Biblical Verse in Classical Settings Quiz

Answer: Aholiab (Oholi'av)

Aholiab, son of Achisamach, was one of the foremen in charge of building the Tabernacle. He had no spoken lines in the scriptures, so no composer could set his words to music. "Jephetah" was one of the first oratorios ever to come out, mainly about Jephetah's daughter rather than him. Handel's "Saul" is still performed on occasion. And of course, oratorios on most miraculous events include a part made out for the character of God.

Answer: King Josiah and the renovations of the temple

The creation of the world comes first in chronological order, and was set by several composers including Paul Ben Haim, Darius Milhaud and Aaron Copland. As far as I know, there is only one setting of the entire first chapter of Genesis in its original Hebrew, and that's my own.

The Exodus was set at least once by Schoenberg ("Moses and Aaron"), and there is a quite famous oratorio by Mendelssohn titled "Elijah".

Answer: Schumann was referring to Goliath, who was defeated by David despite the incredible odds

Just as David beat the Philistine giant, though everyone around him said it was impossible, so Schumann thought his music would survive criticism by an audience that didn't appreciate his work at the time. As history turns out, he was right.

Answer: False

Johannes Brahms preferred to set the Old Testament. While he was Protestant by tradition and upbringing, he was generally careful about the texts he chose to set. In fact, in the Reqiem he went out of his way to avoid using the name Jesus in the score.

Other famous settings of Old Testament texts by Brahms include a brilliantly canonic setting of verses from Psalm 51, and the very well known motet "Warrum ist das Licht gegeben..." ("Wherefore is the light given...") set to text from Job, among other sources.

Answer: Johann Hermann Schein

One can easily recall Schoenberg's ending to his cantata "A Survivor from Warsaw" which is shouted out in Hebrew. Rossi was one of the first composers whose music was printed in Hebrew. Stravinsky did write a less well known piece for solo voice and piano in which he set the story of Abraham almost sacrificing Isaac. Schein, as far as I know, never wrote anything in Hebrew (though he did write some marvelous motets in German).

Answer: Complete silence

"And there was no voice, and no answer..." That's how the text portrays it. Incidentally, God's voice is described a couple of chapters later as "the sound of a moment's silence".

Answer: Hebrew

Since the 1930s, the Hebrew language has been gaining popularity among composers, especially Jewish composers. The establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 gave rise to a great number of composers, artists, bands, sports teams and the like. But the custom of setting verses in Hebrew for a performance in Great Britain was still highly unorthodox in the 60s, when Bernstein wrote the piece.

Answer: False

Austria had a history of being a Catholic empire, and usually Austrians used the Latin verses, especially in church music. Bruckner himself was reputed to have been an extremely devout Catholic.

Answer: Latin

It has been said that Stravinsky chose to set the verses in the Latin Vulgate version specifically because he did not understand the language. Because of this, he felt that he could have a little more freedom to break the laws and structure of the language, as opposed to strictly conforming to it (which is what composers had done throughout history in almost any language).

Answer: The Hebrew alphabet was set to melismatic music before the verse was set

"Lamentatione di Jeremiah Prophete: Aleph:..." In the Latin editions of the Bible, where a Hebrew alphabetical acrostic was used in the original, the letters were usually written on the margins. Four of the five chapters of "Lamentations" are written as alphabetical acrostics. And before setting each verse to music, many Renaissance composers would set the opening letters to music as well.