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 |  |  | | | | Track Listings | |  | 1 shofar demonstration | 0:32 | | 2 Call of the Shofar (1992) | 14:11 | | 3 Summer Mischief | 7:37 | | 4 Sh`mah (1995) | 7:44 | | Rooster's Court Ball (1992) | | | 5 Prelude: Arrival of Guests | 1:25 | | 6 Rooster's Gavotte | 2:14 | | 7 Three Kittens Courante | 2:24 | | 8 The Cow's Sarabande | 3:02 | | 9 The Whippet's Bourrée | 2:23 | | 10 The Lamb's Gigue | 2:16 | | 11 Kabala (1993) | 12:52 | | | | Total time: | 57:18 |
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| | | | | | Kabala - Mathew H. Fields | | | Our Price: $9.95  | | | | Item Number: MMC2087 | | Audio Format: DDD | | Genres: Chamber\Featured Composer | | | | Description | | Excerpts from the Liner Notes (by Matthew H. Fields)
The First Sound on the recording is not new music at all, but a series of calls upon a shofar. This ancient trumpet is a hollowed ram's horn stretched under steam heat into a long curl; it is used in traditional Jewish rites as the voice of awe, historically on all major festivals, but now mainly at New Years and the Day of Atonement in early autumn.
Call of the Shofar
“Call of the Shofar” is a festive march. After an introduction in which the four trombones imitate a shofar, they play forth a complex fabric of music built from two themes of Jewish liturgy. The piece was written on a commission from the Mesilla Valley Trombone Choir in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and the same ensemble gave the premiere performance.
Summer Mischief
“Summer Mischief” is summery in its very flowery ornamentation, and mischievous in both the prankish and amorous senses. It's also a vehicle for the showcasing of the virtuosity of the player and the marvelous capabilities of the [harpsichord], including even the percussive sounds of various parts of the mechanism being engaged and disengaged.
Sh`mah
“Sh`mah” is the Hebrew imperative: Hark! and the first word of the Sh`mah Yisrael, the daily recitation of verses from Deuteronomy that lies at the core of traditional Jewish ritual. I appropriated the tune of the Sh`mah Yisrael as the cantus firmus of this carillon toccata, because the intervals of the chant ring felicitously with the resonances of carillon bells. The large bells, which typically vary from a few inches to five feet tall, and from about twenty pounds to six tons, tend to make a wonderful overlapping wash of sound when the harmony changes rapidly, and this reminds me of the complex sound of a typical Jewish congregation reciting "together" - in which each individual recites at their own pace, making a massed, not-entirely-cacophonous sound.
Rooster’s Court Ball
"Rooster’s Court Ball" was written on the request of the Finnish flautist Tiina Pietarinen, and was premiered at Eindhoven, Netherlands by Nicole Anna-Maria de Beer. The music combines a flamboyant twentieth-century approach to melody with the stately elegance of a seventeenth-century dance suite, and associates each dance with a different character from the Animal Kingdom.
Kabala
“Kabala” is the name of a medieval Jewish mystical tradition that re-interprets the traditional mythos of Torah, Prophets, and Writings as encrypted clues to a hierarchy of intermediary emanations between deity and the creation and nature of the material world.
Like the original Kabala, this work approaches its subject matter as a hidden factor in the fabric of life; unlike the original, this music deals with observable facts. |
| | | | | | | Reviews | | "This is an amazing and spellbinding-at times frightening in its primordial directness, at times utterly disarming in its magical grace and wit-celebration of Jewish rites created by a highly gifted composer who is profoundly in touch with his roots, and who has the compositional wherewithal to universalize them in often surprising and always resourceful ways."
"The recorded sound…is first rate-the performances are wonderfully committed. Go let yourself be challenged and, incidentally, treat yourself to a voyage of discovery."
-Fanfare: William Zagorski |
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