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A ritual bowl from Nippur reveals in graphic detail Lilith’s intentions “to take [a mother’s] child which is being bore to her, to suck its blood, and to suck the marrow of its bones, and to seal its flesh” (Patai 214-215). In the fourth movement of Bolcom’s Lilith, the piano and the saxophone begin the first measure together, one with a violent pizzicato chord, and the other with a shrieking growled glissando. The saxophonist’s last gesture of the movement is a glissando-approached long-tone that slowly decays to pppp. Bolcom’s performance note above it is “like a wail in the distance” (Bolcom, Lilith 15), so by comparison the saxophonist’s opening gesture is a horrified scream, like that of a mother having lost her child, or a child being ripped from his or her crib. The saxophone follows the shriek with two eerie effects; one marked “echo--tone,” and the other a subtone decelerating “smorzato,” or tongue-less embouchure articulation, that bears resemblance to the piano’s sustain pedal flutter. The second measure begins in the same manner, the saxophonist shrieking even higher in its altissimo register and following with an echo-tone gesture. The saxophone flutter-tongues and growls into measure 3 as it does in the second movement, transitions to a sweet, seductive melody alluding to the first and second movements, a pseudo-leitmotif, and closes out the measure with three inhuman “smack” sounds, all effectively placing Lilith in the scene.

What follows in the next five measures seems more playful. The gestures in the saxophone become lighter and more melodic, but still with an underlying violence denoted by sharp articulations marked “bitten” and growls in measures 6 and 7, respectively. On one hand, the music is seemingly demonstrative of Lilith’s disdain for the infant’s life, stemming from her resentment at having her own demon offspring killed by God every day (Scerba, “The Alphabet of Ben Sira”), a sensation which is facilitated by Bolcom’s marking “unctuous” in measure 4. At the same time, the music could be representative of the child itself, as described in Jewish ritual beliefs: “If children laugh in their sleep, or if they laugh while they are awake but alone, this is a sign showing that Lilith is playing with them” (qtd. in Patai 228). The last four measures of the movement return to the eerie mood of its beginning and seem to retreat away, as Bolcom describes, like Lilith to “her hideouts” (Bolcom, E-mail interview), ending appropriately with a wail in the distance.

References to Lilith in The Zohar, a fourteenth-century text central to the Jewish Kabbalah (Hurwitz 139), are descriptive amalgamations of many of the sources given above. In it, Lilith is contextualized in her many different manifestations: as a predecessor to Eve, a child-slayer, a succubus, and in greater detail, a female demon and counterpart to Samael, the Devil (Scerba “The Zohar”). Patai translates a passage describing her activities as a succubus:

“She (Lilith) roams at night, and goes all about the world and makes sport with men and causes them to emit seed. In every place where a man sleeps alone in a house, she visits him and grabs him and attaches herself to him and has her desire from him, and bears from him. And she also afflicts him with sickness, and he knows it not, and all this takes place when the moon is on the wane.” (221)

Patai goes on to say that Lilith was given as an explanation for nocturnal emissions, and was believed to reside in the beds of married couples, hoping to take spilt seed in order to make her Lilin (221-223). In a later passage of The Zohar, Lilith is described in a manner harkening back to the Sumerian myths – as a seductress of the waking world who seeks out and destroys men:

She adorns herself with many ornaments like a despicable harlot, and takes up her position at the crossroads to seduce the sons of man. When a fool approaches her, she grabs him, kisses him, and pours him wine of dregs of viper’s gall… Yon fool goes astray after her and drinks from the cup of wine and commits with her fornications and strays after her… She leaves him asleep on the couch, flies up to heaven, denounces him, takes her leave, and descends. That fool awakens and deems he can make sport with her as before, but she removes her ornaments and turns into a menacing figure. She stands before him clothed in garments of flaming fire, inspiring terror and making body and soul tremble, full of frightening eyes, in her hand a drawn sword dripping in bitter drops. And she kills that fool and casts him into Gehenna.” (222)

Program and Myth in Bolcom's Lilith

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