The Synagogue Music of Samuel Adler

Psalm 100

Song of Hanukkah

Judah's Song of Praise

Eli tzion

El melekh yoshev

A Woman of Valor

I Will Betroth Thee

Emunah

Havdala - Blessing

Y'vrekh'kha

Torat adonai/Etz hayyim

Charles Davidson’s choral song cycle, I Never Saw Another Butterfly (1968), is one of many Holocaust-inspired musical works related to the Theresienstadt (Terezin) experience. It is also one of a number of settings, by various composers, of poems from the collection of the same title (in its 1964 English-language edition)—poems written by Jewish children imprisoned in that former walled city turned transit-concentration camp as they awaited removal to death camps.

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IV. The Butterfly

Beginning in the 1960s, composers of Jewish liturgical music turned to popular music and jazz in search of new expressive possibilities. Gershon Kingsley used Moog synthesizers with jazz and rock idioms. Charles Davidson combined jazz and blues with cantorial and chant traditions. Around the same time, a teen-aged composer and rabbi’s son named Jonathan Klein composed a jazz sacred service for a Boston Jewish youth convention. When a local Jewish official arranged to have the piece recorded, some of the era’s finest jazz musicians showed up at the recording session.

About Jonathan Klein

Jonathan Klein’s Hear O Israel: Herbie Hancock’s maiden voyage with Jewish music

Barukh habba (Psalms 118:26–29) is the last passage of hallel (Psalms of praise), but it is also sung independently as an opening “welcome” for various ceremonies—most commonly, weddings, joyous dedications, and consecrations. The phrase in the Psalm refers to the welcoming blessing by the priests in the ancient Temple in Jerusalem, which they pronounced to those arriving with their ritual sacrifices.

Barukh Habba (Psalm 118: 26-29)

Arnold Schoenberg’s Kol Nidre (op. 39) is his only completed, intentionally liturgical work. Conceived specifically for actual synagogue use, it was also his first foray into the genre of Jewish sacred music—assuming, as we should, that Psalm settings per se do not necessarily fall into the functional framework of synagogue music when not so envisioned by their composers.

Arnold Schoenberg - Kol nidre

Though Ernest Bloch’s Avodat [Avodath] Hakodesh has served as the model for many composers aspiring to elevate the language and flow of a synagogue service to the realm of high art, it remains sui generis—not only because of its surpassing beauty, but equally as the first successful and most enduring exploration of the Hebrew liturgy for serious artistic possibilities and universal applications. In equal measure, it is a virtual oratorio based on the Sabbath liturgy and a musically sophisticated service for practical use in the context of the aesthetic format of Reform worship that once prevailed in America—a confluence of high art and Jewish sacred music.

Sacred Service (Avodat Hakodesh) Part I: Tzur yisra'el

Sacred Service (Avodat Hakodesh) Part I: Meditation (Prelude); Ma tovu

In 1947, when Kurt Weill’s orchestral arrangement of Hatikva received its world premiere in New York, it was still—as it had been for decades—the anthem of the modern Zionist movement, expressing the hope and determination of a dispersed people for a permanent national home in Palestine. Less than six months later, it had become the de facto national anthem of the new sovereign State of Israel.

Kurt Weill -  Hatikva

John Zorn’s Kol nidre for string quartet is atypical of the bulk of his work in its conservatively reverential exposition and in its notational precision, which calls for no improvisation. And it is neither a setting nor an arrangement of that famous Yom Kippur signature melody.

John Zorn - Kol nidre

Composed in 1924, Ernest Bloch’s Méditation Hébraϊque is a spiritually reflective expression for cello and piano in three sections—Moderato, Allegro deciso, and Moderato—for a unified, uninterrupted work rather than one divided into movements.

The soulful, sometimes wailing melodic line in the cello that opens the piece is peppered with occasional hints at cantorial ornamentation and sighs.

Ernest Bloch -  Méditation Hébraϊque

Ernest Bloch’s From Jewish Life is a set of three short pieces, or movements, written by the composer in 1924 for the cellist Hans Kindler. The first of these, Prayer: Andante moderato, indeed has the flavor of a fervently sung prayer, or a hymn of petition, in a traditional Ashkenazi synagogue.

Prayer

Composed to a book by Robert E. Sherwood, directed and coproduced by Moss Hart, Irving Berlin’s musical comedy Miss Liberty is a mostly fictitious account of the history behind the creation of the Statue of Liberty. The song Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor served as the final number in that 1949 production.

Irving Berlin - Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor

The American Yiddish musical theater, a vibrant expression of the immigrant experience, became famous during its heyday in the 1920s–1940s. Combining the musical flavors of Viennese operetta, Tin Pan Alley, and eastern European nostalgia, these songs and duets are quintessential American popular music—with a Yiddish voice. Volume 1 spotlights the hit songs of Abe Ellstein, one of the genre's premier songwriters. New, historically accurate orchestrations re-create the unforgettable glory days of Yiddish radio and film, the uproarious vaudeville houses, and the thrill of a night at the theater on old New York's fabled "Second Avenue."

Di grine kuzine

Abi gezunt

Oygn

Der nayer sher

Volume 2 of this acclaimed series features immortal favorites such as Bay Mir Bistu Sheyn (#1 in the USA Hit Parade of 1938) and Mayn Yidishe Meydle, all performed in new, historically authentic arrangements. In-depth liner notes by award-winning author Neil Levin complement the musical program.

Ikh hob dikh tsufil lib

Bay mir bistu sheyn

Amram’s second opera, The Final Ingredient, with a libretto by Arnold Weinstein, was commissioned in 1965 by the ABC television network in cooperation with the Jewish Theological Seminary for broadcast that year on the Seminary’s national program, Directions. The libretto was based on a play by Reginald Rose, which takes place at the infamous German concentration camp Bergen-Belsen.

Scene 9

Scene 5

Exploring the rich and variegated legacy of Sephardi Jewish culture in America.

L'kha dodi (Bensoussan)

Kantigas Ulvidadas, the second cycle of Ladino-based songs by Ofer Ben-Amots, is a setting of three songs to contemporary Judeo-Spanish (Ladino) texts by Israeli poets Miriam Raymond and Shlomo Avayou.

The composer views this work as contrasting in several ways to his earlier cycle, Songs from the Pomegranate Garden (2004).

Yo kon amor

Solo kon ti

Prelude

B'rakhot l'hanukka

Not by Might, Not by Power

Ocho kandelikas

Adonai ro'i (Psalm 23)

Volume 4, Album 9: Liturgical Settings for the Sabbath Day adds 23 liturgical settings to the already voluminous Volume 4, Cycle of Life in Synagogue and Home: Prayers and Celebrations throughout the Jewish Year. Hebrew liturgy, apart from silently recited devotions, nearly always implies musical delivery. And this, combined with the relative autonomy of American synagogues, has spawned a range of musical styles and orientations in Jewish liturgical music.

Sim shalom (Adler)

Hanukka, the Festival of Dedication, is celebrated by Jews everywhere to commemorate the heroic Maccabean victory in 165 B.C.E. over the Greco-Syrians in the fight for religious freedom. It marks the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem and the legend of the miraculous eight-day endurance of the light in the candelabrum. Traditional Hanukka songs from many parts of the world, along with music composed in America, enrich the experience of this beloved holiday. This recording brings old favorites and new discoveries together for a unique American Hanukka celebration.

Vol 4.01 A Hanukka Celebration

Ma'oz Tzur

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