award for best music in the film Esperando al Mesias by Daniel Burman. He was part of the quintet Puente Celeste, one of the best crossover music bands in Argentina (Konex Award 2005: Jazz Group).
From 2011 to 2019 he was Director of the Music area of the Fondo Nacional de las Artes, where he created the Argentinian Encounter of Improvisation and Musical composition.
Since 2011 he has been Professor of Musical Language at the Fine Arts Department of the National University of La Plata. He has performed numerous shows integrating music and poetry (by Pessoa, Borges and Cortazar) together with writer Santiago Kovadloff and musical co-author Cesar Lerner. His projects include frequent tours in Europe, North America, Brazil, Colombia and Paraguay. He has composed music for film, contemporary dance, video art and theater. In 2015 he presented in Argentina and then in Europe (Berlin Philharmonic Hall) his latest work „Cinco“, recorded in Amsterdam with the Cuareim Quartet, which was chosen Record of the Month by the Buenos Aires Record Club.
DISCOGRAPHY
2019 – Cliché Moguilevsky and Espósito 2014 – Five Moguilevsky Plus Cuareim Quartet (Amsterdam) 2012 – Buey solo (cd+dvd recorded live at Café Vinilo ) 2011 – Puente Celeste alive. 2009 – Lerner-Moguilevsky: Alef Bet. 2009 – Puente Celeste: Songs. 2006 – Sinesi-Moguilevsky: Only the river. 2005 – La Segunda: Será una noche, modern tango (M.A Records). 2004 – Mañana Domingo: Puente Celeste. 2003 – Lerner-Moguilevsky: Sobreviviente. 2002 – Puente Celeste: Pasando el mar. 2001 – Lerner-Moguilevsky: Shtil. 1999 – Lerner-Moguilevsky: Basavilbaso. 1999 – Lerner-Moguilevsky: Klezmer for Kosovo, Compilation of international groups, (Lucerne, Switzerland). 1999 – Será una Noche, Contemporary Tango, Edited in Japan. 1997 – Lerner-Moguilevsky: Klezmer en Buenos Aires (edited by IRCO in Buenos Aires and for Discmedi in Barcelona, 1998). 1996 – Moguilevsky y Los Acústicos: El viaje (Edited by EPSA). 1996 – Sinesi-Moguilevsky: Soltando Amarras. 1996 – Falú-Moguilevsky: Improvisations on Argentine folklore.
Dr. Diana Matut teaches Jewish Studies, Yiddish and Jewish Music at the University College for Jewish Studies Heidelberg and at the University Halle-Wittenberg. In 1999, she earned her Diploma in Hebrew and Jewish Studies (Oxford), followed 2001 by the MA in Yiddish Studies (SOAS, London). The same year brought her to the Advanced Seminar for Yiddish Studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York – taught exclusively in Yiddish.
She was the Joseph Kremen Memorial Fellow in East European Jewish Arts, Music, and Theatre at YIVO (New York) and Visiting Fellow at the Oxford Center for Hebrew and Jewish Studies (twice). From 2019 to 2020 Diana Matut was the convenor of the Oxford Seminar in Advanced Jewish Studies and led a research group focusing on „Jewish Musical Cultures in Europe, 1500-1750“. In 2021 she was awarded the Mare-Balticum-Fellowship of the University of Rostock.
She has taught at universities in the UK, Israel, the USA, Canada, Italy and the Czech Republic as well as for several Jewish cultural festivals and centers such as Yiddish Summer Weimar, Klezkanada, Klezfest London and Maison de la Culture Yiddish Paris.
Various musical projects are the result of her cooperation with Yiddish Summer Weimar. Together with Alan Bern, she produced a CD with rediscovered Yiddish children’s songs (Far dem nayem dor – For the New Generation; http://www.kinderlider.com/righthome.html) and in 2017 conducted the ‚Young Kadya‘ Choir, a German-Israeli project with new settings by Alan Bern for the poetry of Kadya Molodovsky. The project documentary under the same title came to cinemas in spring 2022 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYORsQ-fHn4).
2019 Diana, together with American composer/arranger Josh Horowitz, lead the Henech Kon project, which brought the only surviving pre-war Yiddish opera from Europe back on stage (https://omaworks.eu/triangle-orchestra/).
