Program Notes

Eliot Bailen (1956- )
Perhaps a Butterfly for Flute, Strings, Voices (2010)

Notes for: July 28, 2015

In every year since 1994, Eliot Bailen has performed at the Sebago-Long Lake Music Festival as a nationally recognized cellist. This year, in addition to his performing, he is participating as a leading composer and producer of children’s music. In particular he is known as the founder and director of the “Song to Symphony” project, a school residency program that presents children’s original musicals in an orchestral setting.

This evening we hear another contribution from the musical world of children - Bailen’s setting of four poems by the children of the Nazi concentration camp at Terezin, 40 miles north of Prague, in what is now the Czech Republic. In recent years, the world has been reminded in music, poetry and art of the moving history of that camp, which was established by the Nazi as a “model” concentration camp for “acceptable” Jews and then transformed into a transit camp to Auschwitz.

Given his interest in children, Bailen was deeply moved by the art and poems produced by the 15,000 children incarcerated at Terezin, of whom only 93 survived. The result was the musical work we hear this evening, for which he has provided the following program note:

These song settings of the poetry of the children of Terezin were commissioned by my dear friend, Cantor Rebecca Garfein at Congregation Rodeph Sholom in New York City. One of those passing through Theriesenstadt was Settchen Levy Feist, Cantor Garfein’s great grandmother, who ultimately perished at Auschwitz.

The memory of some of these children was preserved miraculously by art and poems carefully hidden in two suitcases by the artist and teacher, Friedl Dicker-Brandeis, before her deportation to Auschwitz. The butterfly was a the children’s frequent symbol for the freedom which they were denied, and some of their stories and poems were translated and published in the book, I Never Saw Another Butterfly. The lyrics for these songs belong to several poems from this book.

The four poems were selected for their humor, musicality and poignancy. The third song, “Perhaps a Butterfly,” combines the two poems “The Butterfly” and “Dusk.” I noticed that three of the four poems use the word ‘perhaps’ which inspired the title for the song settings.

In my life, I have written hundreds of songs with children as my writing partners. In writing these songs again I have the privilege and honor of working with children, vibrant and alive when they wrote their words. I tried to imagine them so, as I wrote the music. It is incredible how the tragedy of their situation is addressed in their poems — with dignity, little self-pity, and descriptive skill — a moment to imagine that perhaps things could have been different.

My thanks to Cantor Garfein and Congregation Rodeph Sholom for proposing this project and for providing me with the extraordinary opportunity to work with these poems and the memory of these children.

The first performance of Perhaps a Butterfly was given on May 1, 2010, at Rodeph Sholom with Cantor Garfein, soprano; Julia Bailen, Eliot Bailen’s daughter, child soprano; his wife, Susan Rotholz, flute, Harumi Rhodes, violin; Toby Appel, viola, and Eliot, cello.

Copyright © 2015 by Willard J. Hertz