SKU: PE.EP72822

ISBN 9790577011769. 232 x 303mm inches. English.

I have only visited Damascus once, twenty years ago, on the way to Palmyra.  I had a purpose (I was writing music for a play about Palmyra’s Queen Zenobia) but essentially I was a tourist.  Like any visitor, I was thrilled to step out of the noisy modern city into the magical ancient world of the walled Old City, its vibrant souk leading to the magnificent mosque, and a labyrinth of winding, narrow streets filled with the smell of unleavened bread.

In Palmyra, I was met with extraordinary kindness everywhere.  On one occasion, a little Bedouin boy noticed that I was risking sunstroke wandering bare-headed among the spectacular ruins: he showed me how to tie a turban, then took me to have tea with his family in their tent.

Since then, I have watched helplessly as these places of wonder have been devastated and their inhabitants scattered and killed.  When the Sacconi Quartet suggested that I might choose a Syrian poet for our collaboration, I welcomed the idea.

I searched for a long time to find a contemporary poet whose work might gain from any music I could imagine.  I felt it was important to find first-hand accounts of the Syrian experience – but, of course, I was always reading them in translation.  In an anthology called Syria Speaks, I was astonished to read something that looked like prose, but was full of poetry.  It was Anne-Marie McManus’s fine translation of Ali Safar’s A Black Cloud in a Leaden White Sky – an eloquent, thoughtful, contained yet vivid account of life in a war-torn country, all the more moving for its restraint.

In setting these words, I have not attempted to imitate Syrian music.  However, there is what might be called a linguistic accommodation in my choice of scale, or mode.  Several movements are in a mode that I first discovered while writing a cantata commemorating the First World War: it has a tuning that I associate with war, its violence and desolation.  This eight-note mode is similar to scales found in Syrian music.  I did not choose it in the abstract: it emerged from the harmonies I was exploring in the earlier work, and emerged again as I was looking for the right musical colours to set Ali Safar’s words.  In this work, its Arabic aspect is more prominent. - Jonathan Dove

SKU: HL.49047037

ISBN 9781705182024. UPC: 842819116998. 9.0x12.0x0.123 inches.

My father, Y. “Raghu” Raghunathan, came from India to the U.S. in 1963, followed soon after by my mother Sita. Dad enjoyed a substantial career as a pharmaceutical chemist, but he drew satisfaction from a simple life among family and friends, never allowing professional demands to overshadow his devotion to loved ones. Modest, compassionate, and ardently egalitarian, he was careful not to take anything too seriously, especially himself. He embraced his own ordinariness because it connected him to everyone else; it made him no better or worse than his neighbor, no more or less deserving of friendship or kindness than any of his fellow human beings. He showed us how to live with dignity, compassion, grace, and boundless love. His last piece of advice to me: “Go slow.” Several weeks after his passing, I happened upon a recording of Shostakovich’s 24 Preludes and Fugues, opus 87. I couldn’t understand why at the time, but the sixteenth prelude and fugue took hold of me and would not let go. I completely immersed myself in that piece for ten days, until it became a mystical conduit for something else: in this semi-trance state I produced a prelude and fugue of my own, in prayer (orison) and in praise (upastuti). It shadows Shostakovich’s form, but it somehow expresses my father’s unhurried, loving spirit. I’ve come to believe that he sent me this piece as a blessing. I hope you feel his presence in it as I do. Vijay Iyer.

SKU: HL.50601319

I met Fausto Romitelli in the early Eighties, while he was still studying composition with Umberto Rotondi at the Conservatory in Milano. Though he was very young, he already showed the signs of a strong and unconventional personality. In a more specific way, besides a very strong bias towards instrumental experimentation, I was impressed by his irresistible urge to explore routes that areunrelated or even contradictory with reference to the rules resulting from the styles and aesthetics of structuralism. So, it seemedto me very natural that he should write music for me: Dia nykta was composed in the wake of a verse written by an ancient Greek poet. The world premiere occurred in Milano on the 18th of December 1983, as part of the concert season of Musica rara at the theatre La Commenda. Anna Maria Morini.

SKU: CA.5066312

ISBN 9790007224271. Latin.

The composer Joseph Martin Kraus was born in the same year as Mozart, and like Salzburg's famous son, he was highly gifted and died too young. But in recent years he has received more attention. And rightly so! He wrote his Requiem in 1775 at the age of 19, probably for his local parish church in Buchen in the Odenwald. Even in this early work Kraus showed himself to be a true exponent of the musical Sturm und Drang movement. For all its youthful carefreeness and originality in terms of compositional technique, the music is characterised by great seriousness and depth of expression, combined with mainly dark instrumental tonal colors, abruptness, and at times also brusqueness. Score and part available separately - see item CA.5066300.

SKU: CA.5066313

ISBN 9790007224288. Latin.

The composer Joseph Martin Kraus was born in the same year as Mozart, and like Salzburg's famous son, he was highly gifted and died too young. But in recent years he has received more attention. And rightly so! He wrote his Requiem in 1775 at the age of 19, probably for his local parish church in Buchen in the Odenwald. Even in this early work Kraus showed himself to be a true exponent of the musical Sturm und Drang movement. For all its youthful carefreeness and originality in terms of compositional technique, the music is characterised by great seriousness and depth of expression, combined with mainly dark instrumental tonal colors, abruptness, and at times also brusqueness. Score and part available separately - see item CA.5066300.

SKU: CA.5066314

ISBN 9790007224295. Latin.

The composer Joseph Martin Kraus was born in the same year as Mozart, and like Salzburg's famous son, he was highly gifted and died too young. But in recent years he has received more attention. And rightly so! He wrote his Requiem in 1775 at the age of 19, probably for his local parish church in Buchen in the Odenwald. Even in this early work Kraus showed himself to be a true exponent of the musical Sturm und Drang movement. For all its youthful carefreeness and originality in terms of compositional technique, the music is characterised by great seriousness and depth of expression, combined with mainly dark instrumental tonal colors, abruptness, and at times also brusqueness. Score and part available separately - see item CA.5066300.