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Many music mysteries solved at Milken Archive
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By CHANAN TIGAY, JTA
“Bay Mir Bistu Sheyn” may very well be the most famous of all Yiddish songs.
It was the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers’ most popular song of 1938. Renditions have been recorded by the Andrews Sisters, Ella Fitzgerald, Judy Garland, the Barry Sisters and Rudy Vallee, among other musical luminaries.
Yet until recently, only a handful of theater historians were aware that the song n whose title means “To me, you’re beautiful” n originated in the Second Avenue Yiddish theater of the 1930s.
Even fewer people knew what the play that launched this massive hit was about. Indeed, many casual listeners didn’t even know that the words of the title were anything more than gibberish or some form of Americanized German.
In fact, the original song was in Yiddish; the popular versions maintained only the Yiddish of the title, substituting English for the rest.
Thanks to the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music, that’s all changing. It has produced a three-CD set of Yiddish theater songs n along with a new recording of the piece as it might have sounded when originally sung at Brooklyn’s Rolland Theater in 1932.
It’s one of more than 600 works, ranging from popular to liturgical to classical, newly recorded by the archive.
Founded in 1990 by Lowell Milken, chairman of the Milken Family Foundation, the archive is an effort of international scope, Its mission is to record, preserve and distribute American Jewish music that might otherwise be lost and to accompany it with written historical documentation. Most of the music has never before been recorded, archive staff say.
Last November, the archive released “Great Songs of the Yiddish Stage, Vol. 3,” the 50th CD release since the archive’s inception. “The Milken Archive Deluxe Box Set,” a collection of these first 50 discs, is available at the archive’s website www.milken archive.org.
“These American mostly immigrants wrote unbelievable music that, yes, had been lost or ignored or forgotten,” says Maestro Gerard Schwarz, music director of the Seattle Symphony and of the Eastern Music Festival and conductor emeritus of New York’s Mostly Mozart Festival. “What the Milken Archive did for all of us musicians is reminded us of this great music that we either never knew or forgot.”
“The Milken Archive is unique,” adds Schwarz, who has conducted on 20 or so of the archive’s releases. It has “in a major way affected the way we think about cultural life in the United States.”
The music and its history sometimes are easily accessible to archive staff; other times, less so. Take the case of Jacob Weinberg, a Russian composer who later in his life moved to America.
“Nobody would even know his name anymore,” says Neil Levin, the archive’s artistic director. Yet Weinberg was among a group of early 20th-century Russian artists and intellectuals striving to create a new, classical Jewish music based on authentic Jewish musical provenance.
Weinberg, who wrote piano concertos based on Jewish themes n including the avodah section of the Yom Kippur service n was nearly confined to history’s dustbin, Levin says, until the archive uncovered a handwritten score in a Haifa archive. Now Weinberg’s music, newly recorded, can be heard on two archive CDs.
As for “Bay Mir Bistu Sheyn,” which was written by composer Sholom Secunda, researchers discovered booklets about the play from which it was plucked n “M’ken leben nor m’lost nit,” (“One could really live but they won’t let you”) n in the basement of a New York museum.
Along with the aid of other historical materials, they were able to piece together the basic plot of the show, which the album notes say was “decidedly weak, even for typical Second Avenue fare.”
Still, Levin says, knowledge of the lost Yiddish plays of Second Avenue “is important sociologically and historically.”
It was “a whole Jewish culture,” he says. “And not only a Jewish culture n a whole chapter of American culture.”
In addition to its musical recordings, the archive has videotaped several thousand hours of oral histories by actors, composers and other Jewish artists, some two-thirds of whom have died since recording their stories. It also is developing a comprehensive music curriculum based on its research.
Among the big names that have appeared on Milken recordings are jazz legend Dave Brubeck, Theodore Bikel, guitarist Eliot Fisk, the Julliard String Quartet and conductor Sir Neville Marriner.
The archive also has established partnerships with a number of other organizations, including the University of Michigan; the BBC, which has co-produced three albums; and German National Radio, which has co-produced 10.
Though the archive’s liner notes say the dialogue from the show that spawned “Bay mir bistu sheyn” is nothing to write home about, here, at least, is the summary of the long-lost plot, from the CD booklet:
“Jake, a shoe factory worker who is fired for union organizing activity, is in love with the owner’s daughter Hene. In response to her concern about the endurance of his commitment to her, he sings ‘Bay mir bistu sheyn’ to her at some point in the first act. Despite a series of predictable attempts to thwart the marriage, they are, of course, wed in the end.”
Now, after their 74-year honeymoon in obscurity, Jake and Hene can n tenks Gott! n live happily ever after.
It was the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers’ most popular song of 1938. Renditions have been recorded by the Andrews Sisters, Ella Fitzgerald, Judy Garland, the Barry Sisters and Rudy Vallee, among other musical luminaries.
Yet until recently, only a handful of theater historians were aware that the song n whose title means “To me, you’re beautiful” n originated in the Second Avenue Yiddish theater of the 1930s.
Even fewer people knew what the play that launched this massive hit was about. Indeed, many casual listeners didn’t even know that the words of the title were anything more than gibberish or some form of Americanized German.
In fact, the original song was in Yiddish; the popular versions maintained only the Yiddish of the title, substituting English for the rest.
Thanks to the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music, that’s all changing. It has produced a three-CD set of Yiddish theater songs n along with a new recording of the piece as it might have sounded when originally sung at Brooklyn’s Rolland Theater in 1932.
It’s one of more than 600 works, ranging from popular to liturgical to classical, newly recorded by the archive.
Founded in 1990 by Lowell Milken, chairman of the Milken Family Foundation, the archive is an effort of international scope, Its mission is to record, preserve and distribute American Jewish music that might otherwise be lost and to accompany it with written historical documentation. Most of the music has never before been recorded, archive staff say.
Last November, the archive released “Great Songs of the Yiddish Stage, Vol. 3,” the 50th CD release since the archive’s inception. “The Milken Archive Deluxe Box Set,” a collection of these first 50 discs, is available at the archive’s website www.milken archive.org.
“These American mostly immigrants wrote unbelievable music that, yes, had been lost or ignored or forgotten,” says Maestro Gerard Schwarz, music director of the Seattle Symphony and of the Eastern Music Festival and conductor emeritus of New York’s Mostly Mozart Festival. “What the Milken Archive did for all of us musicians is reminded us of this great music that we either never knew or forgot.”
“The Milken Archive is unique,” adds Schwarz, who has conducted on 20 or so of the archive’s releases. It has “in a major way affected the way we think about cultural life in the United States.”
The music and its history sometimes are easily accessible to archive staff; other times, less so. Take the case of Jacob Weinberg, a Russian composer who later in his life moved to America.
“Nobody would even know his name anymore,” says Neil Levin, the archive’s artistic director. Yet Weinberg was among a group of early 20th-century Russian artists and intellectuals striving to create a new, classical Jewish music based on authentic Jewish musical provenance.
Weinberg, who wrote piano concertos based on Jewish themes n including the avodah section of the Yom Kippur service n was nearly confined to history’s dustbin, Levin says, until the archive uncovered a handwritten score in a Haifa archive. Now Weinberg’s music, newly recorded, can be heard on two archive CDs.
As for “Bay Mir Bistu Sheyn,” which was written by composer Sholom Secunda, researchers discovered booklets about the play from which it was plucked n “M’ken leben nor m’lost nit,” (“One could really live but they won’t let you”) n in the basement of a New York museum.
Along with the aid of other historical materials, they were able to piece together the basic plot of the show, which the album notes say was “decidedly weak, even for typical Second Avenue fare.”
Still, Levin says, knowledge of the lost Yiddish plays of Second Avenue “is important sociologically and historically.”
It was “a whole Jewish culture,” he says. “And not only a Jewish culture n a whole chapter of American culture.”
In addition to its musical recordings, the archive has videotaped several thousand hours of oral histories by actors, composers and other Jewish artists, some two-thirds of whom have died since recording their stories. It also is developing a comprehensive music curriculum based on its research.
Among the big names that have appeared on Milken recordings are jazz legend Dave Brubeck, Theodore Bikel, guitarist Eliot Fisk, the Julliard String Quartet and conductor Sir Neville Marriner.
The archive also has established partnerships with a number of other organizations, including the University of Michigan; the BBC, which has co-produced three albums; and German National Radio, which has co-produced 10.
Though the archive’s liner notes say the dialogue from the show that spawned “Bay mir bistu sheyn” is nothing to write home about, here, at least, is the summary of the long-lost plot, from the CD booklet:
“Jake, a shoe factory worker who is fired for union organizing activity, is in love with the owner’s daughter Hene. In response to her concern about the endurance of his commitment to her, he sings ‘Bay mir bistu sheyn’ to her at some point in the first act. Despite a series of predictable attempts to thwart the marriage, they are, of course, wed in the end.”
Now, after their 74-year honeymoon in obscurity, Jake and Hene can n tenks Gott! n live happily ever after.
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