My Ancestors Speak features two texts sung simultaneously. The longer text, from which the work takes its title, is a Yiddish poem by Anna Margolin (Rosa Lebensboym, 1887-1952). The poem describes Jewish ancestors in kaleidoscopic variety — religious and secular, rich and poor, sophisticated and simple, even including ancestors who elicit shame. The second text, taken from the book of Chronicles in the Hebrew Bible, simply lists the Biblical patriarch Jacob/Israel’s twelve sons. Taken together, the two texts represent layers and diversity of Jewish ancestors from ancient to modern and their languages from Hebrew to Yiddish.
The shorter text from Chronicles is sung with very long note values and acts as a kind of cantus firmus for the work — a fixed line which served as the skeletal foundation for many Medieval and Renaissance liturgical works. (Traditionally a cantus firmus is a preexisting melody, but here it is newly composed).
In addition to borrowing this polytextual structural device, the sound world of Medieval and early Renaissance liturgical music is an important reference point in this work alongside other references including minimalism. In this way the music, like the text, juxtaposes multiple layers of ancestors.
