A performance guide to four pieces with Jewish and Gypsy themes by Sylvie Bodorová
Renner, Timothy Michael Jr.
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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/99549
Description
Title
A performance guide to four pieces with Jewish and Gypsy themes by Sylvie Bodorová
Author(s)
Renner, Timothy Michael Jr.
Issue Date
2018
Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)
Siena, Jerold
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Siena, Jerold
Committee Member(s)
Parisi, Susan
Redman, Yvonne
Gunn, Julie
Department of Study
School of Music
Discipline
Music
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
A.Mus.D. (doctoral)
Keyword(s)
Bodorová
Czech music
Jewish music
Gypsy music
Requiem
String quartet
Language
en
Abstract
About thirty years into her professional career, Czech composer Sylvie Bodorová (b.
1954) turned her focus specifically toward Jewish themes for compositional inspiration.
Beginning with the
Terezín Ghetto Requiem, which is now perhaps her best known work, she
went on to write four pieces over the next five years centered around some aspect of Jewish
culture, history, liturgy, or tradition. The present essay discusses this group of compositions, with
particular attention to compositional aspects and performance issues in the individual works. Chapter 1 begins with a brief biography of Sylvie Bodorová and an introduction to her
compositional interests in the period 1997-2002. Chapter 2 examines the
Terezín Ghetto Requiem
(1997), scored for string quartet and baritone soloist,
which was inspired specifically by the
courage of Jews and other persecuted people who suffered in the Holocaust. At the concentration
camp at Terezín (Theresienstadt), many prisoners had continued artistic pursuits while interned,
some involving themselves in musical composition and staging theatrical works and concerts.
One of their culminating achievements was the mounting of some twenty complete performances
of Verdi’s
Messa da Requiem, a masterwork the Bodorová Requiem references. Chapter 3
focuses on the Bodorová song cycle for baritone entitled
Ama me
(1999),
which celebrates
maternal love. While no Jewish themes are present in its three songs, the influence of Gypsy
music, which bears much in common with Jewish music, affects Bodorová’s style in this work.
Chapter 4 discusses another string quartet,
Shofarot
(2000), in which Bodorová revisited
elements of Jewish liturgy. In its three movements, the composer reimagines the various calls of
the shofar through the medium of stringed instruments. Chapter 5 considers the piano trio Megiddo
(2001), a composition of a very programmatic nature, with each movement evoking
images of Israeli geography or Jewish tradition relating to the Jezreel Valley. Finally, the
Conclusion places these compositions in a larger perspective, drawing in part on Bodorová’s own
statements about the influence of Jewish and Gypsy themes in her music.
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