"A Kid A Kid" - Jewish English Chad Gadya
Channel: Jewish Language Project
Date: 09/10/2023

This rendition of Chad Gadya was put together by English Christian composer Sir Henry Walford Davies. Walford Davies was Master of the King’s Music from 1934 until 1941 and served as music advisor to the BBC for almost two decades. On the top left corner of his handwritten score (view at jewishlanguages.org/chad-gadya), Davies has written a description of his source material (the Passover liturgy) stating “a cumulative rhyme from an old Jewish hymn”. Davies never published his setting, but he clearly had larger goals for it, since he includes harmonies for a choir arrangement.

Thank you to Cantor Ella Gladstone Martin of The Community Synagogue, and to pianist Pedro D’Aquino.