in merciful shadow (בצל רחום) [2021]

General Information

Commissioner: Yale College New Music
Written: September – October, 2021
Duration: ca. 6.5'
Instrumentation: vla + vcl + live electronics
Electronics: Can be performed with an analog loop pedal with reverse and half-speed capabilities, or with a Max MSP patch with options for live or pre-recording of playback.

Performance History

November 18, 2021: Jacob Miller (viola) and Gregory Llewellyn (cello) at the Morse-Styles Crescent Theater in New Haven, CT (World Premiere)

Perusal Score

~ This score below is intended for perusal purposes only, and may not be used for performance. To obtain performance materials, please click here. Thank you! ~

Program Note

As a composer, I rarely write pieces that have to do with my personal identity, often opting for subject matter dealing with abstract concepts, the natural world, or social movements happening around us. While all of my music (and maybe any artists’ work) is connected to the life I am living while writing, in merciful shadow (בצל רחום) [the Hebrew is pronounced ‘b’tzel rakhum’ and is the translation of the English phrase] is the first piece that explicitly deals with Jewishness – the core of my identity and the foundation and community on which my values and worldview are based.

In the fall of 2021, I began taking Modern Hebrew language as part of my curriculum at Yale. I had always wanted to learn Hebrew to better understand Jewish sacred texts and to speak in the language with my father (who is fluent). Language is a large part of identity: through learning Hebrew, I began to feel much more deeply connected to my Judaism.

Perhaps correlated with this shift, I began more and more to recognize a cognitive – and perhaps physical – dissonance, or uncomfortability, in my being in explicitly Christian spaces. I grew up with Christian sacred music through the works of Bach and Mozart, and I work many hours weekly singing in churches or in choirs that primarily sing Christian music. I love that music deeply. Be it the flowing line of Renaissance and Baroque counterpoint, or the serene harmony of modern sacred music, there are moments of beauty in the music that are universal and stunning.

But I cannot ignore that this music is the music of a people who persecuted my ancestors. This came to a head when I was asked to sing Vittoria’s Tenebrae Responses, which’s text reads “Tenebrae factae sunt, dum crucifixissent Jesum Judaei”: ‘darkness fell when Jesus was crucified by the Jews”. The doctrine of Jewish deicide, despite being repudiated by the Catholic church, has been used by some to justify persecution of the Jewish people for thousands of years, be it pogroms, massacres of Jews in the Crusades, the expulsion from Spain, and the Holocaust. There is an irreconcilable dissonance in the beauty of the line and music the Tenebrae Responses and the darkness and violence against me and my ancestors caused by its text. But beyond that, the Christian sacred music of this period is foundational to Western art music as a whole. It is a simple fact that the very fabric of musical institutions in Europe was deeply steeped in antisemitism. in merciful shadow (בצל רחום) is a piece about this dissonance. The piece is laden with quotes and fragments from Vittoria’s Tenebrae factae sunt and a traditional Jewish niggun sung on high holidays that lists thirteen attributes of God, beginning “יהוה, יהוה, אל רחום וחנון” (the text of the phrase translates to “God is gracious and compassionate, patient and abounding in kindness and faithfulness, assuring love for a thousand generations, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin, and granting pardon”). Despite the implied kindness of God implied by the text, the melody is dark, solemn, and haunting. I feel it serves as a fitting complement (accusation versus forgiveness, deicide versus God’s mercy, the fitting darkness of Vittoria’s music versus the unexpected darkness of the niggun) to the themes of Vittoria’s Tenebrae. In combining, warping, and distorting the two, in merciful shadow (בצל רחום) is a piece about my warped and distorted experience reconciling the dissonance between my love for Western art music and Jewish identity.