Robert Stern

Mixed Chorus and Piano

Editor's Note:

three lullabies is a three-movement work for mixed chorus and piano based on traditional Yiddish cradle songs. The work was composed in the fall of 1989 in Amherst, Massachusetts, for Richard Dubois, Professor of Composition and Choral Music at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and longtime director of the UMass/Amherst University Chorale.

Stern originally composed the lullabies using English-language versions of the texts. Prior to the work’s first official publication in 2002, he revisited the score and restored the original Yiddish texts, placing them beneath the English with the intention that either language could be sung in performance. Because Yiddish and English differ significantly in syllabification, accentuation, and vocal flow, accommodating both languages required the expansion or contraction of rhythms—and in some cases the addition of notes. As a result, the present edition separates the English and Yiddish versions into distinct scores to provide greater clarity and ease for performers. This present score is the original composed English version.

The English translations Stern uses in the original score derive from early twentieth-century adaptations of Yiddish folk material, most notably those published in From the Cradle to the Chuppe: Songs of Jewish Life (1923), compiled by Henry Gideon, with English versions by Constance Ramsay Gideon.

Musically, the settings reference melodic materials associated with the traditional songs while expanding them through added harmony, texture, and formal shaping. Across the three movements, Stern creates a unified concert work that moves from broader, more communal expressions toward an increasingly intimate tone, with each lullaby feeling closer and more personal in its emotional world.