When the Angels Sing

Autumn morning in the spirit of Mahler

On Saturday, the 6th day of Kislev 5754, or November 20, 1993, at 11:00 AM, musician Smadar Carmi Giberman opened the first season of Cinematic Variations on Live Classical Music at the Jerusalem Cinematheque. Her lecture, titled “Autumn Morning in the Spirit of Mahler,” was peppered with quotes from Mahler’s poems and letters, together with a description of the great composer. The autumn atmosphere reigned over her lecture presenting the figure of Gustav Mahler, who summed up for the entire world the romantic symphony and the German lied. Her talk was followed by a performance by the young percussionist Oron Schwarz, just back from studies abroad, who played the latest composition by Israeli composer Zvi Avni, Five Variations for Mr. K., arranged for percussion and electronics. The composition was inspired by the letters and writings of Franz Kafka. In his five variations, Zvi Avni referred to five main conflicts in Kafka’s personality. Avni’s piece was a meaningful complement to Smadar Carmi Giberman’s lecture. Mahler and Kafka told the audience the story of Europe’s assimilated Jews before and between the two world wars. After the intermission, Ken Russel’s film Mahler was screened. This provocative and controversial film from 1974 boldly and explicitly addressed the issues presented in the preceding lecture and concert. This is how the original lecture-concert-film format was created, a success that has since become a well-kept tradition of the series.

The first years

We have happily arrived at the twenty-fifth year of Cinematic Variations on Live Classical Music, a collaboration of the Jerusalem Cinematheque and the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance. Over the twenty-four years of the series, the programs were jointly prepared by Costel Safirman, of the Cinematheque, and Chana Englard, of the academy. In the early years, they were also assisted by Rina Gordon, the academy’s academic secretary, who brought her own ideas to the series. Over the twenty-four years of the series, 360 events were held, all meticulously preserving the model of a lecture leading to a concert and concluding with a screening following an intermission.

A review of the list of films, lecture subjects and music played at each of these events reveals the fascinating progress of global and local culture over the course of a quarter of a century.

In the first years of the series, most meetings were well-rooted in the world of western classical music and dance. The first season (1993-1994) was dedicated to documentaries and feature films on classical composers, the great performers of the concert halls, together with cinematic adaptations of operas and ballets. The following five seasons continued this trend, with more and more heroes of the world of classical music and dance.

Stylistic Receptiveness

Starting from the sixth season, different film genres were included in the series. Animated and feature films, selected for their soundtracks, as well as musicals, heralded the beginning of a new receptiveness to ever more diverse subjects.

The seventh season opened to 20th century jazz, folk music and popular music. The eighth season, which symbolically was fully in the new millennium (2000-2001), presented a diverse program that already included many films on the lives of jazz greats, cantors and klezmer musicians.

In the spirit of the time and place

Starting from the ninth season of the series, and in the 15 years that followed, the program diverged into a wide variety of subjects. Concert music, opera and classical and modern dance remained prominent in the series, but were joined by art and popular Israeli music, international and local jazz, Hebrew songs, Israeli rock, Mizrahi pop music, Hassidic and synagogue music, Greek and Balkan music, French chanson, tango, flamenco, rebetiko, gypsy music, classical and popular Arabic music, American and British rock, blues and pop, Ladino and Yiddish music, modern art music, unique soundtracks of films of different genres, world music and other musical styles.

The documentaries and feature films were now joined not only by cinematic adaptations of dance and opera pieces, but also musicals; documentaries on music education; interviews with musicians in all areas of the industry and from a wide variety of musical languages; local and international cult movies featuring outstanding soundtracks; films on social and communal issues; satirical and political movies involving music; historic features that include music; and a wide variety of other issues. The series improved over the years, also thanks to the creative boom of documentaries on the lives of musicians in the first decades of the twenty-first century. The range of available movies kept increasing, so that we were able to select new, challenging films, that contributed significantly to the series’ success.

Naturally, as more and more directions were opened, the regular lecturers in the series were joined by more and more lecturers from diverse styles and fields of interest.

Shabbat in Jerusalem

This openness to an ever-increasing variety of artistic statements and styles reflects the story of global culture in the last generation – an increasing curiosity and interest in learning about the other, adapting to and even understanding new music and new ideas regarding the performance of historic and contemporary music – these are all fascinating phenomena taking place around the world. My impression is that these phenomena are very strong in Jerusalem, as a city that brings together a wide variety of cultures, where many different creative venues are naturally established, boasting an outstanding audience in terms of its broad-mindedness and curiosity.

The last twenty-four years were not short of excitement. The audience, lecturers and performing artists grew into a community aspiring to joint learning and creation. The Cinematheque’s location in the beautiful valley set against the walls of the Old City, the inviting design of the building, the restaurant overlooking the majestic Jerusalem landscape – all these engendered a special sort of inspiration and helped establish the status of the series. When the cinematheque was being renovated and the series relocated, for a certain period in 2007, to the YMCA on King David Street, everybody missed the series’ regular venue, and the return to the enlarged, renovated building was a real celebration.

It would be difficult to list all the many artists that took part in the series. Many of them are performers and artists from the Academy of Music and Dance in Jerusalem – teachers, students and graduates, who by their very participation realized the process of growing receptiveness to different cultures and genres.

Two memories

I remember many different experiences from the twenty-four years of Cinematic Variations on Live Classical Music, but to keep it short, here are two memories that I selected. The first is from the early days of the series, and the second from recent years.

First memory – Autumn Sonata

In the third year of the series, Rina suggested I go in depth into Ingmar Bergman’s film Autumn Sonata. The film features several main characters, who represent holistic ideas. The mother, a pianist visiting her daughter, represents the total artist, fully committed to her work. The daughter represents the desire to lead an ordinary, simple life. Her family members represent simple, unconditional love. The film hardly uses background music; however, two-thirds through it, one of the minor characters plays a movement from Bach’s suite for solo cello in the family living room. In my lecture, I sought to prove, both to myself and to the audience, that Autumn Sonata can be used to illustrate sonata form in music. I presented the different parts of the film, describing the development of each idea – how the conflict between mother and daughter is managed like the dialogue between the two subjects in the sonata form, and how the cello at this magical moment in the film marks the beginning of the release and the solution. Bach’s wonderful music is highly moving, as it follows the climatic conflict between the daughter and her mother. For the first time in the film, music is heard, and it is heavenly, played simply, performed in fact in the room where all the characters sit. This emotive musical image commits the viewer to a careful listening to Bach’s music, and thereby emphasizes the film’s central dilemma, which has no other solution but coming to terms with and containing the two opposites. On the one hand, art gives meaning to our lives. Those who live it, however, pay a hefty personal price, as they sacrifice their private lives and those of their dear ones to this lofty cause. On the other hand, the family’s cozy living room represents the simple and pleasant reality that allows art to suddenly break into the room’s space, and imbue such special meaning to the lives of all the characters. Thus, when the entire audience, in the movie itself and in the theater, listen to Bach, the sonata’s development ends. Here we are now in the recapitulation, internalization and coming to terms of the third, conclusive part of the film, which entails much pain and awareness of the unsolvable tension between the mother and daughter. In the film’s coda, when the mother parts from her daughter and sets out on her way, her car driving away, the daughter returns to the bosom of her beloved husband. The mother remains lonely, while the daughter resumes the family life that she chose for herself. The wisdom of music helps us watch the film.

Second memory – Bird on a Wire

My second memory relates to the discovery of rare films, some in the archives of the cinematheque itself, and some that arrive through film collectors and scholars. I especially remember an event that is highly representative of this decade of the series – the premiere screening of Tony Palmer’s long-lost film Bird on a Wire, from 1974. This film, documenting singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen’s concert tour in Europe, ending in Jerusalem, disappeared under mysterious circumstances, and was rediscovered in 2009. The encounter dedicated to this special and surprising film, which was restored and adjusted for screening using modern technology, was attended by the director himself, Tony Palmer. Following an introduction presenting the biography and life work of Leonard Cohen, I invited the director to tell the story of the film’s disappearance, discovery and restoration. Following his lecture, I returned to the stage and analyzed Leonard Cohen’s texts, as an introduction to a moving and fresh performance of a selection of his songs. After the intermission, we watched the film, which was especially stirring, as it shows Leonard Cohen in moments of weakness as well as grace; at successful concerts and failed concerts; at embarrassing moments, such as when artists ask their money back from him, because of a failed amplification system; and of course, the film’s conclusion, which takes places at the last show, at the International Convention Center at Jerusalem, in 1974, shortly after the Yom Kippur War. Leonard Cohen does not want to go on stage, and asks that the concert be cancelled, due to his bad mood at the end of his concert tour. The audience does not give up. Hundreds of young people, filling the large concert hall, start singing his songs by heart, calling him to come back, clapping their hands and shouting out encouragements. At the end of the film, he returns to the stage, and the last moments of this documentary film present his emotional singing, with the entire audience signing with him, song after song. As the show ends, after several encores, we see him and his band behind the stage, at their dressing rooms, hugging each other and crying, excited as well as baffled. The film’s incredible ending was even more exciting as it was shot in the International Convention Center in Jerusalem, a venue the audience was well-familiar with. Words cannot express how moved we all were that morning. The film’s director found himself surrounded by fans, who asked to buy copies of the film and get his autograph.

On this coming autumn

Cinematic Variations on Live Classical Music is now opening its 25th season. The cinematheque remains a warm home for the many Israeli pilgrims who visit the different festivals held here every year. The Academy of Music and Dance in Jerusalem is flourishing, seeing ever-increasing artistic endeavors, and facing an expanding range of styles and manners of expression. The students, graduates and teachers of the Jerusalem academy are committed to the success of Cinematic Variations on Live Classical Music, lecture and perform in it, and are excited and inspired by it.

Jerusalem is a city that brings together many contrasts, a city that merges the words war and peace in its vivacious life, a city whose breathtaking beauty inspired many artists. It is the home of the cinematheque and of the academy, the two institutions behind Cinematic Variations on Live Classical Music. The many windows opened by the program of the 25th season wonderfully express the city of the series’ birth, and continue to serve as an attraction for a large audience of listeners, musicians, artists and performers.

Michael Wolpe

June 25, 2017