Holy Blossom Temple

Shabbat Shira – Temple Singers

SHABBAT SHIRA

February 3rd at 6 pm and Saturday, February 4th at 10.30 am Sermon in Song and Lecture after Kiddush at 1pm

The intense sounds fill our Sanctuary as we enter our preparations in high gear for Shabbat Shira. Witness our Temple Singers as they are fully engaged and enveloped in the original sounds of our German Musical Synagogal tradition.  This short clip demonstrates the intensity and seriousness of mastering the music of different communities throughout Germany.   These traditions of comparing the music of Berlin, Vienna, Frankfurt, Hannover and Danzig, provide us with the awareness and understanding of excellence; and gives us a sense of the backbone for which the North American Synagogue inherited after WW II.

In elegance of the 19th century Romantic music of the period we are embraced with lushes sounds of praise and doxology attributed to the omnipotent Almighty. Though quite similar in nature of Harmonic and melodic treatment we can notice a difference both in the complexity, sophistication and simplicity of the music written for each community. Where as Berlin’s renowned composer Louis Lewandowski used mostly the form of the German folklore song and “Lied”, it was the Father of the modern Cantorate in Vienna, Solomon Sulzer who used more of east European Jewish Thymes namely the Jewish Musical Synagogue modes and wove them in with western musical techniques. Isaac Myer Japhet in Shire Yeshurun, honoring the tradition of Frankfurt simplified much of its renditions so that children, soprano, alto and men can sing the congregational repertoire in relative ease.

Don’t miss the opportunity to learn more about the origin of our Synagogue musical tradition as a prelude to the Mission I will be pleased to lead to Germany “A Musical Tour of Healing” with the Cantors Assembly June 28th – July 4th 2012.