Noam Ben Ze?ev, writing in Ha?aretz, reports on an extraordinary musical discovery made in Jerusalem recently. While preparing for a lecture he was to give at the Rubin Academy of Music and Dance, conductor Charles Zacharie Bornstein came across previously unknown, hand-written notes and revisions to Gustav Mahler?s First Symphony, written by the composer himself. The serendipitous and important discovery led Bornstein, who had arrived in Israel as an oleh (new immigrant) only last month, to tell Ha?aretz, ?God gave me such a beautiful gift and in one day made me an Israeli.?
The annotated ?Jerusalem score? had to be identified conclusively with the help of Universal Edition firm, which publishes the ?official? versions of scores used by most orchestras, the Israel Police forensic identification department, and the Gustav Mahler Library in Paris, according to Ben Ze?ev. All of these sources added their piece to the puzzle to confirm what Bornstein had assumed based on instinct when he first spied the document - Mahler authored the handwritten notes on the printed First Symphony score.
One wonders if the famed Jewish composer, whose position with the Viennese Opera was curtailed due to turn-of-the-20th-century anti-Semitism, would be pleased that the most recent revelation of his handiwork was made at an academy of music in Jerusalem, the capital of the Jewish State.
The annotated ?Jerusalem score? had to be identified conclusively with the help of Universal Edition firm, which publishes the ?official? versions of scores used by most orchestras, the Israel Police forensic identification department, and the Gustav Mahler Library in Paris, according to Ben Ze?ev. All of these sources added their piece to the puzzle to confirm what Bornstein had assumed based on instinct when he first spied the document - Mahler authored the handwritten notes on the printed First Symphony score.
One wonders if the famed Jewish composer, whose position with the Viennese Opera was curtailed due to turn-of-the-20th-century anti-Semitism, would be pleased that the most recent revelation of his handiwork was made at an academy of music in Jerusalem, the capital of the Jewish State.