The web page for this composition is in progress. Please contact me at gerald@nullgeraldcohenmusic.com for more information about the piece.
Commissioned for American Composers Forum’s Faith Partners residency
The web page for this composition is in progress. Please contact me at gerald@nullgeraldcohenmusic.com for more information about the piece.
Commissioned for American Composers Forum’s Faith Partners residency
About – Score – Text – Arrangements – Listen/Watch
PDF version of score and parts: $6.00 a copy (minimum 6 copies). For printed version of score, contact me. Note: Final movement of this piece, The ocean of peace lies ahead of me, is published by G. Schirmer/AMP, and can be purchased as a separate octavo from them.
An Undaunted Heart: Songs of Elders was commissioned by the New York Virtuoso Singers, Harold Rosenbaum, conductor. It was a commission of the Westchester Prize for New Works, and had its premieres in 2003 at the Music Conservatory of Westchester, White Plains, NY, and Shaarei Tikvah Congregation, Scarsdale, NY.
I was inspired to write this piece by my relationships with my elders—family, friends, and members of my community. The texts are from varied sources, including quotes from the Psalms on aging and honoring the old; by the American Marc Kaminsky, a humorous poem on a man’s vigorous request to his children to give him grandchildren; by the 12th- century Japanese poet Saigyo, on observing the passage of time in one’s aging body and in the natural world; by the American poet Mark Van Doren, on an old couple and their uncanny intuition of each other’s joys and pains; and by the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore, using the imagery of the “ocean of peace” that lies ahead of him as he encounters the “great unknown.”
The texts are meant to reflect a variety of experience in the aging process, and yet to create a strong sense of continuity for the piece as whole. The music is quite varied as well, responding to the texts such as the wild humor of the Kaminsky, the gentle humor of the Van Doren, and the ecstatic feeling of the Tagore, and was composed so as to utilize the marvelous technical and expressive resources of Harold Rosenbaum and the New York Virtuoso Singers.
***Note: Final movement of this piece, The ocean of peace lies ahead of me, is published by G. Schirmer/AMP
AN UNDAUNTED HEART:
1. From the Bible (Psalm 37:25; Leviticus 19:32; Psalm 92:15; Psalm 71:9)
Naar hayiti v’gam zakanti.
I was young and now grow old.
Mip’nei seiva takum, v’hadarta p’nei zakein.
Rise before the old, and honor the face of an elder.
Od y’nuvun b’seiva d’sheinim v’raananim yihyu.
They shall still flourish in old age, they shall be ever fresh and fragrant.
Al tashlicheini b’eit zikna, kichlot kochi al taazveini.
Do not cast me off in old age—when my strength fails, do not forsake me.
2. Mark Kaminsky (American, b. 1943): “Dancing Bear”
My father, when his sons and daughters
visit his table, bringing freshly picked
husbands and wives, sits at the head
like a man who’s come into his place
and is drunk with his triumph. He jumps
up and pulls each one of us to him
into a great wet bear hug, and cries:
Bring me grandchildren! Go home
and get me some grandchildren!
Quick! I want them
to get me greatgrandchildren before I die.
And my mother, trying to make him
act like a grown-up, cannot,
during the whole time he dances around us,
get him back on the leash.
3. Saigyo (Japanese, 1118-1190): “While noticing how time”
While noticing how time
Has bent my body’s silhouette
Cast in the moonlight…
Away off in the distance the moon
Sank closer to the world’s rim.
4. Mark van Doren (American, 1894-1973): “Old Man, Old Woman”
Old man, if he cares much
When old woman is achesome, gives
No sign to strangers; even when
She staggers, seems not to notice
But does, and old woman knows it
In the odd way of animals
That watch each other incessantly.
Such tenderness is in these two,
Each of them sees everything
Outside, inside the other: old
Man, old woman suffer and then
Feel good together, their hearts equal,
Their eyes veteran, missing no
Least message, morning or evening,
Winter or summer, during or after
Pain—oh, dear, plenty of that.
5. Rabindranath Tagore (Bengali, 1861-1941), “The ocean of peace lies ahead of me”
The ocean of peace lies ahead of me.
Sail the boat, O pilot
You are my constant companion now.
Take me in your lap.
Along the journey to the infinite
The pole star alone will shine.
Giver of Freedom
Set me free.
May your forgiveness and compassion
Be my eternal resources for the journey—
May the mortal ties fall away,
May the vast universe
Hold me in embrace,
And with an undaunted heart
May I come to know the Great Unknown.
“The Ocean of Peace”, the final movement of An Undaunted Heart, is available in an instrumental arrangement, (i.e. without chorus), for:
Violin, viola, cello and piano. This arrangement was a Hoff-Barthelson/Copland House commission.
Please contact Gerald Cohen at gerald@nullgeraldcohenmusic.com for information on this arrangement.
About – Score – Performances
Adon Olam is a setting of one of the best known Jewish liturgical poems— attributed to Solomon Ibn Gabriol—expressing God as present both in the infinity of space and time, and the nearness of our own being. When used in synagogue, the text is often sung at the very end of services, often to lively tunes that do not particularly reflect the meaning of the text. In this piece, I hoped to write a choral setting that was indeed a close reflection of the beauty and the content of the poem.
I was pleased to write this piece commissioned, for SATB chorus and organ, as part of the Faith Partners fellowship of the American Composers Forum, for the Church of St. Ignatius-Loyola, New York, NY, Kent Tritle, Music Director, who premiered it in September 2003. I wrote a new arrangement for chorus and piano, which was given its premiere in September 2024 by the New York Virtuoso Singers, Harold Rosenbaum, conductor.
September 14, 2003, Church of St. Ignatius-Loyola, New York, NY
About – Score – Listen/Watch – Text – Performances
Lakol z’man/For everything a season was commissioned by the Cantabile Chamber Chorale, Rebecca Scott, conductor. The piece is written in memory of Ronald Axelrad—a beloved member of the chorus, and a great lover of life and of music of many sorts.
The text for this piece is the famous section from the book of Ecclesiastes (known in Hebrew as Kohelet). I have chosen to set the refrain in both Hebrew and English; the melody of the refrain is based upon the traditional cantillation of the text as it is chanted with the Hebrew text, as recited in services on the holiday of Sukkot. The opposing pairs of “a time to…” that make up the rest of the text are set in English, each verse leading to a fuller and more impassioned return of the refrain. The coda of the piece gives the melody of the refrain quietly to the piano, with the chorus singing words of the verses in a gentle recitation.
Gerald Cohen
August 2004
Commissioned by Cantabile Chamber Chorus
Lakol z’man, v’et l’kol chefets tachat hashamayim,
For everything a season, and a time for every purpose under the heavens.
a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to break down and a time to build up —
Lakol z’man, v’et l’kol chefets tachat hashamayim,
For everything a season, and a time for every purpose under the heavens.
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.
Lakol z’man, v’et l’kol chefets tachat hashamayim,
For everything a season, and a time for every purpose under the heavens.
Premiere: Cantabile Chamber Chorus, Rebecca Scott, cond., December 2004, New Brunswick, NJ
The web page for this composition is in progress. Please contact me at gerald@nullgeraldcohenmusic.com for more information about the piece.
Commissioned by Zemer Chai, Washington, D.C.
The web page for this composition is in progress. Please contact me at gerald@nullgeraldcohenmusic.com for more information about the piece.
Children’s Aid Society Chorus Commission Award 2007
Poem by Walt Whitman
The web page for this composition is in progress. Please contact me at gerald@nullgeraldcohenmusic.com for more information about the piece.
Commissioned by Congregation B’nai Israel, Sylvania, OH
The web page for this composition is in progress. Please contact me at gerald@nullgeraldcohenmusic.com for more information about the piece.
Commissioned by Baltimore Hebrew Congregation
About – Score – Arrangements – Listen/Watch – Text – Performances
Dodi li vaani lo (My beloved is mine, and I am his) was commissioned for Cantabile Chamber Chorale by Mitzi Lasky and Seth and Carolyn Rudnick, in memory of their parents, Dr. Stanford and Lucille Batter Rudnick, and by Cantabile. This piece was also written in celebration of Cantabile’s 20th anniversary as a chorus, all under the direction of Rebecca Scott, and it was the 3rd piece that I have written for Cantabile–it has been so significant for me to be an active part of their musical lives! The premiere of the piece took place in March 2009.
The Song of Songs is a favorite text both of mine and of Mitzi’s, and Mitzi felt that it would be most suitable as a tribute to the love of her parents for each other. I chose a selection of short texts from different parts of the poem, with the opening line as a refrain, and with each successive line becoming musically more and more caught up in the intoxication of love.
Dodi Li has also been arranged in an instrumental version for two clarinets and piano (or clarinet, viola, and piano, or solo piano) as part of my composition Sea of Reeds. The two-clarinet version has been recorded by the Grneta Ensemble on the album (also entitled Sea of Reeds) of my chamber music with clarinet (Navona Records NV5979).
—Gerald Cohen
Commissioned by Cantabile Chamber Chorale, Rebecca Scott, music director.
SATB Chorus and piano (without clarinet)
Instrumental versions, as part of Sea of Reeds: Piano solo, 2 clarinets and piano, clarinet, viola and piano
Refrain:
Dodi li, vaani lo,
haroeh bashoshanim.
K’shoshana bein hachochim,
kein rayati bein habanot.
K’tapuach baatsei hayaar,
kein dodi bein habanim.
(Refrain)
Hayoshevet baganim,
chavemost rim makshivim,
l’koleich hashmiini!
(Refrain)
Ichlu rei-im, sh’tu v’shichru dodim!
Refrain:
My beloved is mine and I am his,
He browses among the lilies.
Like a lily among thorns,
so is my darling among the maidens.
Like an apple tree among trees of the forest,
So is my beloved among the youths.
(Refrain)
O you who linger in the garden,
A lover is listening;
Let me hear your voice!
(Refrain)
Eat, lovers; and drink, become intoxicated with love!
(Shir Hashirim 2:16, 2:2-3, 8:13, 5:1)
Premiere: Cantabile Chamber Chorale, Rebecca Scott, music director, March 2009, New Brunswick, NJ
