Born on September 8, 1973, in New Brunswick, New Jersey; Currently resides in the Baltimore, Maryland area.
The Sacrifice of Isaac
Composed: 2020
Estimated length: 50 minutes
Over recent seasons the Nashville Symphony has returned repeatedly to the music of the Baltimore-based composer Jonathan Leshnoff , performing and recording a growing body of work shaped by his sustained engagement with Jewish spiritual thought.
First championed in Nashville under Giancarlo Guerrero, that relationship continues here under Robert Spano, who led the world premiere of The Sacrifice of Isaac with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in 2024 and now brings the work to Nashville as part of its continuing life.
The biblical account of the binding of Isaac (Genesis 22) is among the most unsettling and enigmatic narratives in scripture. God commands Abraham to sacrifice his son; Abraham obeys; at the final moment, the command is revoked, and a ram is offered in Isaac’s place. The story unfolds with terse economy, offering little in the way of psychological commentary. Its moral and theological implications—obedience, faith, sacrifice, and the nature of divine command—have provoked millennia of interpretation and debate.
The Sacrifice of Isaac approaches this story as an expansive oratorio rooted firmly in Jewish tradition. Leshnoff aligns himself with a long lineage of oratorio composers such as Handel and Mendelssohn, who shaped monumental musical works around biblical narratives, while pursuing a different interpretive vantage point.
Rather than treat the narrative as an abstract theological problem, he draws on Jewish textual traditions, including Midrash—rabbinic reflections that speculate on what the biblical text leaves unsaid— to dramatize the story.
The libretto, assembled by the composer, puts that impulse into practice. Leshnoff observes that the biblical verses alone are too brief and matter-of-fact to sustain a large-scale musical drama. By expanding the narrative through Midrash and related Jewish sources, the libretto opens space for dialogue, confrontation, and reflection absent from the biblical text itself. Structurally, the scriptural pas sages function almost like the choruses of Greek tragedy, anchoring the narrative, while the surrounding material gives shape to the characters’ inner lives.
Structured as an oratorio—an extensive narrative work for soloists, chorus, and orchestra—the drama unfolds without staging, relying on music and text alone to shape its emotional and moral arc.
Musically, the form of The Sacrifice of Isaac is closely governed by its text. Pacing, texture, and harmonic tension respond directly to the unfolding narrative, often at the level of individual phrases. Rather than impose a predetermined musical architecture, Leshnoff follows the internal demands of the story, giving the music a sense of inevitability shaped by language and meaning.
The oratorio is framed by a blessing, heard at both the beginning and the end. Leshnoff describes it as a gesture traditionally passed from parent to child— but here opening a story in which that very lineage appears threatened, setting up the central paradox at the heart of the work. When the blessing returns at the conclusion, it does so transformed, no longer offering reassurance but bearing the weight of what has been endured.
Vocal characterization is similarly intentional. Abraham is cast as a baritone, while Isaac’s music lies higher, conveying vulnerability and emotional exposure. Crucially, Isaac is not portrayed as a child. Drawing on Jewish tradition, Leshnoff notes that Isaac was approximately thirty-seven years old at the time of the binding, fully aware of what was occurring. This understanding deepens the story’s moral complexity, particularly in light of the fact that Abraham and Isaac never speak again in the biblical narrative after this episode.
The orchestra plays a central dramatic role throughout the work. At times it speaks with overwhelming power, amplified by an expanded brass section; elsewhere, the sound world turns inward, thinning to hushed textures and reduced sonorities. As Leshnoff puts it, “even though I have all the instruments and singers on stage, my paint brush changes throughout.”
Silence itself becomes expressive, “suddenly erupting,” as Leshnoff notes, at the dramatic turning point of the work. After driving the music to maximum intensity— with full chorus and blazing orchestral sound—an abrupt cut off at the moment just before the sacrifice is to take place replaces the expected climax with charged stillness.
For Leshnoff, the enduring significance of the binding of Isaac does not lie in resolving its contradictions, but in reframing them. He understands the story not as a test designed to inform an all-knowing divine being, but as an ordeal through which Abraham himself must grow—a crucible that forces confrontation with the limits of reason, obedience, and faith.
The Sacrifice of Isaac thus emerges as a meditation on how profound difficulty can shape character, a perspective Leshnoff sees as especially resonant for modern listeners.
WHAT TO LISTEN FOR
The contrast between forceful expression and restraint shapes much of the musical narrative. The chorus continually shifts its role, moving between proclamation, reflection, and lyricism, while the three solo voices draw the drama into sharper human focus. One especially striking moment comes in Isaac’s solo aria, the only extended passage sung in Hebrew. Rather than voice fear or despair at the brink of death, Isaac sings Yedid Nefesh, a Sabbath poem expressing the soul’s longing for closeness with God. Set at the moment when catastrophe seems inevitable, the aria transforms the scene into one of inward transcendence, offering a glimpse of beauty and spiritual strength where disaster might be expected.
Elsewhere, three shofars—an ancient ram’s horn associated with Jewish ritual—cuts through the orchestral fabric at a pivotal moment, their sound evoking the ram that ultimately replaces Isaac on the altar. God’s voice enters unexpectedly, represented not by a low voice asserting authority through sheer volume but by a countertenor who floats above suspended sonorities. Moments of stillness often arrive where a grand climax might be expected, sharpening tension and leaving us suspended within the story’s unresolved questions.
Along with tenor, baritone, and countertenor soloists, scored for 3 flutes, 3 oboes, 3 clarinets, 3 bassoons, 4 horns, 4 trumpets, 3 shofars, 4 trombones, tuba, timpani, 3 percussionists, piano, harp, strings and chorus.
− Thomas May is the Nashville Symphony's program annotator.
Back