With: Boris Brott, National Academy Orchestra, Arcady Singers, Brott Festival Choir
When: Friday, Aug. 20, at 7:30 p.m.
Where: McIntyre Theatre, Mohawk College, 135 Fennell Ave. W.
Cost: $27, senior $22, student $10 (plus HST)
Call: 905-525-7664, ext. 16
By Leonard Turnevicius
THE HAMILTON SPECTATOR
January 7, 1993. 10:50 p.m. Srul Irving Glick walked out of Beth Tikvah Synagogue in North York just as he'd done so many times before. But this wouldn't turn out to be just another night.
Glick, then 58 and the synagogue's music director, had earlier wrapped up Thursday evening choir practice and was ready to climb into his car when he was approached by a man sporting a ponytail. Without uttering a word, the man opened his coat, pulled out a gun and fired.
Glick turned and ran. The shooter gave chase, firing four more shots. One of them hit Glick. A nearby female resident heard gunfire and wailing. She called 911. By the time police and emergency personnel arrived, the gunman had long fled. Glick was rushed to Sunnybrook hospital, where surgeons removed a 9-mm bullet from his right calf.
Who would want to do this to Glick? He was a prolific composer in various media including more than 200 liturgical works, a former producer at the CBC, Beth Tikvah's choir director since 1969 and its composer-in-residence from 1978.
Glick wondered this himself. And was this shooting linked to an attempted home burglary eight months earlier in which he fought off an intruder armed with an axe? Glick had suffered head injuries in that incident.
Needless to say, these events had a profound effect on Glick's psyche and music. His Second String Quartet was written some months after the shooting. Glick admitted that he was taken aback at the aggressive drive, the vehemence, and the bitterness of the music that poured out of him.
That, however, would change in another commission, this one from Elmer Iseler and the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir. Iseler wanted a choral work with which to celebrate the TMC's centennial and asked if Glick's piece would also include some Jewish hymns.
For texts, Glick chose Avinu Malkeinu (Our Father, Our King) and Adonai, Adonai (The Lord, The Eternal from Exodus 34:6-7). He framed those by opening with Thus Saith the Lord (Jeremiah 6:16), placing Donia Clenman's poem Rainbow Symphony as the third movement, and ending with Rabbi Abraham Kook's Radiant is the World Soul. Glick titled his song cycle Triumph of the Spirit.
In his program notes for the 1996 publication of the work, Glick explained the effect of the shooting on his world view. "The sheer perverseness and unexpectedness of this event forced me to re-examine my deepest feelings about life and my place in it. It was then I realized, and with great impact, that everybody in some way or another struggles against the hardships and adversities in life, and that each personal and spiritual success becomes a 'triumph of the spirit.'
"The origin of this work, as with so many of my compositions, comes from a faith found deep within my soul; the purposefulness, the beauty, the richness, and the indwelling love in our world, is the most precious and wondrous gift of God. That is not to say that I am unaware of the pain and suffering and the evil in this world; rather, it's a turning, an illumination of a totality which makes every moment priceless."
Make no mistake, Triumph of the Spirit is no 30-minute-long, c'mon-let's-get-happy, soporific singfest. Glick poured out music that was in turn reverential, wistful, high-spirited and gentle, culminating in a grand Mahlerian climax on the phrase, "Come find peace, embrace delight and taste of the goodness of God." Glick passed away in 2002 after a long battle with multiple myeloma.
Glick's Triumph of the Spirit will be performed at tomorrow night's Brott Summer Festival closing concert in Mohawk College's McIntyre Theatre. Also on the bill, several concerto competition winners whose performances were bumped from a July concert, plus the paean of all paeans to humanity, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.
Read Leonard Turnevicius's reports from some of Europe's classical music festivals at
http://www.jamilton.ca/.