Shofar in Jewish Music
admin April 30th, 2008
The Horn Section
You are probably familiar with musical instruments called “horns.” In a band or orchestra, the horns are made out of brass, have a small hole at one end that you blow into, and a large flared bell at the other end. In between is a long tube. Modern orchestral horns are the descendants of earlier instruments made from real animal horns. The shofar, usually made from a ram’s horn, is still used today in Jewish religious ceremonies.
The instrument is now almost never used outside these times, though has been seen in western classical music on a limited number of occasions. The best known example is to be found in Edward Elgar’s oratorio The Apostles, although an instrument such as the flugelhorn usually plays the part instead of an actual shofar.
http://www.fact-index.com/s/sh/shofar.html
Jewish Daily Forward
SEPTEMBER 6, 2002
When the Ram’s Horn Sounds
From Edward Elgar, Who Announced Daybreak Over the Temple in an Oratorio, to Leonard Bernstein, Who Began ‘West Side Story’ With a Familiar Blast, Composers Have Used the Shofar To Evoke the Majestic and the Mystical
By RAPHAEL MOSTEL
To adapt the famous categorization of Claude Levi-Strauss, if such wind instruments as clarinets and cornets are “cooked,” the shofar is definitely “raw.” The question arises: Why has this wild horn, the only biblical instrument still in use, come to represent so much to Jews, especially in the holiday season we are entering?
According to tradition, the shofar is the closest thing to the voice of God. Almost every time the Jewish or Christian Bibles mention a trumpet or horn, it means the shofar. Whether it is at the giving of the Ten Commandments to Moses, Gabriel blowing the last trumpet, the raising of the dead or the tuba mirum (wondrous trumpet) of the Catholic mass — all are referring to the shofar. Composers throughout history have vied to conjure the magic of the biblical shofar, but most have done so fancifully, perhaps the most spectacular being by the 19th-century atheist and genius Hector Berlioz, who dreamed up four spatially separated brass bands for the unforgettably rousing Dies Irae of his “Requiem Mass” to illustrate what the shofars at the end of the world would sound like. Or on the opposite end of the spectrum, the sweetly singing tuba mirum of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s “Requiem,” which seems to have been equally inspired by the call of the wood thrush.
Other composers have been more literal in invoking the shofar. Without doubt the most famous music inspired by the call of the shofar is Leonard Bernstein’s masterpiece, “West Side Story.” The very first notes of the introduction are nothing but a full-throated orchestral evocation of the sound of the shofar. And this theme is the musical kernel from which Bernstein derived most of the music in this score. In the earliest version, the musical was called “East Side Story” and the female lead was not the Puerto Rican immigrant Maria, but rather a Jewish girl who falls in love with an Italian Catholic boy in Greenwich Village. It was this interfaith conflict that informed the thematic development of the score. Even though the ethnic elements of the plot were changed, the original inspiration in the music remains embedded throughout. But perhaps Maria was secretly a Marrano?
It’s not just Jewish composers who’ve been inspired by the sound of the shofar. Surprisingly, the Edwardian English composer Sir Edward Elgar — yes, the one famous for the “Pomp and Circumstance March” that everyone knows from graduation ceremonies — was inspired by the mystical vision of the shofar sounding to announce the daybreak over the temple in Jerusalem in his oratorio “The Apostles.”
Although there were many composers who imitated the sound or the idea of the shofar in their music, there were very few who had included actual shofars in their compositions when I started to do so almost two decades ago. Now there are many, and currently we’re seeing a renaissance of interest in the musical possibilities of this extraordinary and evocative instrument from composers as diverse as Alvin Curran (shofar and electronics) to John Zorn (”downtown” shofar) and John Duffy (shofar on the “Heritage” soundtrack).
In synagogues, there are two divergent traditions of shofar calls: the Ashkenazi (German), which is dramatic and outward, and the Sephardi (Spanish-Portuguese), which is more tremulous and inward. It is possible that the patterns of shofar calls are derived from military trumpet calls, which are described in several ancient texts, including one of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Te’kiah would correspond to “assemble,” Sh’vorim to “advance,” T’ruah (described as “like raindrops”) to “pursue” and Te’kiah G’dolah as “regroup.” (It should be noted, though, that Plutarch, traveling in the Nile delta, sarcastically described hearing a debased version of these calls used for traffic control that sounded to him “like donkeys.”)
Historically, the sound of shofar has always been treated as something in a category by itself — not quite music, but a sound endowed with mystical and magical powers.
My own research has linked everyone’s favorite fantastical animal, the unicorn, to the shofar. The Bible specifically says that when the messiah comes, the “big” shofar (shofar ha-gadol) will sound. This led Maimonides, who was a medical doctor as well as philosopher, to speculate that since the left side of animals is always slightly smaller than the right only the right horn should be used for a shofar. And in medieval times Jews followed this thinking and were careful to use only the right horn for their shofars.
Unicorn or ram, the shofar-bearing animal is one of the most powerful symbols in the monotheistic traditions. The most famous ram of the Bible is the one sacrificed by Abraham in place of his beloved son Isaac, which to many symbolizes the archetypal movement of civilization from human to animal sacrifice. The sound of the shofar is certainly a convincing reminder of those roots.
At the time of the temple in Jerusalem, a full orchestra — including winds, brass, strings and percussion — performed. All were played by musicians, but only priests were entitled to play the ram’s horn, underscoring the shofar’s ambiguity: Is it music, or something else?
Of all of the instruments used in the Temple, only the shofar survives today. In this season of remembrance and introspection, the call of the shofar focuses our minds on what is essential, what is eternal. If we are asking who will live and who will die, who will be raised up and who will be cast down, it is a sound that brings us up short, with no possibility of arrogant response. No one can be indifferent to its rude wail. Of how many other musical devices can this be said?
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Raphael Mostel has composed 18 works for shofar since 1985, and has broadcast an ongoing series of reports on the instrument on WNYC and National Public Radio. He was the first composer to sound the shofar at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, for which he was commissioned by WNYC-FM to help celebrate the radio station’s 50th anniversary in 1994.
http://www.mostel.com. Accessed June 14, 2004