Judaic Treasures of the On the first page of Copland's work
sheets, he talks about using the tune "mipne ma" as it was sung
in Vitebska, where the famous playwright Ansky was born, and
which Ansky included as a melody in his play The Dybbuk. The
play's Hebrew version (translated by the famous Hebrew poet,
Hayyim Nahman Bialik) was performed in 1927 by the brilliant
Habimah Theater of Moscow to audiences in New York, where
Copland must have seen it. Its insistent melodic theme, "mipne
ma?" -- for what reason?inquires, Why? O why? / Has the soul
descended from on high? Descent from on high, / demands that man
must ever try / to rise upward! In the course of the drama, the
melody evinces many moods, yearning, compassion, command, the
sigh of despair vying with the cry of exultation, but through it
all that echoing question, "Why?"