Composer Portrait: Music of Paul Schoenfield

Donor Acknowledgement

This event is made possible by the Lowell Milken Center for Music of American Jewish Experience at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music.

Program Notes

Tales from Chelm for string quartet (1991)

Schoenfield’s Tales from Chelm—Four Pieces for String Quartet, completed in 1991, is a programmatic work that depicts humorous incidents, scenes, and characters from eastern European Jewish folklore centered around the Polish city of Chelm and its imaginary Jewish inhabitants.

The very mention of the city of Chelm can evoke laughter, owing to the large body of humorous stories connected to its mythical former Jewish residents. Since at least the 19th century, generations of eastern European Yiddish-speaking Jews and their descendants have been entertained by those sometimes satirical, sometimes nonsensical stories mocking Chelm’s supposed population of fools—sarcastically in folklore as khelmer khakhomim (the wise men of Chelm).

Although it is often assumed to be a completely fictitious town, Chelm (khelem in Yiddish) is actually a small city southwest of Lublin, with a centuries-old serious Jewish history. Its Jewish community, virtually extinct since the German deportation and slaughter of the Jewish population in 1942, is thought by some to be one of the oldest in Poland—possibly of medieval origin. In 1939, just prior to the German invasion of Poland that year, Chelm’s Jewish population was estimated at approximately 15,000. Only fifteen of the handful left behind by the Germans survived to be liberated by the Red Army in 1944. The earliest documented evidence of the city’s existence dates to 1442. Early in the 19th century a local Hassidic dynasty was founded there, after which the city’s rabbis were Hassidim. At its peak, the Jewish community—probably about fifty percent of the total population at the time of the German invasion—boasted the typical communal and religious institutions: a yeshiva (talmudic learning center), an orphanage, an old-age home, a secondary school, two Jewish weekly periodicals, and synagogues (one of which may have dated to the 13th century). All were destroyed by the Germans between 1939 and 1944.

Chelm’s comic notoriety stems from the perception of its residents as naïve and sometimes childlike simpletons—unable to separate theory from practice, incapable of deductive reasoning or problem solving, and prone to silly conclusions and confusions. Those perceptions eventually acquired the status of folklore throughout Poland and other regions of eastern Europe—much as jokes or comically derogatory anecdotes about stereotypical daftness have characterized inhabitants of Gotham, England, or certain regions or rural parts of the United States, however unfairly.

Typical stories about the “wise men of Chelm” concern senseless solutions to dilemmas and portray a community mentally overwhelmed by ordinary as well as self-created problems and befuddled by questions requiring even a modest degree of practical wisdom. Many Chelm tales and their variants are found in published collections, but the principal vehicle of dissemination was, as is the case with folklore by its very nature—oral transmission.

Awareness of some typical Chelm tales can provide a wider context for Schoenfield’s depictions and may further enrich our appreciation of his music. For example, one of the best-known stories concerns a group of Chelm laborers who are constructing a building atop a hill. They must bring dozens if not hundreds of large and heavy boulders up the hill by hand, without benefit of horses or mules. More than halfway through the process, a passerby notices them struggling to carry the rocks up the steep incline, at great risk of injury, and he suggests that a more judicious procedure would be to roll them up the hill instead. Seizing on that advice, the Chelm workers proceed to carry each boulder to the bottom again so that they can avail themselves of the passerby’s advice and roll them up—now observing how much easier their task is!

In another story (told as a prelude at the premiere of the piece by the Ciompi Quartet), a traveler passing through Chelm purchases bread and pickles at a local store. After weighing both, the merchant informs the traveler that he owes him eleven kopeks: seven for the bread and seven for the pickles. Not wanting to take advantage of the merchant’s mistake, the traveler reminds him that twice seven would be fourteen. The Chelm merchant, after giving it serious thought, insists that he was correct in the first place—that he is owed only eleven kopeks, since seven plus seven indeed comes to eleven. “I’ll tell you how I know this,” he explains. “When I was married the first time, my wife and I had four children. Then, after my dear wife died, may her soul rest in peace, I married an almone—a widow—who had four children by her first husband. Then, together, we (my second wife and myself) had three children. So you can see: I have seven children, she has seven children, and all together we have eleven children. So seven plus seven make eleven!”

The first movement of Schoenfield’s Tales is titled A Meeting of the Council of Sages. The Chelm Jews have decided that they need a new synagogue. The residents all pitch in and begin digging a hole for the foundation. Working furiously, they eventually have an excavation, as well as a huge mound of earth, and they are at a loss to know what to do with it or how to dispose of it. So the council of elders is convened to find a solution. After days of deliberation, the council comes up with the solution: Dig a second hole and put the earth from the first one into the second. The town is in awe at the wisdom of the sages, and digging of the second hole is commenced the same day. Soon there is a large and deep enough second hole for depositing the earth from the first. Only then do the Chelm Jews realize that they now have another mound of earth on their hands. Completely confounded now, they decide to take the unusual step of bypassing the council and going directly to the wisest man in all Chelm, the retired rabbi of the town, Reb Leib. After scratching his head, tugging at his beard, and pacing around the room five times, Reb Leib finally has the answer: “My friends,” he counsels, “you must dig yet another hole. But this time, you must simply make it twice as deep.”

The program of the second movement, A Tightrope Walker in Chelm, finds the city in the throes of a severe winter, with all the Jews suffering from debilitating colds. Their noses run incessantly, and no one can work or even sleep. The wise men of Chelm come up with an ingenious solution. They string a wire high above the main square of the town and invite Veruchika, the beautiful female tightrope walker from the city of Pultusk, to perform her tightrope-walking stunts for Chelm. Scantily clad, with a parasol in one hand, she parades back and forth across the wire. Everyone in town turns out to watch her; the women jab their husbands in the ribs for looking up so eagerly at the enticing Veruchika, which the women and children do as well. And once again the wisdom of the town elders and sages is proved, for as the townsfolk raise their heads and crane their necks to see Veruchika above the square on the tightrope, their noses—as if by magic—cease to drip.

The third movement, Witch Cunegunde, depicts the purported evil sorceress Cunegunde, who is said to live in the forest outside Chelm. Cunegunde is a long-standing local legend whom parents invoke as a threat to misbehaving children, saying that if a child were to be sent into the forest as punishment, Cunegunde would catch him and make his ears grow down to his feet or turn his nose into a corkscrew. All misfortunes in the city—bankruptcy, an unhappy marriage, a damaging storm—are attributed to the witch, who takes credit for them because it strengthens her reputation as a sorceress. Cunegunde is not without a weakness for love, however, and she has fallen in love with the town rabbi, Reb Leib, during one of his walks in the forest. However, since he is under Divine protection, none of her sorcery—including feminine wiles, potions, and other tricks—have succeeded in attracting his love in return.

The similarity between the witch’s name in the Chelm tale and the fictional character Cunégonde in Voltaire’s novel Candide is difficult to ignore. Indeed, the two names may be identical, with the slight variation only a matter of Yiddish pronunciation. Voltaire’s character, who engages in multiple amorous and sexual exploits as the mistress of three men (two of them simultaneously) before marrying Candide in the end, is thought by some literary scholars to have her derivation in Cunigunde of Luxemburg, wife of the 11th-century Holy Roman Emperor Henry II. Whether or not Voltaire so based his character, the name itself is believed by many etymologists to be a pun on the Latin and French terms for female genitalia (which became a coarse physiological term and a vulgar epithet in English, signifying, among other things, a nasty, despicable woman). Given the singularity of the name, pure coincidence strains the imagination. But how the name of Voltaire’s character—or the earlier Luxembourgian one—might have found its way into a Yiddish tale in Poland, if indeed there is any connection, is open to conjecture.

The fourth and final movement, The Soldiers of Chelm, reflects another case of the “wisdom” of Chelm’s Jews. A famous rabbi from Lublin is about to arrive one morning on a visit to Chelm, following a snowstorm the previous night. Remarking on the beauty of the freshly fallen layer of pristine snow covering the ground in front of the synagogue, the people try to come up with a way to avoid having the rabbi make footprints in the snow, thus ruining its breathtaking effect. They huddle in council and arrive at a brilliant solution: A welcoming committee of four strong men will meet the rabbi at the railroad station, hoist him up into a high chair fitted with long slats, and carry him up the hill, across the expanse, and into the synagogue. That way, the rabbi’s feet need never touch the ground and ruin the layer of snow.

Meanwhile, the army regiment in Chelm has been suffering serious defeats, which concern the entire town. They have been pummeled by their adversaries in Nashelsk; they have lost the Battle of the River; and even a girls’ sport team from Vilna has gotten the better of them, which was the last straw for Chelm. Something must be done. Feitl the Thief comes forward and announces that if the town were to grant him full authority (and immunity) as its leader, he would break the tide of misfortunes. With unanimous agreement, Feitl is appointed the mayor, simultaneously given an absurd array of titles—including minister of war, chancellor of the exchequer, and anything else they can find to aggrandize him. Feitl’s first official act is to issue a proclamation stating that stealing is no longer a crime, but he also follows through on his assurances, arranging first for the army to be outfitted with new, stolen equipment and ammunition. The army goes on to victory after glorious victory throughout northeastern and central Poland and even beyond. Feitl’s ego gets the better of him, and he decides to go to America to conquer Chicago—for some reason, the American city perceived in Chelm as the ultimate utopia. He leaves on this mission, and of course, no one ever hears from him again.

The first movement combines the character of a typical eastern European Jewish wedding dance, such as a freylekh, with echoes of actual Hassidic niggunim (sing. nign, denoting not only a tune in its generic sense—the original and literal meaning of the word—but also a spiritual melody, whether joyous or meditative, specific to Hassidic rituals and celebrations). At the outset, Schoenfield quotes a well-known nign of the Lubavitcher Hassidim (the dynasty also now known as Habad, for its acronym that represents the three words for wisdom, understanding, and knowledge). Although even the first part of the tune is not quoted in its entirety, it is sufficiently and instantly recognizable before its alteration following three measures of its statement, with its syncopated incipit and semiquaver and quaver/semiquaver figures. This first part of the opening nign becomes the principal thematic material of the movement, recurring throughout. The second part, or b section of the same tune, appears later as well, as does another Lubavitcher nign identifiable by its initial leap of a fifth and its dwelling on the fifth tone. But the melodic substance always returns to the initial nign as the point of reference, which is heard in various alterations and extensions played by each of the four strings at various times. There is a driving, motoric force throughout the movement, with unrelenting energy, as the semiquavers of the initial nign are expanded and extended to a fortissimo climax, with no ritard.

The second movement is marked “alla Marcia,” but it is as much a depiction of the steps of the tightrope walker as it is a march. The principal motive, a dotted rhythmic figure stated initially by the first violin, is heard passim in various extensions, often accompanied by marchlike pulsating chords, evenly paced. The overall character becomes lyrical toward the end, as the movement fades to its conclusion.

The third, slow movement has a meditative, almost plaintive quality. Yet its motion, too, is continuous, even as it changes meters. Perhaps its most gentle as well as its most passionate moments reflect some sympathy with Cunegunde’s weak spot—her unrequited love for Reb Leib. It builds to a feeling of intensity, punctuated by a short waltzlike section, but ends softly (ppp) with ethereal harmonics.

The final movement returns to a quasi-Hassidic flavor, although without recognizable quotations, in a furious, ebullient expression that recalls the energy of the first movement. Reflecting the new victories of Chelm’s army, it builds with the frenzy typical of the accelerating energy of Hassidic dances as well as joyous niggunim.

Throughout all four movements, the perfectly crafted string writing, as well as the harmonic language, are reminiscent—in the best sense of original artistic inspiration—of Bartók’s quartets, with echoes of Prokofiev and Shostakovich as well. The dissonances are mild, always allowing the melodic material to remain transparent; and the textures recall advanced neoclassicism, but always with Schoenfield’s unique stamp. The melodic material, whether actual Hassidic niggunim or original tune fragments in the same vein, is developed with typical classical and neoclassical procedures such as extension, fragmentation, augmentation, and counterpoint.

Neil W. Levin; Milken Archive

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Intermezzo No. 2 for piano (2004)

“Schoenfeld has described his Three Intermezzi (for Piano Solo) as one of a very few works he has written simply to please himself. In his words, ‘Here is music my hands feel like touching with sounds my ears enjoy perceiving.’ Its three movements were written at different times, but coalesced into a single work. The Three Intermezzi explore an interior world devoid of anything ostentatious. Schoenfeld’s signature counterpoint–echoing both Bach and Brahms–is evident throughout. The music is intimate, serene and contemplative. ‘It’s the sort of music I improvise at night with the lights out and the house empty,’ he says. The first Intermezzo quotes a bit of a Bach prelude, then develops it in waves and spirals that course up and down the keyboard. The second Intermezzo emerges from a single repeated note into an oscillating minor third and finally into a dark and soulful Sicilienne. The third Intermezzo, as long as the other two combined, explores the boundaries where decidedly crafted music and mediation combine.”

Christina Dahl

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Carolina Réveille for violin, viola, cello, piano (1996)

Paul Schoenfield composed Carolina Reveille in response to a commission from Jack and Linda Hoeschler to honor their longtime friends, Dick and Maryan Schall. When Dick Schall, a onetime executive at MGM Studios, provided a list of his favorite songs from MGM musicals, Schoenfield selected Carolina in the Morning as the basis for his new piece. This classic song, written in 1922 by Walter Donaldson with lyrics by Gus Kahn, was used in the 1945 musical The Dolly Sisters, starring Betty Grable and June Haver.

Schoenfield’s composition comprises a set of free variations, in gradually increasing tempo, on motivic fragments from the song. The tempo slows in the second-last variation, which closes in a fleeting quotation of the original song before the piece charges to a boisterous conclusion. Carolina Reveille received its first performance in St. Paul, Minnesota, on February 18, 1996. The performers were Young-Nam Kim (violin), Michael Adams (viola), and Peter Howard (cello) with the composer as pianist.

Karl Gwiasda

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Four Motets for unaccompanied chorus (1995)

Four Motets is an a cappella setting of four excerpts from Psalm 86 (seven verses in all), written in 1995 on commission from a consortium consisting of Chanticleer, the Dale Warland Singers, the Phoenix Bach Choir, and La Vie. The verses chosen by the composer all center around a theme of intense personal supplication-for God to listen; for God to answer; for God to guard our souls and thus keep us dose to Him; for God to guide and teach us; for God to show us truth; and for God to make us whole. In fact, some of the constituent phrases and sentiments of these verses were paraphrased many centuries later by paytanim (authors of liturgical poetry) in their s’lil)ot-poems of the penitential liturgy. Examples are hatte adonai ozn’kha {Incline Your ear, 0 Lord; v.1); and ki ata adonai tov v’sallal), v’rav l)esed . (For You, O Lord, are good and ready to pardon, and full of kindness…; v.S). The deeply spiritual character of these devotions guides the continuously unfolding direction of the music.

These settings span a stylistic gulf of 500 years, connecting two disparate but still fully Western music worlds in a synthesis that suggests, as does this Psalm itself, timelessness and universality. Four Motets is transparently cast in the mold of High Renaissance polyphony, with silken textures that drift and weave among various levels of density, well-paced swells that mirror the words, and independent seamless voice leading. These characteristics, together with their soaring spirit, give the motets their quintessentially Renaissance aura, but they are subtly infused with judiciously crafted chromaticism, 20th-century harmonic moments, and even some strident dissonances that somehow do not detract from the overall Renaissance character. To the contrary, they suggest a Renaissance form reclothed in contemporary guise-almost as if the rules of Palestrina or species counterpoint had been revised slightly and pantonally applied.

When the Italian Jewish composer Salomone Rossi (ca. 1570-Ca. 1630) published his collection of Hebrew liturgical settings in Venice in 1623 (Hashirim Asher Ushlomo), he provided the first and ultimately the only serious and substantial repertoire of synagogue music based on late Renaissance polyphony (even though his secular music from that time frame had already entered the early Baroque era). After Rossi’s death, that repertoire-which never really caught on in Italian synagogues during his lifetime-was virtually forgotten until its academic discovery in the 19th century. And it was not until well into the 20th century that it received any appreciable performances. Apart from some subsequent rearrangement of a few of those Rossi pieces, no lasting synagogue music was ever again composed in that 16th-century style. Schoenfield’s motets offer one of the first reconsiderations of Renaissance polyphony in connection with sacred Hebrew texts. In the context of their 20th-century harmonic vocabulary, they might be viewed as a kind of logical extension-and contemporary version-of Rossi’s work.

Neil W. Levin; Milken Archive

Four Motets (Psalm 86: 1-5, 7, 11-12)

I.

Hatei Hashem azn’kha aneini

Shamra nafshi ki chasid ani.

Hosha avd’kha ata Elokai

Haboteakh eilekha.

Incline Your ear, O Lord, answer me,

for I am poor and needy.

Guard my soul, for I am devout;

Save Your servant who trusts in You.

II.

Sameiakh nefesh avdecha

Ki eilekha nafshi esa

Ki ata tov l’khol kor’ekha

Ki ata tov v’salakh  l’khol.

Sameiakh nefesh avdecha

Gladden the soul of Your servant, for to You, my Lord,

I lift up my soul.

For You, my Lord, are good and forgiving

to all who call on You.

Gladden the soul of Your servant, for to You, my Lord,

I lift up my soul.

Ill.

B’yom tzarati ekra’eka ki ta’aneini

In my time of trouble I call You,

for You will answer me.

IV.

Horeini darkekha ahaleicha ba’amitekha

Yachid l’vavi l’yir’ah sh’mekha.

Odekha, odekha b’khol l’vavi odekha

Yachid libi l’yirah sh’mekha

Teach me Your way, O Lord;

That I may walk in Your truth;

Unite my heart to fear Your name.

I will thank You, myLord, my God, with all my heart.

Translation: JPS Tanakh 1999

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Camp Songs for mezzo-soprano, baritone, violin, cello, double bass, clarinet, piano (2001)

Camp Songs is a setting of five poems written in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp during World War II. The poems are part of an extensive collection of music, art and poetry by hundreds of camp prisoners, compiled by Aleksander Kulisiewicz, a non-Jewish Polish survivor who was incarcerated because of his politics. After liberation, Kulisiewicz devoted his life to collecting these works, which are now housed in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Music of Remembrance Artistic Director Mina Miller discovered the collection while doing research in the Museum’s archives. She decided, “There was no question that I wanted Schoenfield to do something with this.” Miller and Schoenfield met in July 2000 at the Museum to delve into the collection, with the guidance of resident musicologist Bret Werb. Schoenfield selected five poems, all by Kulisiewicz himself. Schoenfield was especially drawn to the mocking, sarcastic ones. As he told a Seattle public radio audience, “When I saw the movie The Producers, I decided that if I were ever going to express my anger to God about the Holocaust, it would be like that.” Camp Songs challenges the expectations of even the most hardened student of Holocaust art. Schoenfield has selected poems that lay bare the raw life and fury seething beneath the terrors of the camps. “The poems that I am setting,” he writes, “are caricatures which (in Joseph Conrad’s words) ‘put the face of a joke upon the body of truth.’ They are an affirmation of dignity; a declaration of man’s superiority to all that befalls him.”

Camp Songs received its world premiere at MOR’s Holocaust Remembrance Day concert on April 7, 2002, at Benaroya Hall. Mina Miller, to whom the work is dedicated, was the pianist for that performance. Camp Songs was a finalist for the 2003 Pulitzer Prize in Music. The work, in a new English translation by Katarzyna Jerzak, was featured at MOR’s concert on November 8, 2004, marking the 66th anniversary of Kristallnacht.

Music of Remembrance overview: https://musicofremembrance.org/show-details/camp-songs

Camp Songs texts by Aleksander Kulisiewicz

(translated from Polish)

Black Boehm

Both by day and by night,

I burn corpses with all my might!

I let out a black, black smoke,

For I am the black, black Boehm!

Fine young ladies and old biddies,

Little kiddies, too, why not!

A hundred chimneys would be nice,

So genau is Birkenau.

A hundred chimneys would be nice,

So genau is Birkenau.

Free for all, since there’s no devil

Aber Juden sind nicht da

Else in nineteen forty-three

SS-men will come to me!

SS-men will come to me!

I am healthy, filled with joy,

And I burn by night and day.

I’ll send up my greasy smoke,

For I am the black, black Boehm.

The Corpse-Carriers’ Tango

Oh, that nation of dogs called Germania,

Has for four years been torturing us.

And the heat from the fire burning corpses,

Is a warm and inviting plus,

Because one fellow there cooks another,

Neither baker nor butcher is he;

So, my friend, hurry into the oven,

“Immer langsam und sicher und froh!”

After the first poke you’re feeling better,

Punch you in the snout, but you just laugh…

The third kick is the one that really gets you (sticks),

And the fourth one makes you wet your pants!

Five dark scoundrels kick you in the kidneys,

Brother, now spit out six bloody teeth!

Number seven’s heel goes in your belly,

Only then are things just truly great!

Old lady death will come to you,

Haggard old thing, she’s lonely!

She’s got her eye on you, oh boy!

She eats you up just like candy

Down to the cellar you both go,

You’ll meet a gruesome fate,

Soon, my dear, you’ll give off a stench-

What a grizzly tete-a-tete!

In one minute you’re in heaven, brother,

And you swallow two warm doughnuts there.

Three nice angels sweetly scrub your bottom,

And they cry out: “So ein Huebscher Arsch!”…

Angel number four, the darling Ania,

Pouring five quick shots down her foolish throat.

With ten angels sleep, my little baby…

Sleep in heaven, sleep now: “c’est la vie!”

Heil, Sachsenhausen!

I am a wild man, a half savage Polack –

Shitly little clod; scheissen Polack, clod.

Und warum denn, warum denn to Africa?

Here’s your colony!

They brought you like a slave;

They own you completely,

Blood drips from your mouth for

Alles Scheiss ist egal.

Ay, Sachsenhausen,

Exotic colony, sweltering

Germania richtig wild,

Heil Sachsenhausen.

Legs as thin as dry bamboo shoots,

Almost dead like blackened cactuses.

“Heil, heil es lebe Kulturkampf.”

Mädchen will you be a nice girl,

Polack that I am.

Gibt’s denn so was?  Oh, you wild savage!

You have pretty eyes, oh what pretty eyes.

From her Mädchen mommy

And her stupid daddy

Will come checkered babies, will come checkered babies,

Schwartz und weiss und rot…

Ay, Sachsenhausen!

Paradise so beloved

All humanity adores you.

Heil, Sachsenhausen!

And if I should die tomorrow,

I will kick the bucket at you.

“Heil, Heil! Es lebe Kulturkampf!

Mister C.

It’s the second year, oh dear God,

Since the stubborn Swastikas

Can’t be shaken off our assess:

Otherwise it’s “On your knees!”

Such a scary little Führer,

(Such a stinking robber-goy,)

With his head chock full of bullshit,

While his wretched Volk shriek, “Heil!”

But Mister C. puffs on his big stogie,

Mister C. blows out some smoke;

While Europe falls and crumbles

He’s as cold as, Yes, he’s cold as he can be!

Mister C. snuffs out his cigar (see-gar),

And he spits on Adolf’s “Sieg”,

They’ll give him a pretty fun’ral,

Maybe even in nineteen forty-three!

Maybe, oh maybe, just maybe –

But who can really know?

Who can really know, truly know for certain?

Poor devil, maybe, just maybe,

We’ll see the English Sea…maybe

Yoom pom tiu dee dee dee yoom pah.

Yoom pom tiu dee dee dee yoo –

Maybe, maybe – who can know for certain,

Maybe with assistance from the Russkies.

Maybe from the “Eastern Wind?” we’ll get some help. . .

Just maybe.

Adolf’s Farewell to the World

By Volga’s waters, chasing the Russkies,

The noble soldiers are fleeing.

Und immer forward und immer weiter,

The Russkies are chasing the Fritzes.

Und immer forward und immer weiter,

The Russkies chasing the Fritzes.

My Leningrad in the distance.

In the Crimean the party is over.

They’ll beat the crap out of me!

In the Crimean the party is over.

They’ll beat the crap out of me!

Farewell my mountains, my Ural Mountains,

And you, too, Ruddy Armada.

Oh mighty Stalin, Stalin so manly,

Oh, I am the impotent Adolf!

Oh mighty Stalin, Stalin of steel,

And I am the impotent Adolf.

Und immer forward und immer weiter…

Goodbye to Europe, my gracious Europe,

Forgive my “Arbeit und Freude”,

Some other time, some other place,

I might yet marry you, darling!

Some other time, some other place,

I might yet marry you, darling!

Goodbye my virgins, lovely Kraut virgins,

Who will now tell me my fortune?

When I was a young boy, so proud and saintly,

I never stuck it in the wrong place!

“Sieg Heil, sieg Heil” my General leader of shitheads!

You great and magnificent province,

You’ll get a pension ever so handsome,

For Goebbels’ and for my Bromberg.

Guitars are sounding, Germany’s drowning,

Victory froze on the Tundra.

And Adolf’s axis, broke as a poet,

And, once again, he’s an orphan.

A Paul Schoenfield Video Sampler

Portrait of Pinchas – Memorial Concert for Paul Schoenberg

Pro-Arte Micro Documentary

Young People’s Concert Series – Leonard Bernstein

Featuring a 19-year-old Schoenfield (clip is at 5:11)