by Corey Rubin | Jul 26, 2020 | Uncategorized
“Mi Yimalel” (“Who can retell?”) is a fairly popular Hanukkah song, with words adapted from scripture. The origin of the melody is unknown. This particular arrangement borrows heavily from other Jewish musical traditions (such as the klezmer dance): the tune, normally...
by Corey Rubin | Mar 10, 2019 | Uncategorized
“Ma’oz Tzur” (arranged here for SATB chorus) is a traditional Jewish song with a long history. The tune dates back at least 500 years, and is still familiar to most modern Jews. The words, written in the 13th century, tell the history of the Jewish people, and...
by Corey Rubin | Apr 28, 2018 | Uncategorized
Christmas Football U.S.A., for symphonic band, originated as a joke—a fake title I gave to a nonexistent piece of music, having been asked (in a college course titled “Career in Composition”) to caption the info for a work I might enclose in a (hypothetical)...
by Corey Rubin | Mar 24, 2018 | Uncategorized
Minute Mass is an (admittedly ridiculous) homage on two counts: first, to the Missae breves of Haydn and his contemporaries, whose Glorias and Credos often employed overlapping text (that is, different, simultaneous text in each voice of the choir) in order to get...
by Corey Rubin | Jan 27, 2018 | Uncategorized
Spaghetti, for oboe, bassoon, viola, bass, and harp, was conceived as an “anti-Pierrot piece”; that is, a quintet mirroring the traditional Pierrot ensemble (flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and piano), but featuring players who don’t typically appear in as much...
by Corey Rubin | Jun 2, 2017 | Uncategorized
My Mother, for SATB chorus, weaves together three texts, each a collage of images and memories surrounding the author’s mother (or, in one case, grandmother). They were written as part of the Traveling Stanzas project, a collaboration between centers of poetry and...
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