Hatikvah (Traditional)

This is a choral arrangement of Hatikvah I wrote for my a cappella group, Techiya. It's mostly a reharmonization. I think I'm starting to have a style to them. It's homophonic, generally, and I generally go for complex harmonies rather than simple ones. If the last four bars sound like Grainger, by the way... Well, let's just say I have learned the importance of the b7 in major. (:

Listen to Hatikvah (right-click to download)

Grace

Full Band

The Birkat Hamazon, the grace after meals, has a very fun traditional melody (which apparently dates to 80 years ago or so), so I decided to set it for band. On Shabbat and festivals, the Birkat Hamazon is preceded by Psalm 126, labeled (like many others in that section of the Tanach) "Shir Hamaalot", or "Song of Ascents", where the meaning of "ascents", according to my JPS Jewish Study Bible, is unclear and possibly refers to steps of the temple or something similar. Here, then, I have set this Song of Ascents for wind orchestra, with an attempt to emulate, to some extent, Percy Grainger. The Birkat proper will follow.

Listen to Grace - I - Song of Ascents (right-click to download)

Oro y Tomates

2 trumpets (in C), horn, trombone

My brother asked me to write a brass quartet, STAT, and to make it sound Spanish. So I did it. I tried to also make it sound a little Jewish, so you can actually pick out some Jewish notes in there (if you think you've heard that snippet before in synagogue, well, you have). Oh, and the first measure is (seriously) based on Jungle Hijinx! from Donkey Kong Country, or whatever the actual name of the song is. The inspiration really went no further than the rhythm of the first measure, but it's what it is. But there's some neat stuff in there; it's a fun piece.

Listen to Oro y Tomates (right-click to download)

A Scale! Ahava Rabbah!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahava_Rabbah

I'm a Jewish atheist, or Humanist, or Pastafarian, or whatever. I don't believe in gods, but I'm Jewish. Figure it out if you feel so inclined (Wikipedia can help). But the Ahava Rabbah scale is one of my favorite scales (mentioned in the last post as well), also known, according to the article linked above, as the Spanish phrygian, Jewish scale, Hungarian scale, or phrygian dominant. I'll stick with Ahava Rabbah, at least for now, but it really is a phrygian with raised 3rd.

I love this scale. I suppose the augmented second sounds "mystical", which in today's postpostmodern age is quite the cliche, but to me it really does. Listening to liturgical music that uses it makes me feel, well, elevated, which I'm sure the religious would interpret as "closer to Hashem". (This is because the religious can't write "Adonai", as that is using the name of God in vain -- instead, they use "Hashem", meaning "the name", in writing and singing, and they use "Adonai", "Lord", in actual prayer. They will sometimes use "Adoshem" when emphasis on pronunciation is necessary, and "Elokeinu" for "Eloheinu". Now you know.) The point is that I love this scale, and modulating to it is an interesting touch, much like that major chord in a minor piece that is like sunlight.

The typical cadences in Ahava Rabbah are not V-I as might be expected, since the 5 chord is actually vo rather than the v that you can change into a V. Instead, the cadences are bII-I and bvii-I (the convention is confusing and I can't be bothered to follow it; hopefully this is clearly referring to the chords on the 2 and 7 of this scale). bvii is especially nice, because since the important half step occurs between 3 and 4, an improvisatory-style melody would tend to hover around there, and the 7th degree would be a refreshing note to signal the cadence. In some chanting schemes this is actually done. A nice melodic cadence using bvii-I would be, in C: Bb' F E Db C; the Shabbat prayer Shalom Aleichem uses this, though the position of the tonal center makes this a half cadence instead. In fact, this is just the conventional phrygian cadence of Western tonal music, iv6-V, but with the function of an authentic cadence (and since this is used in mostly monophonic liturgical music anyway, with no attention to inversion numbers).

But yeah, Ahava Rabah, awesome scale.

Scales, Harmonic and Melodic

There are two similar but somewhat different things we call "scales", and sometimes those two things are different and sometimes the same. There is the harmonic scale and there is the melodic scale, and they are each sets of pitches from which one draws harmony and melody, respectively. The melodic scale is an ORDERED set of pitches, and the harmonic scale is not -- this is one of the main distinctions between them. This is important when we consider what the silly "common practice" people call the minor key.

It took me a while to realize that the three minor "scales", natural, harmonic, and melodic (and I don't mean the jazz melodic scale, I mean the CP one), were not all meant to be played. My first encounter with scales, as such, was in beginning band in sixth grade, or maybe in my piano computer program in fifth grade, and they were major. I knew what the minor keys were, but I never had to play minor scales. When I saw "harmonic minor" and "melodic minor" in a book from the school media center in sixth grade, or maybe someplace else, I saw them as curiosities, and I liked the sound of the harmonic minor scale, and I wondered at this melodic scale thing that goes up and down differently.

Eventually, in college, while taking a music theory course, I realized several things. First, the augmented second in the harmonic minor is essentially wrong. Second, the leading tone HAS to be a half step below the tonic, which is why the 7th is raised. Therefore, the 6th needs to be raised as well if you're moving to the raised 7th from below. So the minor key, with a flatted 7th and 6th, needs to be modified. The V chord has a leading tone when it goes to i, so it has to be V rather than v. Everything else still works, so the scale with this modification is the harmonic scale. The b6 and b7 still want to be used, but they can't be used if the tonic is approached by step from below. So if you're going to PLAY the scale, you have to raise the 6th and 7th on the way up, but going down you can keep the minor key feeling.

Personally, I find this all very silly, and enough other people find it silly, so we play just one minor scale: the melodic minor. When we play scales, which are a useful exercise for instrumental technique, the melodic minor should be played (if we are practicing for CP music), since those are the note patterns that we are likely to see. There is no reason to practice playing the harmonic minor scale -- this is because the harmonic minor scale was never meant to be played! The harmonic minor is the set of notes from which we draw the harmony. There are really only five chords, i, ii0, iv, V, VI, in the minor key (though with melodic minor melodic materials, you can include also ii and IV, but these are essentially chromatic alterations). III and VII don't really have functions so much, and even VI is a little iffy, so we can essentially limit ourselves to using the notes from the harmonic scale. The melody, conceived entirely separately and heard entirely separately (this is not true, but let's consider it as such), uses a different set of notes, and given the rules of CP, they are different going up from going down.

The melody and harmony, let me stress, use DIFFERENT SETS OF NOTES. There are plenty of examples, of course.

First, the blues scale. Mark Levine's Jazz Theory Book claims that nobody understands how it manages to work, but I claim that I do. (: In the key of C, the blues scale is C Eb F F#/Gb G Bb C. The twelve bar blues progression is C7 C7 C7 C7 F7 F7 C7 C7 G7 F7 C7 C7. Now, let's consider ripping the nonfuctional dominant 7ths out first, so we have C C C C F F C C G7 F C C. This uses the harmonic scale C D E F G A B, so we have that as a harmonic scale and C Eb F F#/Gb G Bb C as the melodic scale. The only common notes here are the tonic, subdominant, and dominant, the roots of the chords! We have here an extremely inflexible system, since this blues scale depends in a way on the fact that we're not using it freely but over a progression that essentially works like the traditional 12-bar blues. We can't really modulate in the scale; the scale has no symmetries! Of course, that's also true of the normal major scale; we have to introduce new notes to modulate. In this case, though, the tendency to the tonic is very strong from the Eb and the Bb. The Gb also tends very strongly down in a way that leads to the tonic. NONE OF THOSE THREE NOTES NEEDS TO BE IN TUNE. They aren't in the harmonic scale, and they form no harmonies. They can be wildly flat and they'll work just as well! (If C7 and F7 are used, though, the 7ths in those chords should probably be the same as the ones in the melody, since those are essentially melodic tones added to the chords rather than harmonic/functional ones).

The blues scale is essentially a harmony that works with bitonality over the C major harmonies in the progression. Let's see how the notes match up, ignoring common tones. Over a C chord, we have the Eb clashing with the E. The Eb has a strong melodic pull to the tonic, so you can hear it as an appoggiatura, essentially. The F clashes with the E as well, but that pulls to the Eb which pulls to the tonic. The Gb clashes with the G, but that pulls to the F which pulls to the Eb which pulls to the tonic. The F# pulls to the G, which is stable. The Bb pulls to the tonic or the fifth, but it doesn't actually clash with anything. The tonic essentially remains a pedal through the other chords, and the blues scale is essentially an elaboration of the tonic pedal. You can use the same logic to consider the notes over the other chords. Over F, then, you have C being stable as the fifth, Eb pulling down to it, F being stable as the tonic, Gb pulling down to it, F# not really working, G being the fifth of the pedal C blues scale, and Bb pulling the same as over the C chord in the tonic pedal scale. Over G7, C is the pedal, Eb tends to C in the pedal, F if the seventh, G is the root, F# tends to it, Gb tends down to the F, and the Bb tends either way in the pedal. So the clashes aren't really clashes because the harmony and the melody are heard separately.

Another example are the modes of the harmonic minor scale, taken melodically. The interesting ones in Jewish music are phrygian #3, dorian #4, and aeolian #7 (the original harmonic minor); they have names in Hebrew that I don't remember. The others (locrian #6, ionian #5, lydian #2, and, uh, mixolydian #1 which is really weird) don't have very useful corresponding harmonic scales, that is, the melody notes can't really be used to form harmonies very easily. You could make a doubly "harmonic" scale as well by taking a phrygian #3#7 or an aeolian #4#7. In these cases, the augmented second is a characteristic interval, though it doesn't have to be -- it might well be treated as a leap rather than a step.

The phrygian #3 scale in particular is a MAJOR scale. The tonic chord is major! The harmonic scale for it is certainly phrygian #3, but the melodic scale isn't, if you don't like augmented seconds. It's just as well to raise the 2nd going up and lower the 3rd coming down if it makes sense in the music when stepwise motion is called for. Of course, a solution is to avoid stepwise motion in that direction, never going lower than the raised 3rd in a scalar passage or higher than the 2nd, and leaping across the gap when necessary. An example from Fiddler on the Roof, "If I were a rich man", in C: G F G F E, C. E F G F G F E F G A Bb A Bb A G. This is a somewhat bad example because it isn't really in this mode, but see how it just avoids the Db or D altogether? This is actually mixolydian (which is another Jewish mode as well), of course. A better example, still from Fiddler on the Roof (it's really the easiest source for this, even though it's not particularly authentic), is the fathers' theme in "Tradition", also here in C: C CDE F GF#GAbG E FEFGF Db ED#EFE G C CDE F GF#GAbG EFEFGF Db C. In this case the majorness and the Db are very clear. There is one occasion of Db going to E, but it's certainly as a leap rather than a scale. When E has to be approached by step from below, the passing tone is D, not Db, but when the harmony is a bII Db chord (or a bvii Bbm chord), the Db is necessary. This way you can have music in the mode that still has smooth voice leading.

And so it is that harmonic and melodic scales are not only different notes but different things altogether. Comments?

To Sepharad (Full Band)

Full Band

Since To Sepharad was originally written for a brass octet (and you can find a better description of the music and meaning on its other post), and the brass octet is a fairly large ensemble, I decided that the piece would be appropriate for transcription to a larger ensemble, with percussion. The chimes are now actual chimes in the third movement. I changed the octaves of several things -- trombone solos became Eb clarinet solos, two octaves higher, for example -- and I played around with instrumental color, especially in the second movement. These are not new movements, but they do have a new flavor.

Listen to To Sepharad (Band) - I - The Nagid (right-click to download)
Listen to To Sepharad (Band) - II - Ramban (right-click to download)
Listen to To Sepharad (Band) - III - Abravanel (right-click to download)

The One-Armed Tailor

Full Band

This is a Jewish-American wind ensemble composition, finished July 16, 2006. It was inspired by "Tevye the Dairyman", a collection of short stories by Sholom Aleichem; the title is some image Tevye used somewhere (I don't remember where). I did analyze much of Jerry Bock's "Fiddler on the Roof" score, so there are some stylistic similarities, but I also listened to other Jewish music. There is a very extended clarinet solo. It's cool. As I said, it's for wind ensemble, though I'm in the habit of including a prominent string bass part. The scale I used mostly is an interesting one: phrygian with raised third. I say that because the second step functions very much like a phrygian second, and bII holds almost a dominant position to I. Interestingly, substituting a raised fourth for the fifth in bII makes a tritone with an interesting resolution; in the key of C, this is Db F G to C E G. It's a pretty characteristic Spanish sound, which is interesting because the Spanish modality has strong resemblances to Jewish and Arabic modalities. I'm not sure how this character made its way through the cultures, though my guess is that the Arabs spread it to Spain and to the new Muslims everywhere in the Muslim world, and the Jews lived mostly around the Muslims. But this is a stupid guess. Reality may look very different.

This piece is ideal for a band who wants to show off its clarinetist, but it isn't a concerto or anything. I'd say it's near the borderline, though not on it or past it. The reason, of course, is the very prominent role of the clarinet in klezmer music. Kontakt Player actually has a decent clarinet patch; the high notes sound like they would on a clarinet: squeaky. However, the recording doesn't capture ad libs at all -- obviously. Local variations in tempo by the soloist, lip bends (there should be no other kind in this piece), and the like would sound better in real life. Still, here you go. (:

Listen to The One-Armed Tailor (right-click to download)

Aleinu - March

Full Band

Aleinu is my second composition for band, composed in the spring of 2004 for my old high school to play. I suppose it's really an arrangement rather than a composition, which is a step up from my first "composition", which was a transcription. The themes are all from Jewish liturgy; the introduction and first strain are Aleinu, the second strain is a dominant version of the Shema, and the trio is Shalom Aleichem. There are some other quotes thrown in as well. This is indeed a march, my first ever, and although it's a bit long, it follows more or less the customary march form. You may wonder at the appropriateness of the themes I chose for a march, especially Shalom Aleichem. Well, many years before I ever composed anything, I had noticed that Aleinu was distinctly march-like. This was one of those things I always wanted to write, and one of the reasons I started writing in the first place. I had also planned it way before actually notating it, which isn't something I do much these days, and I knew I wanted to have Shalom Aleichem, a beautiful and slow hymn, with fast things going on underneath it, so I figured this would be great for a trio. Needless to say, I really liked the result.

Then I took Music 51, and coming back a few years later, I noticed a lot of things I could have done better. So I did them better, and here it is, improved from the original version, the Aleinu march.

Listen to Aleinu (right-click to download)

To Sepharad

3 trumpets, horn, 2 trombones, euphonium, tuba

I wrote this in January 2006 for the Humboldt contest; this year the instrumentation required was a brass octet. After several tries, I eventually decided to write a piece that told a story about, say, a Jewish tailor. Realizing that oh wait, Jason Robert Brown already did that in Last Five Years, and somewhat affected by the stories from my class on Jews in Spain, I changed the title to To Sepharad as an ode to Jewish Spain -- Sepharad is the Hebrew name for Spain.

The first movement, The Nagid, is named after Joseph ha Nagid, a Jewish vizier in one of the Taifa kingdoms, who was his king's general, trusted advisor, poet, physician, etc. in Muslim Spain. It's in 5/4 and, after an introductory prayer, goes gradually from very slow to very fast at the end, keeping essentially the same melody in variations.

The second movement, Ramban, is named after Rabbi Moses ben Nachman, or Nachmanides, of Christian Spain, partly famous for his debate against the only bishop to be succeeded by his son, Paul Christiani of Burgos. It's a natural enough march; there is no accelerando or much showiness, and there are no pretensions.

The third movement, Abravanel, is named after rather a family (I don't remember the first names; there were two Isaacs, I think) that was evicted from Spain in 1492 after the eldest member was one of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella's most trusted advisors. All Jews were expelled; some, like Abravanel's son, went to Portugal. He there begot a baby Isaac, who was forcibly taken from his father to be raised a Christian, and when the Jews were expelled from Portugal in 1497, Abravanel fled to Italy, where he wrote a letter he hoped would eventually reach this son. Naturally, this movement is slow and sad, with beautiful low brass chords and ugly out-of-the-mode trumpet chords, intended to sound like bells and represent the evil Christianity, interrupting the beauty. After a brief violent section, the low brass chorale takes up the melody again, and the tolling bells steal away members of the low brass chorale, who join the bells the next time, until all are taken. The piece ends with a solo tuba's unpunctuated lament.

This took me the better part of a month to write, with very little sleep. The Harvard Brass Ensemble was going to play the first movement, The Nagid, at Arts First on May 6, 2006, 2 PM, Sanders Theater, but they thought it was too hard.

Listen to To Sepharad - I - The Nagid (right-click to download)
Listen to To Sepharad - II - Ramban (right-click to download)
Listen to To Sepharad - III - Abravanel (right-click to download)