In any case, as Poland had regained its independent statehood, the Berlinskis retained their Polish nationality rather than facing the increasingly difficult task foreigners had in gaining German citizenship at that time, and with success made even less likely because they were Jews.

[2] In fact there was a strong probability, based on the experience of others, that the German authorities would classify them as "stateless", thereby stripping them of any citizenship and eliminating any rights they had as foreigners legally resident in the country.

After observing the formal mourning period called shneim asar chodesh,[6] Herman began private piano lessons under Bronya Gottlieb, a Polish-born woman and a gifted graduate of the Leipzig Conservatory.

Fellow students included the Norwegian composer Geirr Tviett, and it is a sign of Berlinski's skills as a pianist that he gave the premiere performance in 1931 of Tveitt's dynamic First Piano Concerto.

His initial exposure to Lutheran liturgical music and the organ arose from attending Friday evening concerts[8] at Leipzig's Thomaskirche where he heard repertoire largely centred on the period from J.S.

Their repertoire ranged from works by Jewish playwrights such as Sholem Aleichem and Isaac Leib Peretz to classic Russian plays presented in Yiddish translation.

A significant event in Berlinski's professional development was a meeting with Moshe Rudinow[16] who was at that time cantor[17] of New York's Temple Emanu-El, one of the city's leading Reform synagogues.

He studied composition with Messiaen at the 1948 Tanglewood Music Center and gained from him an understanding of rhythmic and harmonic techniques which would affect his approach to using Jewish melodic forms in his later works.

[24] As a result, he quickly demonstrated skill both as a recitalist and as a liturgical organist, setting the direction for the future both in terms of his professional appointments and the types of works which he composed.

During those last years after Rabbi Gerstenfeld's death, requirements for Berlinski's liturgical music decreased, and he took the opportunity to compose larger vocal works and continued writing his sinfonias for organ with other instruments or singers.

Commitments included sessions at the Mendelssohn Academy[27] in Leipzig under the auspices of the United States Information Agency, and at the Europäisches Zentrum für jüdische Musik (European Centre for Jewish Music), Hannover.

This thirty-voice choir continued its work for eleven years, giving concerts of Hanukkah and other high holiday music annually in the John F. Kennedy Centre for the Performing Arts and the Washington National Cathedral.

12 (Die heiligen Zehn Gebote (These Holy Ten Commandments)), for organ, choir, soprano, tenor, baritone, two trumpets and percussion, received its world premiere in the Leipzig Thomaskirche, and was repeated at the Munich Hochschule with Berlinski present.

His final composition, Psalm 130 (Shir hamaaloth (Out of the Depths)) for solo voice, choir and organ, had been commissioned by the Washington National Cathedral for the dedication of its last stained glass window.

Another work, Allegretto grazioso con variazioni: Hommage à Ravel, for piano, also written in 1938, now exists in a revised version dated 1945 and held in The Herman Berlinski Music Collection (HBMC) at The Library of JTSA.

It also appeared later after several revisions as an Organ Suite also under the title, From the World of My Father, but with five movements listed in the HBMC catalogue as Prayer at Midnight (Chazoth), Air (Nigun), Nocturnal Procession, Legend and Ritual Dance.

The HBMC catalogue shows it as having been written originally in 1938, rewritten in 1942 and revised in 1976, and it carries on the cover the alternate title, Peretz Suite: oboe or flute or clarinet and organ or piano, with an explanatory note from the composer, "From incidental music to stage plays by J.L.

"[40] According to the catalogue, there are four movements, Lament, Pastorale, Allegretto, and Song and finale, reflecting some parallels with the suite for clarinet and chamber orchestra mentioned in the previous paragraph.

Some years later the work was being assessed for performance at Emanu-El and was submitted for examination by several musicians including Leonard Bernstein, who noted it to be "a fine compromise between tradition and somewhat contemporary sounds."

For his doctoral dissertation at JTSA, Berlinski composed a large oratorio, Kiddush Ha-Shem (Sanctification of the Name of God) for choir, soloists and orchestra, in memory of those murdered in the Holocaust.

Subtitled Litanies for the persecuted, it is scored for narrator, contralto soloist and organ with a text drawn from poems by Shlomo Ephraim ben Aaron of Łęczyca, Solomon ibn Gabirol, the Book of Jeremiah, and Psalm 94.

[55]Likewise, the last movement, with the arresting subtitle Polymodal Sounds and Motions, a set of variations in chaconne form, derives its thematic material from modes called in Yiddish shtaygers[56] which are used in Ashkenazic cantorial improvisation and take their names from the first words of the prayer with which they are most often used.

[58] The second is called Mogen ovos or Magein avot, a natural minor mode (the first line of the prayer in translation being, "Our forebears' shield, reviver of the dead, incomparable Lord ...".

According to Frohbieter, Berlinski drew a parallel between this movement and the heart attack which he had experienced four years before writing this work, with the abrupt ending of its first section representing the moment of the cardiac arrest itself.

(1979–1980); A Psalm of unity, commissioned in 1980 for the choir of St Margaret's Episcopal Church, Washington DC[35][permanent dead link‍]; Ein Musikalischer Spass: theme and variations from Mozart's Dorfmusikanten-Sextett, K. 522 (1983); Adagietto for flute and organ,[65] and a Sonata for violin and piano: Le violon de Chagall, both in 1985.

After the premiere of The Trumpets of Freedom, critic Joan Reinthaler wrote in The Washington Post: With his new Hanukah oratorio ... Herman Berlinski has affirmed his conviction that it is as important to celebrate victories as it is to remember tragedies.

[66]In 1990 Berlinski wrote Maskir Neshamoth (In Remembrance of the Souls) which was commissioned by Ann and Donald Brown[67] in memory of businessman Jules C. Winkelman, and its premiere was of excerpts only which were performed in 1998 at the Library of Congress for the sixtieth anniversary of Kristallnacht.

[38] The obituary by Martin Anderson published in The Independent began: Herman Berlinski's deep involvement with Jewish liturgical music meant that his compositions didn't get the attention they deserve on the wider stage of concerts and recordings.

[72] Even closer to Berlinski's own situation, British composers Sir Charles Villiers Stanford[73] and Herbert Howells[74] whose contributions to Anglican church music have been in frequent use by choirs around the world, also wrote many other types of works - for orchestra, piano, chamber ensemble and so on - which have been all but forgotten.

In view of the tortuous path that led him from his place of birth, Leipzig, via his parents' home country, Poland, to France which was then overtaken by Germany's Nazi forces, and finally to the United States, it is notable that he should have had the wisdom, insight and strength of purpose that would allow him to do so.