<p>Leonard Bernstein’s third symphony, “Kaddish”, is a 1963 choral/orchestral work with a narrator. The text for the narrator is by Bernstein himself, while that of the choir is the Jewish prayer the Kaddish, an Aramaic text recited by and for the bereaved after someone passes.</p>
<p>The narrator’s text was later revised in 1977, and it’s that version that I was working with. Originally, the narrator was originally intended to be Bernstein’s wife, Felicia Montealegre, and recordings of this version are out there, but I first listened to the piece with the revision in place, and enjoy that text quite a bit more. This is relevant because the narration in the first version was intended to be for a female narrator in order to emphasize aspects of duality, and the version that I’m used to has a male narrator (Michael Wagar). From LeonardBernstein.com: <em>“In the original version, the choice of a woman as the Speaker and as vocal soloist (singing sacred words traditionally reserved for men in the synagogue) was in itself a dualistic decision. The woman represented in the Symphony, that aspect of humankind which know God through intuition, and can come closest to Divinity, a concept at odds with the male principal of organized rationality.”</em></p>
<p>Interleaved with the Kaddish prayer, the narrator struggles with </p>
