Composed By: Yehezkel Braun

Hebrew Title: Hilkhot T’liyat Shofar

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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.”