THE T’FILAH : MIDDLE BENEDICTION FOR SHABBAT K’DUSHAT HAYOM : THE DAY’S HOLINESS Penny Kessler Download the PDF of these pages Music is midrash: it enhances and fills in gaps and unanswered questions suggested by texts and lyrics. Choosing music for prayer texts and saying that this or that setting “works” means that the text and music complement and respond to each other. Each of the three prayers of K’dushat Ha-yom ( Mishkan T’filah , pp. 250, 252) represents a variety of aspects of our celebration of Shabbat: joy, renewal, reinvigoration, community, family, contemplation and meditation. And the music for these prayers should reflect its own particular midrash. Yism’chu is a prayer of pure joy – oneg – and its music should reflect an outpouring of delight. I frequently choose Rabbi Joe Black’s setting of Yism’chu 1 because it makes me smile when I feel the joy and the love and the absolute delight of the music. I love that it's not frantic, I respond to the salsa beat
Because cantors talk, too.