Kol Nidre

The German Romantic composer, Max Bruch (1838-1920) composed the “Adagio on Hebrew Melodies for Violincello and orchestra,” opus 47 in 1881. It has become the most popular and most performed of his works next to his violin concerto #1 in G minor. He wrote the following in a letter to cantor and musicologist Eduard Birnbaum on Dec. 4, 1889:

“I became acquainted with ‘Kol Nidre in Berlin through the Lichtenstein family, who befriended me. Even though I am a Protestant (Christian), as an artist I deeply felt the outstanding beauty of this melody…As a young man I had already…studied folksongs of all nations with great enthusiasm, because the folksong is the source of all true melodies – a wellspring, at which one must repeatedly renew and refresh oneself…so lay also before me the study of ethnic Jewish music on my path.”

Bruch’s arrangement of ‘Kol Nidre’ actually was based on two different Hebrew melodies. The first is the melody of ‘Kol Nidre’ itself - one of the most ancient and sacred of Jewish melodies sung in the synagogues throughout the world on the eve (the beginning) of the Day of Atonement (‘Yom Kippur’) each year. It is chanted/sung by the cantor of the synagogue and/or played on an instrument. The ancient prayer text cries out to God for forgiveness, asking for the release from and the renouncing of ‘all vows’ that we may make but not keep for the following year. Some believe that it came as a Jewish response to forced conversions, particularly those of the Marranos during the Spanish Inquisition. However, the prayer predates this by hundreds of years.

Nevertheless, it certainly was used in that manner by the Jews in many lands during the Diaspora that had to “convert” and/or make vows that they didn’t really mean under pain of banishment, loss of property, torture, and even death. In any case, however it is applied, it allows for the forgiveness and absolution from rash and wrong vows made before God either foolishly or under compulsion. It is considered by many Rabbis and Jewish religious scholars to be one of the holiest parts of the ‘Yom Kippur’ service. My father, a cellist, has often been asked to play Kol Nidre for the synagogue on ‘Yom Kippur’, although he attends synagogue services very rarely at other times.

The second melody in this Romantic setting of Kol Nidre is in D major and is from the middle section of a moving and magnificent song written by Isaac Nathans with lyrics by Lord Byron entitled, “Oh Weep for those who wept on Babylon’s stream”. This is taken from Psalm 137 and is a lament for Israel’s seventy years of captivity in Babylon. Although Bruch’s version of Kol Nidre is a Romantic departure from the traditional Jewish liturgical setting, its’ warmth, beauty and expressiveness give it an enduring and exalted musical quality - making it the most well known and beloved of arrangements of this most sacred Jewish hymn. In more recent times, the violinist Josef Gingold edited this lovely arrangement for the violin and piano.