Bringing folk melodies into modern repertoire has a long tradition, with many iconic works simultaneously celebrating and preserving melodies which might otherwise have been lost to history. Here we have the opportunity to celebrate and preserve a melody just as it starts to find its way in the musical world.

By the time Debbie Friedman died in January 2011, just shy of her 60th birthday, she had created a large collection of music loved throughout the world’s Jewish community. She embodied the idea that each generation has a responsibility to contribute to the canon of sacred music, and her settings of liturgical texts have been sung regularly for decades. Her setting of “Mi Shebeirach,” the prayer for healing, is likely her most familiar tune, but “Shalom Aleichem” is a beautiful capstone to her legacy. It was in an early stage at the time of her death, having shared the melody among a few groups. This melody has since been sung worldwide, beginning with Friedman’s own memorial and the following Sabbath of Song (Shabbat Shira), and it has begun to take its rightful place in the liturgical canon.

This chorale setting of Friedman’s tune for wind band is ordered as it would be sung: starting with a presentation of the chorus theme by clarinets in SATB choir voicing, with more of the band joining-in with each repetition of the theme or chorus. The melody and countermelodies move among the different sections until the full band has taken up the tune while the euphonium, horn, and clarinet weave a contrapuntal line through it. Slowly, the joy of the full band is stripped away, exposing the more solemn sound of a brass choir, juxtaposing the joy brought to so many by Ms. Friedman during her life with a quiet reflection at its end.