Festive Horns, Braun
Festive Horns, Braun
Composed By: Yehezkel Braun
Hebrew Title: Hilkhot T’liyat Shofar
Purchase sheet music at IMI
sample pages here
Festive Horns is on this CD
program note here
Voicing: SATB
soloists: soprano and tenor
Language: Hebrew
Difficulty: challenging
Country: Israel
Instruments: brass octet (3 horns, 2 trumpets, 2 trombones and tuba)
Occasion: High Holidays (Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur)
Lyrics: Mishnah
Year Composed/Published: 1980
Timing: 18:30
Tempo: various
First Line: kol hashofarot kesherim, khuts mi-she-la-parah
description: Israeli composer set to music the text describing the laws of blowing the shofar (the ram’s horn). The texts may be dry and academic, but the music is marvelous, with its six movements displaying a great variety of textures.
The composer wrote: “This work for choir and brass octet is a setting of six passages from the Mishnaic tractate “Rosh Hashanah”, dealing with rules and customs of blowing the shofars and trumpets on the High Holidays and on other occasions. The choir presents the Mishnaic text while the brass instruments, evoking in a stylized manner the memory of the ancient ritual horns and trumpets, weave a musical commentary around the text chanted by the choir, much in the manner of later Rabbinical commentaries that used to be set around the Mishnaic text.”