Choral Piece of the Day, Installment 6: Anim Zemiros
Choral Piece of the Day, Installment 5: Anim Zemiros; A Hymn of Glory. It is an original setting of a traditional Hebrew Shabbat prayer - Ashkenazic transliteration by the composer, SATB divisi, - 1985. Built on permutations of a 12-tone row, this is among the complex choral works I have composed or will ever compose. The late Robert Schuneman, the former owner of ECS Publishing Group, knew it was unpublishable because of its complexity, but thought very highly of it, calling it a "a chromatic and contrapuntal tour de force." It was a prize winner in the 2008 Choral Composition Competition sponsored by The New York Virtuoso Singers, Harold Rosenbaum, conductor.
Follow this link to view a watermarked PDF of the score. https://www.stanleymhoffman.com/_files/ugd/f3e5c9_44a630e8c07742c4bc519972c46b0875.pdf
Follow this link to view and listen to the YouTube music video for this title.
Extensive program notes appear below. Thank you for listening!
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Anim Zemiros was composed in 1985 while I was a doctoral student of Martin Boykan at Brandeis University. The initial fugal theme was inspired by the melody from the third movement of Beethoven's Quartet in A Minor, Op. 132, also known as Heiliger Dankgesang. My theme resembles Beethoven's melody in two ways: it aurally approximates the rhythms of his theme and it also takes the contour of Beethoven's melody and inverts it, also in an approximated way. This is where the similarities to Beethoven's theme end, for Anim Zemiros is most certainly not composed in the Lydian mode! Rather, it is composed in a chromatically saturated musical language.
Although Anim Zemiros may be used for the Jewish Musaf Sabbath Service, it was conceived as a concert piece. In the synagogue, this hymn is sung responsively by the cantor and congregation. The responsive nature of this hymn is what inspired the use of contrapuntal passages alternating with homophonic ones. Anim Zemiros begins with a statement of the initial fugal theme in the basses followed by a response at the interval of a fifth in the altos during which the basses present the counter theme. After a brief episode, the same thing happens in the tenor and soprano voices while the basses and altos present new contrapuntal melodies. A brief, contrasting, calm homophonic chorale passage ensues (a textural foreshadowing of both the loud climax and the hushed closing of the piece). This is followed by an extended development section (like ones from sonata-allegro movements) in which ideas from both the contrapuntal and homophonic sections are fragmented and stratified. Shifting time signatures provide added momentum to this music that leads to the homophonic climax that follows. Next comes an “anti-fugue” in which the initial fugal theme is presented backwards, as is the fugal form itself, moving from four voices, to three and finally to two. However, rather than moving to one voice as at the opening of the piece (which would have been a very predictable thing to do), the piece ends with a reminiscence of the calm homophonic chorale.
Ashkenazic pronunciation was chosen over Sephardic for two reasons. I wished to have the "s" sound on the Hebrew letter "sov" rather than the "t" sound. In addition, Ashkenazic pronunciation is considered to be somewhat archaic since Sephardic is used in modern Hebrew. I felt this gave me artistic license to compose vocal lines containing correct or incorrect syllabic stress for purely musical effect. I deemed it necessary to state this at the outset of the score, lest one think that this composition contains errors in text-setting.
Ashkenazic Transliteration
An-im zemiros veshirim e-erog,
Ki eilecho nafshi sa-arog.
Naf-shi chimedo betseil yodecho,
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Loda-as kol roz sodecho,
Midei daberi bichevodecho,
Ho-me libi el dodecho.
Ye-eravno sichi olecho,
Ki nafshi sa-arog eilecho.
English Translation
I will chant sweet hymns and compose songs,
For my soul pants after you.
My soul has longed to be beneath the shadow of your hand,
To know all of your mysteries.
Even while I speak of your glory,
My heart yearns for your love.
May my meditation be pleasant unto you,
For my soul pants after you.