MOSES IN NEDERLAND: II. | Michael Kropf

The second movement of Michael Kropf's "Moses in Nederland," from its world premiere performance by Contemporaneous with Sabrina Tabby as soloist on August 27, 2022 at Roulette Intermedium as part of Contemporaneous’s show GENEALOGY. Co-commissioned by Contemporaneous and the Adele and John Gray Endowment Fund.

Moses in Nederland

(Michael Kropf)

Moses in Nederland is a nineteen minute piece for violin soloist and orchestra. The piece is named for my great-grandfather Moses Schenkein, who as a European Jew living in Holland, was forced to lead his family on a dangerous and miraculous journey of escape from the horrors of the Holocaust. He was also an amateur violinist and composer, and left behind a folder of short melodic compositions. These works include melodic settings of Hebrew and Yiddish poetry, violin music, and a number of short tangos. Some of the melodies contained within the folder are arranged for larger forces by the composer Wilhelm Rettich, a prominent German-Jewish composer who immigrated to Holland after the Nazis came into power in Germany.

As a composer and violinist myself, I’ve always felt a special kinship with my great-grandfather Moses; each movement of the concerto focuses on one of his melodies found in the aforementioned folder of compositions that my family inherited.

The first movement is an elaboration upon Schenkein’s melodic setting of poet Hayim Bialik’s “A Faithful Tear.” This poem, written in Hebrew,  describes a single “faithful” tear, carried in the “secret” of the author’s heart. Translating this poem, I was intrigued by and drawn to the mystery of what it might have represented for my great-grandfather. In this movement of my piece, my relationship with that mystery is enacted in a structural way: Schenkein’s melody is never presented in full within the movement. Instead, it darts in and out of focus in fragments that are never entirely resolved. I also engage with the harmony of Rettich’s arrangement, building a harmonic framework out of its opening chords.

The concerto’s second movement is a theme-and-variation on a Schenkein melody entitled “Elegy.” This melody is a setting of a Yiddish poem of the same name by Avrom Reyzen. In contrast to the first movement of the concerto, this movement quotes Schenkein’s music directly before devolving back into an echo of the concerto’s first movement.

The third movement of the work does not directly utilize music written by Schenkein. Instead, it serves as a reflection on the title of one of his tangos:  “Hollandia.” Schenkein had moved to Holland as a young man to escape the religious strictures of his sofer father in Krakow, Poland. In this movement, I imagine a young and optimistic Schenkein who is excited to adopt a new city as his own. Although Schenkein passed away long before I was born, the sense I get from family stories is that he loved Holland very much, in spite of the circumstances in which he was forced to flee it. After living in Israel following the war, Schenkein became one of the relatively few Jews to actually return to Europe; he moved back to Holland.

—Michael Kropf

Biography

Michael Kropf is a Michigan-based composer whose work deals with hidden emotions and evocative places.  He has collaborated with Marin Alsop and the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, the Ann Arbor Symphony, the Apple Hill String Quartet, and the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble.  His music has been described as "a brilliant, rapid fire stretch of perpetual motion," by the SF Chronicle's Joshua Kosman. Recent project include a violin sonata for violinist Matt Albert and pianist Forrest Howell. He is currently writing a violin concerto for Sabrina Tabby and Contemporaneous.

Michael is also an active music teacher, pianist, violinist, and conductor. He has taught classes at the University of Michigan, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Pre-College and the Academy of Art. He serves as an academic dean and faculty member at the Walden School Young Musicians Young Musician's Program in New Hampshire. 

He earned his doctoral degree in composition at The University of Michigan in 2022, where he studied with Kristin Kuster and Evan Chambers.  He received his Master’s degree from the San Francisco Conservatory in 2016, where he studied with Evan Chambers. He has also received private study in composition from John Adams.

His work has received recognition from insitutions including ASCAP, The San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and the The Music Teacher’s National Association.