(Reviewer: Estelle Sher, Vol. 65 #1, Pesach 2010)
Leo Zeitlin – Chamber Music is an informative, fascinating and superbly detailed study of Leo Zeitlin (1884-1930), a superbly talented composer, arranger, violinist, violist, conductor, impresario and teacher. It not only gives us the story of Zeitlin and his music, but also includes all his known scores of Chamber works – about thirty – some published here for the first time.
Leo Zeitlin, as he called himself in the United States, was born Lev Mordukhovich Tseitlin in Pinsk, now Belarus, on 7 December 1884. At thirteen, he went to study at the Odessa Branch of the Imperial Russian Music Society. When he graduated, at the age of nineteen, he auditioned and was accepted at the St Petersburg Conservatory. A compelling reason for this further study was a diploma which would earn him the title “free artist”, enabling him to be an “honoured citizen”, exempting him from the draft and allowing him to travel freely. It would also allow him – a Jew – to live outside the Pale of Settlement to which Jews were confined. He studied violin with Nikolai Galkin, composition with Rimsky-Korsakov (that master of orchestration and teacher of so many), and instrumentation with Glazunov.
At this time, Zeitlin joined the Society for Jewish Folk Music (‘folk’ being understood as ‘ethnic’). This society was the catalyst for a brief but golden age of art music on Jewish themes drawn from cantillation, liturgical tunes and folksongs. Its major legacy is the body of published works by its member composers; between 1909 and 1918 it published at least eighty original compositions and arrangements, four of them by Zeitlin. In Moscow, the society lasted from 1912 to 1931, and gave concert tours and lectures, attracting wide audiences that included non-Jews. Art music on Jewish themes was a logical extension of the late 19th Century and nationalist musical style championed by the group of composers known as “The Five”, of which Rimsky-Korsakov was a leading member.
After graduating from St. Petersburg Conservatoire in 1917, Zeitlin led a successful concert career in Ekatorinoslav as a conductor and composer, where at least six of his performances were composed and performed. He and his wife, Esther Rivka, later went to Vilna, where he conducted and performed. The United States beckoned and the Zeitlins arrived in New York in August 1923.
In New York, Zeitlin was hired as a violist by the Capitol Theatre, a “picture palace” that seated more than five thousand. Soon, he was arranging popular and light classical works for the small ensembles that played for the theatre’s regular Sunday evening radio program. Some of his own works were performed too. By 1929, he was writing for the Capitol Grand Orchestra. One of his works, a dramatic overture on Jewish themes titled ‘Palestina’, played a week prior to the High Holidays in September 1929. It was later broadcast on radio to an estimated six million people – a far cry from the Society for Jewish Folk Music! Zeitlin was highly regarded here among colleagues of the highest calibre.
In June 1930, at the age of 45, Leo Zeitlin suddenly developed encephalitis lethargica (sleeping sickness), and died soon after, leaving his wife Esther, a six year old son Nathan and a year old daughter, Ruth, in straitened circumstances. On his tombstone is engraved the first two measures of the cello part of his Chef d’ouvre Eli-Zion (no. 5).
Esther went to live in Los Angeles, where Zeitlin’s music brought together an extraordinary array of prominent Hollywood figures for three benefit concerts. She also took with her a trunk of original manuscripts, which were only discovered decades after her death in 1956.
Most of Zeitlin’s chamber works utilise strings. Despite his own work as an orchestral conductor and arranger, he hardly ever used other instruments and his interest in the voice is, of course, predominant. A few pieces that use piano only are the three Declamations (nos. 12–14). The arrangements are consistently skilful, imaginative and well-crafted. Although circumstances dictated that most of his works were arrangements, it is a pity that there are so few original compositions.
Zeitlin succeeded in capturing the Jewish idiom without using “real folk melodies”, notably in Reb Nakhmon’s Tune (nos. 3a and 3b) and others such as the instrumental quintets (no. 17). There is a strong dramatic element in his works, and melodically and harmonically there are the influences of late 19th Century Russian music, such as modal bits. His string writing with the contrapuntal chamber and interesting inner parts are evidence of his own playing of these parts.
From the extensive section on analytical discussions of the works in the book, that of No. 1 More (The Sea) is particularly interesting, with the rocking waves in the piano part combined with the speaking voice. And then there is his masterpiece, No. 5 Eli Zion, for cello and piano (the work that first attracted Paula Eisenstein Baker to Zeitlin’s music in 1986). There is Lament O Zion: Fantasy on a folk melody and the cantillation for Song of Songs from 1911 is described as a work with a “depth of mystical mood … the best piece in Jewish musical literature until Bloch”. High praise indeed!
Then there is A Yidl with his fiddle, no. 4, and Bim-Bom, one of the six choral sketches for voices alone (19 – 24). Reb Leyvi-Yitskhok’s Kaddish (11a and 11b) is one of the best opportunities to examine how Zeitlin could take an existing source and turn it into an amazing work of art.
This is a treasure trove of Yiddish folk songs (all translated into English and sometimes Russian or Hebrew) for the enthusiast. It is an enlightening book to dip into, not only for Zeitlin’s music, but also for insights into the life and music of the times. There is much for the musician’s information and, of course, all the music. What a pity this superb volume does not include a CD! It also leaves one curious with regard to Leo Zeitlin’s other orchestral works.
Leo Zeitlin – Chamber Music, edited by Paula Eisenstein Baker and Robert S. Nelson, Middleton, Wisconsin, 2009.
Estelle Sher is a musicologist and teacher. She gives talks on musical appreciation for the Union of Jewish Women, and is a presenter of the pre-concert talks for the Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra.
