But perhaps Maria was secretly a Marrano? Even though the ethnic elements of the plot were changed, the original inspiration in the music remains embedded throughout. It was this interfaith conflict that informed the thematic development of the score. In the earliest version, the musical was called “East Side Story” and the female lead was not the Puerto Rican immigrant Maria, but rather a Jewish girl who falls in love with an Italian Catholic boy in Greenwich Village. And this theme is the musical kernel from which Bernstein derived most of the music in this score. Without doubt the most famous music inspired by the call of the shofar is Leonard Bernstein’s masterpiece, “West Side Story.” The very first notes of the introduction are nothing but a full-throated orchestral evocation of the sound of the shofar. Other composers have been more literal in invoking the shofar. Or on the opposite end of the spectrum, the sweetly singing tuba mirum of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s “Requiem,” which seems to have been equally inspired by the call of the wood thrush.
Composers throughout history have vied to conjure the magic of the biblical shofar, but most have done so fancifully, perhaps the most spectacular being by the 19th-century atheist and genius Hector Berlioz, who dreamed up four spatially separated brass bands for the unforgettably rousing Dies Irae of his “Requiem Mass” to illustrate what the shofars at the end of the world would sound like. Whether it is at the giving of the Ten Commandments to Moses, Gabriel blowing the last trumpet, the raising of the dead or the tuba mirum (wondrous trumpet) of the Catholic mass - all are referring to the shofar. Almost every time the Jewish or Christian Bibles mention a trumpet or horn, it means the shofar. To adapt the famous categorization of Claude Levi-Strauss, if such wind instruments as clarinets and cornets are “cooked,” the shofar is definitely “raw.” The question arises: Why has this wild horn, the only biblical instrument still in use, come to represent so much to Jews, especially in the holiday season we are entering?Īccording to tradition, the shofar is the closest thing to the voice of God. (Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)Īnd to cap it all, when Mercedes, with tears in her pretty eyes and a quaver in her throat, could not cajole him into giving the dogs still more, she stole from the fish-sacks and fed them slyly.Originally published in the Forward September 6, 2002. Someone was singing, a dull, old, droning sailor's song, with a droop and a quaver at the end of every verse, and seemingly no end to it at all but the patience of the singer. (The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) Sir, I am very much in the wrong, and I beg that you will forget what is past." "Professor Challenger," said he, in a solemn voice, which quavered with emotion, "I owe you an apology. Laurence, who looked quite taken aback, and held out her hand, saying, with only a small quaver in her voice, I came to thank you, sir, for. If you will believe me, she went and knocked at the study door before she gave herself time to think, and when a gruff voice called out, come in! she did go in, right up to Mr. (Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)
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"I don't know how to thank you," Madge quavered. (The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) He was voicing an utter woe, his cry bursting upward in great heart-breaking rushes, dying down into quavering misery, and bursting upward again with a rush upon rush of grief.įrom Wiltshire, friend, said she, in a quavering voice three days have I been on the road. “The man you shot-he is-I hope?” Maud Brewster quavered. (The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) “Who are you, then? What do you want?” he asked in a quavering voice.
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