Piano Solo - Digital Download SKU: A0.944074 Composed by Ofer Ben-Amots. Contemporary. Score. 12 pages. The Composer's Own Press #4889959. Published by The Composer's Own Press (A0.944074). Akëda is based on the prayer El Maleh Rakhamim which is one of two main Jewish liturgies commemorating the deceased (the other one is the Kaddish.) The music is written in a free, single movement, improvisatory-like form. The traditional eastern-European melody of El Maleh is the main text, which pulls liked a thread throughout the movement. The different musical gestures surrounding and illustrating it, function as commentaries (Midrashim.) Simulating the journey of a prayer, from the abyss upward to the highest height, so does the music in this movement cruise from the lowest range all the way up to the top octaves of the instrument. The Hebrew word Akëda means binding or sacrificial offering as the binding of the sacrifice in the story of Abraham and Isaac: ..., and Abraham built the altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar, upon the wood. (Genesis, 22,9.) The prayer of El Maleh Rakhamim appears in several different versions. The version used for Akëda is the one specifically chanted during Yom Hashoah in memory of the victims of the Holocaust.
