Robert Stern

Flute, Cello, and Harp

Editor's Note:

Robert Stern composed Wedding Music in 1993 for the wedding of his stepson, Noah Eckhouse, and Catherine Popper, in Macon, Georgia. It is scored for flute, cello, and harp, and is in three movements— Processional, "Al Tifg'i Vi," and Recessional — lasting about nine minutes in total.

The first and third movements, the Processional and Recessional, are original to this piece. The central movement, "Al Tifg'i Vi," is also Stern's own music, but did not begin life in this piece. It began as a recitative in his 1986 cantata A Rushing of New Waters (published by the American Composers Alliance) — scored for women's chorus, soprano solo, piano, narrator, and optional bells, on a text drawn from the Book of Ruth by the composer and his wife, Judith Glaser. Stern later arranged the recitative as a song for soprano and piano, "Al Tifg'i Vi," written for his University of Massachusetts colleague, the soprano Paulina Stark, and placed it first in his cycle Three Hebrew Songs (also published by the American Composers Alliance). Here it is arranged again, now for flute, cello, and harp.

The textual basis for the movement is Ruth's declaration in Ruth 1:16, spoken to her mother-in-law Naomi as Naomi prepares to return from Moab to Bethlehem: "Entreat me not to leave you… where you go I will go… your people shall be my people, and your God my God." This passage is frequently used at weddings as a statement of commitment and devotion. The Processional is based on the sarabande — a slow, stately Baroque dance in triple meter, one of the standard movements of the Baroque suite — and carries that dance's characteristic emphasis on the second beat of the bar throughout.

The closing Recessional, marked fortissimo throughout, evokes the Sephardic Sabbath song Ki Eshmera Shabbat — a twelfth-century table hymn by Abraham ibn Ezra celebrating the Sabbath as a day of rest and delight, of festive food and wine and of joy rather than mourning, kept as "an eternal sign" between God and Israel — capturing the character and quality of that melody without exactly duplicating the original tune.

New 2026 engraved edition from 1993 original manuscript courtesy of Michael Golzmane.