Song of Songs

In the 1940s Foss had already done two cantatas for voice and orchestra, “Song of Anguish” and “Song of Songs,” that were also on biblical texts.

If Mrs. Brenner thought plagiarizing the Song of Songs would convince me to ruin my Fourth of July, she was sadly mistaken.

These are balanced by simple folk-dance patterns, and Tanowitz has said her “Song of Songs” is a “Jewish dance,” but it’s Jewish in the sense that Jerome Robbins’s “Dances at a Gathering” is.

He was game but hesitant about returning to “Song of Songs,” as he had created music based on it twice before.

So does “A Song of Songs,” at least at first.