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She gave a start and grabbed the teacher’s hand, but a
policeman pushed her forcefully away from him. This
incident awakened a desire in her to express the
experience in sounds, and most likely, this is when the
seeds were planted for the later creative process for
all her compositions.
In 1922 she settled in Moscow, where her musical talent
ripened. In 1924, she began composing full-time. The
themes of her songs were enriched with new motifs. In
addition to the nature songs, she wrote social songs and
songs about labor. She began to write music for the
texts of works for children and she became popular in
Moscow musical circles. M. Gnesin arranged her two
songs, “Song of the Machines” and “Spring is Here.”
In
1925, the music sector of the state publisher in the
Soviet Union published her first collection for
pre-school children, Little Hammers Resound, with
forty songs. This book quickly became beloved among
children and educators in the broad network of Yiddish
pre-school institutions. In 1932, the “Truth” publishing
house released her second songbook, Work, Play, Song,
for children in higher grades, and finally, in 1936, the
same publisher released her songbook, Little Drill
and in 1939 (there), Let’s Sing. In 1940, the
state music publisher released her fifth collection of
songs.
The second world war did not interrupt B.’s creative
activity, and she wrote a number of new songs with
music, particularly the composition for the poem, “Babi
Yar” by Shike Driz, which was sung by Nehama Lifshits.
At the same time, she devoted herself to pedagogical
work as a teacher of song and rhythm in pre-school
courses.
B. worked with a number of Soviet Yiddish poets and
wrote music for the poems of Hofshteyn, Markish, Fefer,
Halkin, Fininberg, Vergelis, and Kushnirov, as well as
for texts of Peretz and Reyzen, and her compositions
were heard on the stages of cabarets, performed by
actors and singers: Clara Young, Sara Fibich, Saul
Liubimov, Zinovii Z. Shulman, L. Rozina, A. Shekhter,
Nehama Lifshits, etc. Some of her compositions were made
into records (music-disks).
In 1966, the Moscow publishing house “Music” released
her book Yiddish Songs (for solo and choir with
piano accompaniment). Though she was already very ill,
she made a strong effort to read the proofs of the book
and she gave firm instructions to her husband, the
literary researcher and theater critic Yehoshua
Liubomirski, to make sure that the final publication was
corrected.
B. died April 26, 1967 in Moscow. Natan Zabara described
her work thus:
“When a listener first encounters Riv[k]a Boyarska’s
work, he or she gets the impression that the
compositions were meant to grow up together with the
children for whom she first created them. For example,
the first two collections … were for children in upper
pre-school, the later songs were for school-age
children, then for youth, growing up to become diverse
adults. Boyarskaya began her creative work at a time
when she was deeply involved in the world of children,
among homeless, abandoned children, and, knowing that
the songs were for them like bread, she was
simultaneously writing both the text and the music. She
rocked them to sleep, played with them, enriched their
world-view, describing nature, beauty, the world around
them. Though they were created at different times, in
general her songs were suffused with motherly
tenderness.
Remarkably, Boyarska was never interested in cultivating
or revising folksongs, and yet her music sounds totally
like folk music. Her songs capture the listener with
their sincerity, simplicity. For this reason, they are
familiar and accessible for the masses. It sounds as
though it should belong to the people. The
characteristic of Boyarska’s music is its tender
lyricism, its colorful, national melody. But, it’s
important to note that Rivka Boyarskaya did not remain
in the narrow confines of her Yiddish origins. She
struck out on a broader road. In Fefer’s “Birobizhaner
Lullaby,” in the music for Vergelis’s “Open Hearts” the
listener senses the distinctive breadth of the
composer’s musical compass.”
Zabara
recalls that when the poet Shmuel Halkin discovered that
she wrote music for his famous poem, “Deep Pits, Red
Clay” during a period of illness, despite being ill
himself (three weeks before his death), he visited her
in order to hear her music, and from his meager words,
the idea emerged that his song would become a new
salvation.
Munye Gleyzer wrote the following for the first
anniversary of B.’s death:
“For more than fifty years of her life, she not only
created musical interpretations for the poems from such
poets as Leyb Kvitko, David Hofshteyn, Itsik Fefer,
Shmuel Halkin, S. Rosin, and others, but she also
created 40 song-texts of her own with original melodies
that were sung in Yiddish schools and on cabaret stages
by such artists as Clara Young, Sara Fibik, Shmuel
Liubimov, Z. Shulman, R. Ros, and others. Some of her
melodies were also recorded (phonograph-records) for
example by Nehama Lifshits (the lullaby, “Babi Yar”,
text—Sh. Driz).
Writers, artists, musicians, and readers of Soviet
Homeland gathered in the editorial office in order
to celebrate the memory of gifted artists. In his short
introductory remarks, Arn Vergelis dwelt on the complete
body of R. Boyarska’s creative corpus and pointed out
that with her 6 songbooks, Rivka Boyarska showed herself
to be
the celebrator of the productive process of the Jewish
folk-masses in Soviet manufacturing. The last period of
her life was occupied with the journal
Soviet Homeland,
where her musical work was printed.
The Moscow composer Atilie Lichtenshteyn (wife of Yankev
Shternberg) described the national and international
praise for Rivka Boyarska’s work. She spoke about the
sincerity of Boyarska’s melodies and the simplicity of
their musical composition. At the end, she played a
musical fantasy by R. Boyarksa, “A Yiddish Wedding-Song”
on the piano. The theater critic Yehoshua Liubomirski
(husband of the deceased) told about the pitfalls that
the artist encountered in her life and how the musician
Z. Kiselgof, who had at that time “infused” with Yiddish
folk music the spectacle The Sorceress in the
Moscow [Yiddish] State-Theater, helped Rivka Boyarska
conquer her difficulties and publish her first songbook,
Little Hammers, in 1925.”
The musical portion of the memorial service, composed
exclusively of B.’s work, was performed by Dina
Potopovska, Mikhail Magid, Mark Shekhter, Olga
Velmozshina, Leonid Vaynshteyn, and Boris Tsitovitsh.
Sh. E. and Sh. E. from Y. Liubomirski.
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G. Pres—Rivka Boyarska, “M.F.” N.Y.,
June 5, 1967.
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N. Samarov—A Songbook by Rivka
Boyarska, “M.F.” N.Y., August 7, 1967.
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Munye Gleyzer—Boyarska’s memorial
takes place in Moscow, “M.F.” N.Y., July 10, 1968.
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Natan Zabara—“A Song Goes Around the
World”, Sovietish Heymland, Moscow, N. 8,
1967.
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