{"id":88626,"date":"2021-02-10T16:58:41","date_gmt":"2021-02-10T14:58:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=88626"},"modified":"2021-02-10T17:04:38","modified_gmt":"2021-02-10T15:04:38","slug":"dissonant-opening","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/dissonant-opening\/","title":{"rendered":"Dissonant Opening"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Leonard Bernstein (1919-1991): \u201cAwake, O harp and lyre!\u201d – from the Chichester Psalms<\/span><\/p>\n

The colorful Jewish-American musician, Leonard Bernstein, was involved in many different areas throughout his life. He is known to many, first and foremost, as one of the greatest conductors in history. He also appeared often as a pianist, and was considered a master of public music education to the wider public, and the first who utilized television for this purpose. His best known composition was the music to \u201cWest Side Story,\u201d which began as a Broadway musical, then filmed, and today is often put on in traditional opera houses. Bernstein was known his whole life as a strongly identifying Jew and supporter of Israel, who visited Israel regularly, and conducted there starting from the War of Independence in 1948, until the day of his death. All these sometimes overshadow his important work as a classical American composer for the symphony, among the greatest of the 20th century.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The background to the composition of the \u201cChichester Psalms\u201d <\/span>was explained here (Psalm 23)<\/span><\/a>. In this large work, which was commissioned by the Choir Festival in Chichester, England in 1965, Bernstein follows in the footsteps of the \u201cPsalm Symphony\u201d by Stravinsky, and allows the Biblical text to create the musical framework for the work. Bernstein wrote the music for the text in Hebrew, and for each movement combines verses from two different psalms. The first movement opens with verse 1 of Psalm 108, and then quickly transitions (at 00:35\u2019\u2019 in clip here) to the joyous verses of Psalm 100 (\u201cshout for joy all the earth!\u201d).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This short opening is considered quite challenging for many choirs. It is sung in unison, but the tenors need to be quite precise and sing in dissonant tones as compared with the other voices. This dissonance is called \u201cseptima,\u201d after the seven notes that separate the tenors from the other voices. This is one of the manifestations of the number 7, a typological number in Jewish tradition, throughout the work. The tune itself also expresses the number 7, which is the distance from its lowest note to its highest. Likewise, Psalm 100 which appears later, is played at a tempo of seven beats per measure, and so on, throughout the work.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Leonard Bernstein,
\n<\/span>Psalm 108 verse 2 and Psalm 100, first movement from the Chichester Psalms, The New York Philharmonic, with The Camerata Singers.
\n<\/span>Paintings by Alexandre Hogue (1898- 1994).<\/span><\/p>\n

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