About the creation

My dear friend Orna Arania asked me to contribute a piece of music for her to sing in a concert. She explained to me, that the concert would deal with the man-made horrors, ideologically based, that ravaged Europe throughout the first half of the twentieth century. I was thinking about the Holocaust. I told her that I am totally incapable of composing music about that most terrible disaster in human history. That I cannot think this madness, this unspeakable horror so scientifically and systematically executed, in terms of music. And if there is music that tries to express such unspeakable wickedness, cruelty and ugliness, it simply ceases to be music.

I told Orna that I would rather set to music some verses from the ancient Book of Lamentations. The destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans in the year 70 A.D. was a total disaster. It spelled not only the end of Judea as an independent state, but also the end of an ancient culture and an ancient religion: the culture and religion of the Old Testament. That far off disaster still looms high as an archetype in Jewish tradition, together with the hope for a comeback, for reconciliation between the People of Israel and their ancient God.

Yehezkel Braun