Chanukah Suite is an original chorale composition

Chorale Composition

Chorale Composition is an important class of Baroque organ composition based on chorale melodies. It became popular in the early seventeenth century and flourished in middle and northern Germany until the early eighteenth century.-Description:...

 by Jewish composer Jason Robert Brown

Jason Robert Brown

Jason Robert Brown is an American musical theater composer, lyricist, and playwright. Brown's music sensibility fuses pop-rock stylings with theatrical lyrics...

. The work was debuted in December, 2005, at the Walt Disney Concert Hall

Walt Disney Concert Hall

The Walt Disney Concert Hall at 111 South Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles, California is the fourth hall of the Los Angeles Music Center. Bounded by Hope Street, Grand Avenue, 1st and 2nd Streets, it seats 2,265 people and serves as the home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestra and the...

 in two performances by the Los Angeles Master Chorale

Los Angeles Master Chorale

The Los Angeles Master Chorale is a professional chorus in Los Angeles, California. It was founded in 1964 by Roger Wagner to be one of the three original resident companies of the Music Center of Los Angeles County...

. Composed in three parts and lasting just over 8 minutes, the work is based on an innovative merging of traditional Hebrew

Hebrew language

Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...

 songs with up-tempo rock and roll

Rock and roll

Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music...

 rhythms and harmonic fanfares.

I. S'vivon/Al Hanism

S'vivon means dreidel

Dreidel

A dreidel is a four-sided spinning top, played with during the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah.Each side of the dreidel bears a letter of the Hebrew alphabet:נ ,ג ,ה ,ש ,...

, and the first section of the piece evokes the celebratory nature of Hanukkah

Hanukkah

Hanukkah , also known as the Festival of Lights, is an eight-day Jewish holiday commemorating the rededication of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem at the time of the Maccabean Revolt of the 2nd century BCE...

, imploring sov, sov, sov,, or spin, spin, spin, as a reminder that Chanukah hu chag tov (Hanukkah is indeed a good holiday.)

Al hanisim is a paragraph from the Jewish prayer service (Amidah

Amidah

The Amidah , also called the Shmoneh Esreh , is the central prayer of the Jewish liturgy. This prayer, among others, is found in the siddur, the traditional Jewish prayer book...

) added during the post-Biblical Festivals of Chanukah and Purim

Purim

Purim is a Jewish holiday that commemorates the deliverance of the Jewish people in the ancient Persian Empire from destruction in the wake of a plot by Haman, a story recorded in the Biblical Book of Esther .Purim is celebrated annually according to the Hebrew calendar on the 14th...

 in which we thank God for Miracles.

II. Mi Yemalel

The Mi yemalel passage asks Who can retell the things that befell us? and speaks of the stories of heroes and wise men of every age, announcing their arrivals with the repeated exclamations Sh'ma! Sh'ma! or Hark! Hark! Musically this passage features bright piano work and joyful hand clapping.

III. Finale: Ma'oz Tsur

Ma'oz Tzur or Rock of ages lifts a song of praise to God's saving power, the tower that sheltered and arms that protected, against all enemies. The finale features repetition of the lines by four soloists in different vocal range

Vocal range

Vocal range is the measure of the breadth of pitches that a human voice can phonate. Although the study of vocal range has little practical application in terms of speech, it is a topic of study within linguistics, phonetics, and speech and language pathology, particularly in relation to the study...

s.

IV. Recordings

The Los Angeles Master Chorale. Grant Gershon, conductor. Lisa Edwards, piano. http://www.jasonrobertbrown.com/exclusive/0906/chanukahsuite.mp3

Edited high school recording from December 2005: http://prongs.spymac.com/music/chanukah-suite.mp3