This is a work for speaker (rabbi), mixed chorus, and orchestra. It is related to the celebration of Yom Kippur (The Day of Atonement), the most solemn day of the year in Jewish observance. Schoenberg composed this setting after Nazi politics had forced him out of Europe and he had settled in Los Angeles. After leaving Berlin he once again took up his original Judaism after having converted to first Catholic and then Protestant Christianity. The Kol Nidre prayer is one in which Jews pray for forgiveness from God for promises that were made to Him but could not be kept. (Neither Kol Nidre nor any other piece of liturgy can obtain forgiveness from a person that someone has injured—this must be obtained straight from that by righting the original wrongdoing, or at least compensating the injured party therefor.) Apart from the two words "Kol Nidre" and one line of Hebrew taken from the spot of the liturgy that invokes heavenly and earthly courts to witness the ceremony at hand, all of the text, even that of the Kol Nidre prayer itself, is delivered in English.

The harmonic idiom of this work is that of a vigorously extended tonality. The orchestra begins with a tentative, humble approach to the issues at hand, not shortchanging its gravity as nervous awe gradually informs the music. Both of these moods by turns inform the music as appropriate. The text begins with the narrator delivering a Kabbalistic (a type of Jewish mystical) tale dealing with the creation of light and extolling the virtues of piousness and humility. Giving out the work's one line of Hebrew he invites heavenly and earthly tribunals to witness the service of atonement, and invites all those with sins requiring atonement to join the community in prayer. The rabbi and the choir deliver an English-language version of the Kol Nidre prayer itself (only the first two words of the original Aramaic are mentioned) in which they express regret for wrongs and resolve to repent. Although the rabbi does not sing, the orchestral and choral parts feature melodic lines taken from traditional synagogal Kol Nidre chants as a solid strand in a very nervous texture.

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