Leonard Bernstein at 100

Overview

This setting was found posthumously among Bernstein’s papers in a folder marked “1989,” but the musical atmosphere suggests his style in Dybbuk (1974). Only ten bars long, this rumination on the mystery of creation is, by extension, a tone painting of artistic creativity, suggesting something formed out of nothingness.

© 2003 Jack Gottlieb (Written for the Milken Jewish Archive Label, CDs distributed by Naxos International)

Lyrics

Sung in Hebrew
Genesis 1:3

And God said “Let there be light,” and there was light.

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