“El Maleh Rachamim” is a Jewish prayer for the departed that is recited with a haunting chant at funeral services, after the reading of the Torah. This movement was inspired on the prayer sang by Cantor Azi Schwartz in the Holocaust Memorial Ceremony at the United Nations General Assembly Hall on January 27, 2012. A short score of the first 80 seconds of the singing is cited as a preface to the score.

An English translation for the first prais of the Hebrew text: “Exalted God, full of compassion, grant perfect peace in your sheltering presence, among the holy and the pure, who shines in like the heavens, to the souls of all those we have remember today. May their memory be a blessing and may they rest in paradise.”

While I started working on the sketches as early as 2017, I finished the piece in the last days of October 2023, weeks after being assaulted by an unknown person, who caused a paralysis in my left arm and hand. The movement is the second movement of a Suite for violoncello solo.