With Boulanger, Seter mastered Renaissance polyphony and contemporary French style, but in 1937, frustrated by the extent of her devotion to Stravinskian neoclassicism, he returned to Palestine.

Therefore, when, in 1938, he encountered the volumes of Abraham Zevi Idelsohn's Thesaurus of Hebrew Oriental Melodies that contained traditional Sephardic and Mizrahi liturgical tunes, he consciously adopted them as a major influence, not only in and of themselves, but eventually as sources for the intervalic character of his own new modes.

[4] However, he revealed greater awareness of the tensions between Mizrahi and Western style and aesthetics, and emphasised the distinction between mere exoticism and genuine stylistic synthesis.

The stage was set for his magnum opus, the oratorio Midnight Vigil, commissioned by Sarah Levi-Tanai and the Inbal Dance Theatre, which reached its final of five versions in 1961.

This scale interacts seamlessly with the borrowed melodies and governs the cantata's harmonic language, ensuring its remarkable cohesion through the common features of its musical elements.

[6] An earlier, radiophonic version was submitted by the Israel Broadcasting Authority to the 1962 Prix Italia international radio competition, and won the first prize in the “stereophonic musical work” category.

[7] The final, concert version, premiered in 1963, was subsequently paired with Beethoven's Ninth Symphony on the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra's Millennium Festival program of 1 January 2000.