Samuel Adler’s musical arrangement To Celebrate A Miracle brings to life the awe and inspiration of the Chanukah story. Incorporating 9 of the holiday’s instantly recognizable melodies, Adler’s composition encourages listeners to connect with the joy of the holiday and to embrace the hope of future redemption.
Inside page of the January 1946, no. 1 issue of the Yiddish DP newspaper, ‘Buchenwald: Bulletin of the Buchenwald Youth in France.’ The column on the left is entitled, ‘Our Lives’. At the bottom is a poem called ‘The Song of Buchenwald’ (translated into Yiddish), sung by all the Buchenwald internees. [Photograph #44247] Source: http://holocaustmusic.ort.org/places/camps/central-europe/buchenwald/Herman Leopoldi, composer of the Buchenwald song (“Buchenwaldlied”), August 15, 1888 – June 28, 1959. The camp commandant organized a song competition soon after the camp opened. Leopoldi and his partner Fritz Lohner-Beda wrote the winning entry, although a non-Jewish kapo submitted it to the contest. The camp guards would command prisoners to sing the Buchenwaldlied as a way to cover up the sounds of torture and other acts of cruelty and murder. Some prisoners found meaning in this song as a symbol of resistance. Singing of freedom and the future gave them the opportunity to express their hopes for the demise of their captors.
To listen to a recording of the song, please click here.
Born March 30, 1804, Salomon Sulzer was one of the most important voices shaping the Chazzanut (the cantorate), Jewish music, and synagogue liturgy of the Western European and German communities.
See here for a video recording of the Ensemble Choral Copernic sing his Adon Olam in concert at the Rykestrassse Synagogue in Berlin, Dec. 23, 2012, as well as for a link to the score and the full text of Sulzer’s seminal work Shir Zion.
Celebrating Bronislaw Huberman’s birthday – violinist, founder of the Palestine Symphony Orchestra, he did not live to see it become the Israel Symphony Orchestra.
Mazal tov to Daniel Henkin on the presentation of the 2016 Covenant Award. Listen to some of his amazing work with Tizmoret, the Queen’s College Jewish a cappella group at http://www.tizmoret.com/songs/