Traditional Hebrew folk song, arr. Robert Applebaum

Robert Applebaum

Traditional folk song, arr. Elliot Z. Levine

Robert Applebaum

Daniel Tunkel

Elliot Z. Levine

Traditional, arr. Steve Barnett

S.E. Goldfarb and S.S. Grossman, arr. Robert Applebaum

Traditional Jewish folk tune, arr. Robert Applebaum

Mikhl Gelbart, arr. Mark Zuckerman

Traditional, arr. Mark Zuckerman

Gerald Cohen

Joshua Fishbein

Jonathan Miller

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Longtime Chicago-area resident Bob Applebaum, now living in Northern California, has provided Chicago a cappella with many superb pieces over several decades. Maoz Tzur is traditionally sung on Hanukkah after the lighting of the menorah. The Hebrew song is thought to have originated in the 13th century.

Applebaum takes the sturdy melody, not unlike chant, and masterfully treats it with subtle text painting. The distinctive opening phrase with descending then ascending fourths, is first sung by the men, then passed back and forth between the sections.  Applebaum’s setting is rhythmically varied, now with augmentation, now in diminution, rising and falling, arriving in a house of prayer, complete, quietly confident, the last word heard in a rich, vibrant, B-flat major. This is the second in his set of Three Pieces for Chanukah, and we’ll present the other two later in the program.

Applebaum wrote this song in 2005, and Chicago a cappella first performed it shortly thereafter. The text is a prayer sung right after the Hanukkah candle blessings are chanted and the candles are kindled. Applebaum notes that the Hebrew prayer emphasizes—as he does in his own translation—that the candles are not to be used for any ordinary purposes, but only to be looked at.  In the composer’s translation, he renders the relevant part of the text as “And we just watch them burn”;  his music likewise lingers on these words and prolongs them, so that musically he enhances and stretches the effect of looking at the candles in awe. Applebaum’s gently rocking rhythms move slowly through jazz-inflected chord progressions that not only soothe but themselves expand on the wonder of the occasion.

Elliot Levine is one of the founders of The Western Wind, an internationally famous vocal sextet known for its summer workshops, varied repertoire, and Jewish-themed shows on public radio. He has composed Jewish choral music as well as church music, film scores, solo songs, and more.

This Jewish folk song’s text comes from the traditional siddur (prayerbook) and is a prayer of thanksgiving that relates to the stories of both Hanukkah and Purim. The tune has a distinctively Mediterranean character, with a melodic feature in which the second note of the scale is only a half-step above the “home” pitch, instead of a whole note as we usually have in music from further up north. Levine sets up a nifty syncopated rhythm at the closing section, where the soprano and tenor toss the melody back and forth, and the altos and basses run the quick “Al ha-nis-sim” rhythm in staggered entries like a rhythmic round, before a big finish.

For a very different take on the same melody, we turn to Bob Applebaum’s arrangement.  Applebaum gives the tune a jazz-and-swing-flavored interpretation, demonstrating his inventive use of harmony, rhythm, and texture that reflect his many years’ experience as a jazz pianist.

Daniel Tunkel (b. 1962, Bristol UK) is a lawyer by profession, but is actively involved in music, in particular the Jewish musical and choral scene in London. He has created a number of compositions and arrangements chiefly for the Zemel Choir, London’s leading Jewish vocal ensemble. He sings regularly with the Zemel Choir and various other London ensembles. He has sung with the Zamir Chorale, New York, and regularly leads workshops on aspects of Jewish music at the North American Jewish Choral Festival.

 Hallel is the sequence of six psalms (113 to 118) specially recited as part of the morning service on most Jewish festival days. As a sequence, it seemed appropriate to score a cantata-type work that addresses them in turn, setting a different atmosphere for each part but effecting a connection between them all. The full composition is in eight sections, of which sections 1, 2, 3 and 6 are being performed in this program.

Tunkel’s musical voice is unique. He creates melodies with strong direction and character, and his counterpoint is appealing. His rhythmic sense of Hebrew is superb, giving life and breath to each movement; the opening takes special advantage of the accents of the Hebrew, moving in irregular meter (11/8) to best sing the Psalm’s praises. The third movement features a glorious, slow solo. We end with his “Hodu,” subtitled “Rustic Dance.”

This lovely song takes its text from the prophet Zechariah. As all prophets do, Zechariah aims to wake us up from our complacency and look at the world in a different way. The text is as fresh and relevant as it was thousands of years ago. Levine casts the text in a meditative, triple-time setting, with phrases that rise and fall beautifully, growing out of the opening ostinato to fullness before releasing back into stillness. The triple-time meter keeps the music propelling forward, much as the prophet keeps nudging at us, tugging at our sleeves to make sure we can hear the message amid the din of our everyday lives.

S’vivon is a traditional Hebrew folk song celebrating the holiday of Hanukkah. The s’vivon is the traditional spinning top, also known as a dreidel in Yiddish. It has four sides, each with a different Hebrew letter. The letters (nun, gimel, heh, and shin) are the first four letters of the words in the Hebrew phrase “Neis gadol hayah sham,” translated as “A great miracle happened there.” That phrase captures the essence of the Hanukkah festival. After their long-fought battle to drive the Syrians out of Israel, the Maccabees rededicated the Temple in Jerusalem. When re-lighting the n’er tamid (the “eternal light,” which is never to be extinguished), one night’s worth of oil miraculously burned for eight nights.

Steve Barnett is a highly acclaimed (and Grammy-winning) producer, arranger, composer, and overall musician, who has served synagogues and churches in the Twin Cities for many years. This setting of “S’vivon” comes from a cycle of four Hanukkah songs that he arranged under the collective title Arise and Be Free. He infuses jazzy new life into this well-known tune, which usually has much tamer harmonies!

In this finale to his Three Pieces for Chanukah, Applebaum again reveals his background in jazz, giving the basses a sort of slap-bass line reminiscent more of George Clinton than Sholom Secunda. The song is playful and jubilant, riffing on the familiar melody in clever and appealing ways.

In this first song of Applebaum’s Three Pieces for Chanukah, he infuses new life into traditional Hanukkah melodies.  The composer comments:

Many will be more familiar with the first line in English reading, “Oh Chanukah, oh Chanukah, come light the menorah.” Technically, the menorah is different from the candelabrum used for Chanukah. The correct term for Chanukah candelabrum is chanukiah as reflected in the words of this setting.

The traditional Hanukkah melody finds a playful setting at the hands of acclaimed composer Mark Zuckerman. You may notice that the composer of the English version of the Dreidl Song is listed above as S. E. Goldfarb, and this Yiddish version is credited to Mikhl Gelbart. The truth is that there is some confusion about who actually composed the original tune; the writers of the English song created new words to the Yiddish version, but that was considered a traditional folk song with lyrics by Mikhl Gelbart.  In any case, Gelbart’s original Yiddish remains intact here, with a small amount of English added for contrast by Zuckerman, whose accomplishments in the field of Yiddish song are significant. Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1948, Zuckerman began composing music in early childhood, with his first public performance at age 11. He studied at Julliard and did graduate work with Milton Babbitt and J.K. Randall at Princeton, where he later joined the faculty.  In addition to original settings of Yiddish poetry, he has written a dozen a cappella arrangements of classic Yiddish songs such as this one.  Here he has the lower three voices begin by singing the names of the sides of the dreidel, each of which has one of the four Hebrew letters: nun, shin, hey, and gimel.

This piece beautifully combines the European and American Jewish experiences. The traditional Hanukkah melody meets a poignant Yiddish text and a skillful a cappella choral arrangement by Mark Zuckerman. The Yiddish poem is by Morris Rosenfeld (1862-1923), who was born in Lithuania and wrote poetry from the age of fifteen. He published in socialist and anarchist Yiddish periodicals, earning a living as a sweatshop tailor and a reputation as a sweatshop bard. He emigrated to London in 1882 and to New York in 1886, but he remained obscure until his poems were translated into English in 1898.

“O, ir kleyne likhtelekh” asks the Hanukkah candles themselves to recount Jewish history. The Yiddish poem evokes parallels between the ancient Hanukkah story and the oppression of Jews under Czar Alexander III of Russia.

Composer Gerald Cohen has been praised for his “linguistic fluidity and melodic gift,” creating music that “reveals a very personal modernism that…offers great emotional rewards” (Gramophone Magazine). As a noted synagogue cantor and baritone, his experience as a singer informs his dramatic, lyrical compositions. Cohen’s best-known work, his Psalm 23, has received thousands of performances from synagogues and churches to Carnegie Hall and the Vatican. Recent instrumental compositions include Voyagers, a celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Voyager spacecraft, which had its premiere at New York’s Hayden Planetarium; and Playing for our Lives, a tribute to the music and musicians of the WWII Terezin concentration camp near Prague. He received degrees in music from both Yale University and Columbia University, and he has been awarded commissioning grants from Meet the Composer and the National Endowment for the Arts.  The composer writes:

“Chanukah Lights” was written in 2005 as a piece for treble choir with optional piano, for the wonderful A Cappella Choir of the PEARLS Hawthorne School in Yonkers NY, conducted by Emme Kresek. (In addition to being an excellent choir, the school is a block from my home, and our daughter was a 5th grader there at the time.) Its simple melody and words, focusing on the importance of light in celebrating the holiday, are infused with ensemble and rhythmic challenges for the choir. In 2019, Chicago a cappella asked me to compose a new version for their professional ensemble, giving me the opportunity to write a 7-voice a cappella version of the piece that they would perform and record. After delays because of COVID, the premiere of this version is finally taking place.

Choral conductor, singer, pianist, and music educator, Dr. Joshua Fishbein (b. 1984) composes and arranges vocal and instrumental music, with special emphasis on choral music. His music has won awards from The American Prize, American Choral Directors Association, American Composers Forum, BMI, Cantate Chamber Singers, Chorus America, Chorus Austin, Delaware Valley Chorale, The Esoterics, Guild of Temple Musicians, and others. Steeped in Jewish classical music, Dr. Fishbein has composed numerous musical settings of Hebrew for chorus and solo voice. His music has been presented at Shalshelet’s International Festivals of New Jewish Liturgical Music, the American Society for Jewish Music, the American Jewish Historical Society, and the Cantor’s Assembly. He teaches on the music faculties of The Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University and Towson University.

In our program’s third setting of this famous prayer, Fishbein delights us with a strong, declamatory, C-minor gesture listing miracles, redemption, mighty deeds, and saving acts; then a repetition of these four now in F-major, legato and leisurely; then a grandiose return to the four in C-minor, and now, only at the end, a hushed, pianissimo for the words bayamim hahem baz’man hazeh – in those days at this season.

Chicago a cappella’s founder and longtime Artistic Director created this new work in anticipation of this program. He writes:

There is a section inserted into the silent prayer (the amidah) at the core of the worship service on Chanukah. Several of the pieces on this program use the opening of the section, which starts with “Al Ha-nissim.” I decided to set the entire remainder of the text, starting with the second sentence. (The setting by Max Janowski is the only other one of this whole text with which I am very familiar.) Starting in 2017, I became a member of the davening team at West Suburban Temple Har Zion in River Forest, Illinois. The spiritual leader there, Rabbi Adir Glick, is a nephew of Shlomo Carlebach, whose melodies we have been using extensively over the past six years in our Shabbat services. One Friday night, after such a “deep dive“ into these melodies, I had Carlebach’s haunting, energetic Psalm 29 (“Mizmor L’David”) in my head. I felt compelled to sit at the piano and write a sort of musical response when I got home, and so my melody is an almost upside-down version of his, but with a contrasting B-section.

 I didn’t initially combine this new melody with the “Biy’mey Mattityahu” text. However, when the prospect of this program came up, I decided to marry my melody with this text. I have learned in recent years the great joy of wordless Yiddish melody, commonly called a niggun. This song opens with the melody being done in that way, and it recurs several times during the piece. There is a pent-up energy that builds when the music begins slowly and starts to accelerate;  not infrequently, the rabbi gets up and leads congregants in dancing around the synagogue when a particular tune really starts to take off. I wanted to capture that sense of joy and exuberance in my setting.