By the Power

MIDI Files:

Piece
Solo
Tutti
Alto 1 solo
Alto 1 tutti
Alto 2 solo
Alto 2 tutti

Communal prayer is important in Judaism, especially on Yom Kippur, which the Hebrew version of this text introduces. The Hebrew word for “to pray”, literally means “to judge oneself”, and in the Great Confession on Yom Kippur, we all confess our sins of the past year together as though each of us had strayed in all the ways that any of us did. But in Jewish communal prayer, praying together does not necessarily mean praying in unison. Often we pray at our own individual paces, with some beginners closely following their more-experienced neighbors while others have already moved on to the next prayer; and yet somehow the disparate voices rise and fall with a single harmonious spirit. This song, with its closely spaced voices in two harmonizing sections of incommensurate meters whose highs and lows nevertheless coincide, tries to capture the characteristic jumble of voices in Jewish communal prayer. The musical progression from a hesitant 3/4-time melody wandering in a divergent round in the first section to the resolute even-rhythmed call to prayer soaring calmly above it in a parallel round in the second section is meant to focus our minds on the upcoming confession while attuning our spirits to the diversity of people around us.

Musically, this song works well either as a simple stretto round with up to 4 voices at 1-beat intervals, as a simple quodlibet round harmonizing the apparently incompatible 3/4 and 4/4 sections, or as a full double canon with up to 4 voices in each section. For a longer arrangement, start by introducing the entire melody solo, repeat with a duet between melody and countermelody, and add voices in pairs on subsequent repetitions. With one to three voices on each part, the harmony is quite pleasing. It's only on adding the fourth pair of voices that the characteristic jumble of voices is attained. In an instrumental arrangment, it helps to assign contrasting instrumental families to the two sections, putting diverse and complex colors (such as strings and double reeds) in the first section and more-uniform and clear colors (such as winds or single reeds) in the second section.

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