Servais - Souvenir de Czernowitz, Op. 21 (Urtext Edition)

Servais’s Souvenir de Czernowitz, Op. 22, reflects the nineteenth-century fascination with music from eastern Europe, especially popular, Roma, Romanian, Ukrainian, and Jewish musical traditions. Czernowitz, now Chernivtsi, Ukraine, belonged at the time to the Duchy of Bukovina. Servais visited the city in 1857 and 1859, and his final published opus draws on music associated with the region.

The Souvenir is dedicated to Servais’s student Ernest Jonas, a cellist and composer who later played in the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Jonas was reportedly one of Servais’s favorite students and toured France with him in 1864.

The work is in three parts, using themes from Carl Mikuli’s Airs nationaux roumains, published in Lviv around 1855. The first section, “Chant du Berger,” is based on Mikuli’s “Doina.” The second, “Berceuse. Chant des Nourrices,” comes from “Puiculița Mea.” The finale, “La Poste,” is a Romanian sârba based on Mikuli’s “Corăbiáscă,” a melody also later associated with Jewish wedding music. Servais was not the only cellist to use Mikuli’s collection: the Hungarian cellist Feri Kletzer also drew from it for his Zigeunerweisen, Op. 24.

ASTA Level: 6