SKU: PR.114419030

ISBN 9781491114124. UPC: 680160669851. 9 x 12 inches.

A fascination with polycultural synergy between diverse literary textsdrives the inspiration for much of Mohammed Fairouz’s prodigiouscreative output, including instrumental music as well as vocal. Inhis profound and extensive essay preceding the score, Fairouz shedslight on how Edgar Allen Poe’s “Israfel” relates to the prophetsand prophesies of the Quran, Old Testament, and New Testament.The eight-movement quartet may be heard as a dramatic galleryof portraits and of story-telling, flourishing in a post-traditionallanguage that is at once vernacular and spiritual, Middle Easternand Western. The complete set of score and parts is included in thispublication.
(See pages 2-3 of score for clear distinction of paragraphs, etc.)Prophesies, by Mohammed FairouzEdgar Allen Poe’s rendition of Israfel was the point of departure for the final movement of my previous stringquartet which is titled The Named Angels. At the opening of his poem, Poe evokes the Quran:“And the angel Israfel, whose heartstrings are a lute, and who has the sweetest voice of all God’s creatures.”This informs the first lines of the poem that, in turn, gave me the title for the final movement of The Named Angels,“Israfel’s Spell”:In Heaven a spirit doth dwell“Whose heartstrings are a lute”None sing so wildly wellAs the angel Israfel,And the giddy stars (so legends tell),Ceasing their hymns, attend the spellOf his voice, all mute.It is the end of that poem, however, that is the starting point for the current quartet, Prophesies, which concernsitself with mortal prophets rather than eternal Angelic spirits.If I could dwellWhere IsrafelHath dwelt, and he where I,He might not sing so wildly wellA mortal melody,While a bolder note than this might swellFrom my lyre within the sky.Islamic thought has asked us to look at the example of the prophets. That’s significant because of the fact thatJoseph and all the prophets were human beings with the flaws of human beings. No prophet was perfect, andIslamic tradition has never asked its followers to aspire to the example of the Angels, the perfected ones. Instead weare given the gift of our prophets. While The Named Angels drew on the motion and energy of everlasting spirits,Prophesies is a depiction of the movements within our own mortal coil.This quartet is a continuation of a long tradition of Muslim artists telling their stories and singing their songs.Many of these renditions are, in fact, figurative and (contrary to popular belief) the Quran contains no “Islamicedict” prohibiting figurative renditions of the figures described in the Old Testament, New Testament, or Quran.The majority of artists, however, have preferred eternal and abstract forms such as words and their calligraphicrepresentations, poems (Yusuf and Zuleikha or the Conference of Birds come immediately to mind), architecture,and many other non-figurative art forms to the representation of man. These cold, ancient, and everlasting shapesof unending time flourished, and the divine infinity of representing geometric forms gained favor over the placementof the explicit representation of mankind and our own likeness at the center of the universes.Adding the string quartet to these forms which express the recursive spheres of heavens and earth abstractly shouldexplain why I have chosen to render higher things through the use of music without the addition of words or anyother art-form. It is the abstract art of pure form, in which all is form and all is content, which compels me. Thisquartet should be seen as no more programmatic than the arches of the Great Mosque at Cordoba.The first movement, Yāqub (Jacob), is slow, quiet and prayerful. It evokes the patient sorrow of a slow choraledeveloping over time as it coaxes our pulse out of the ticking of a clock-like meter that defines our day-to-day livesand into a divine eternity.The second, Saleh, imagines the spirit of that desert-prophet through the use of a Liwa; the dance-sequence that hasbeen such a prevalent form of expression in the Arabian Peninsula for much of our recorded history.The third movement is titled Dawoōd, and it is emblematic of the beloved Prophet, King, and Psalmist, David.Though it has no lyrics, the movement functions as a dabkeh (an ancient dance native to the Levant) and also “sets”the opening of Psalm 100 (Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands). This line is never set to music or sung inthe quartet but is evoked through the rhythmic shape of the violin part which imitates the phonology and rhythmof my speaking the opening line in the Hebrew and develops the contours of that line incessantly throughout themovement.3The fourth movement is an ode to Yousef (Joseph) and relates to the first movement in tempo and tone just as Josephrelates to Jacob, his father. Together, the first and fourth movements provide a sort of Lamentation and relief.Joseph had the appearance of a noble angel, but he was very much a human being. And the story of this particularprophet had tragic beginnings many years before he found himself in a position of power in Egypt. Back in his youth,still among the Israelites, Joseph experienced a series of revelations through his dreams that spoke of his impendingcareer in prophecy. He confided his dreams to his father, the Prophet Jacob, who told his son of the greatness thatawaited him in his future only to have his brothers throw him into a well and leave him for dead. Joseph eventuallyfound his way from Israel to Egypt and rose out of slavery into a position of power. Meanwhile, famine engulfs Israel.Forty years pass, and back in the land of Jacob and Rachel, of Joseph’s brothers and Abraham’s tribe, Israel wasnot spared the effects of the famine. They sorely lacked Joseph’s prophecy and his vision. The Qur’an then tells usthat Jacob, sensing Joseph, sends the other brothers to Egypt instructing them to come back with food and grain.Arriving in Egypt, they unwittingly appear before Joseph. They don’t recognize their little brother who has risen toa position of might, dressed in his Egyptian regalia. They ask for the food and the grain.After some conversation, Joseph is no longer able to contain his emotion. Overcome, he reveals himself to his nowterrified brothers. He embraces them. He asks them eagerly, “How is our father?” Joseph gives them the gift of thefood and the grain that they came in search of. He relieves them from hunger and alleviates their fear. He sendsthem back with proof that he is alive, and it is this joyful proof from the miraculous hands of a prophet that bringsback the ancient Jacob’s vision after 40 years of blindness.In this story, I am struck by the fact that Joseph may not have made the decision to forgive his brothers on thespot, but that something inside the prophet’s soul found forgiveness and peace for the brothers who had so gravelywronged him at some point along his journey. I would suspect this point to have been present at Joseph’s inception,even before he had ever been wronged.This is proof, if we needed it, that Joseph’s angel-like beauty was not only physical and external, but also internalas well: Joseph possessed a profound loveliness of spirit that bound his appearance and his soul. In Joseph, formand soul are one.Time is to musicians what light is to a painter. In this way, the story of Joseph also shows us that time can affectour perception of even the most tragic wounds. In fact, the most common Arabic word for “human being” is insaan,which shares its roots with the word insaa, “to forget.” While our ability to remember is essential to how we learnabout ourselves, our capacity to “forgive and forget” may also be one of our great gifts as human beings.The fifth movement follows my ode to Joseph with a structural memory of Mūsa (Moses). The movement consistsentirely of descending motifs which I constructed as an indication of Moses’ descending movement as he emergedto his people from the heights of Mt. Sinai. The music is constructed in five phrases which function as a formalreference to the five books of Moses, the Pentateuch. The movement is placed as the fifth of the quartet for the samereason.While Joseph is always evoked as supremely beautiful in the Books of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, Suleiman(Solomon) is described as surpassing in his quicksilver intelligence. This movement is composed of a seven-partriddle which passes by in an instant but can be caught by the attentive listener. From Solomon, we work our wayback to Yishak (Isaac) in a seventh movement that evokes Isaac’s literal meaning in Arabic and Hebrew: laughter.The eighth and final movement of this quartet is named for the Patriarch of the entire Book: Ibrahim (Abraham). Itrelates to Isaac just as Joseph relates to Jacob; they are father and son. The lines are prayerful and contemplative;the form of the music evolves from a fugue joining together many different forms of prayer into a single tapestry ofcounterpoint, to the cyclical form of this entire quartet which is rendered through the motion of pilgrims circling theKaaba (cube) in Mecca — a structure which was built by Abraham for Hagaar and their son Ismail.These are just some of the figures that are cherished by all three of the Middle Eastern monotheisms (Judaism,Christianity, and Islam) that the Qur’an refers to collectively as Ahl Al-Kitab. This Arabic phrase is most commonlytranslated as “The People of the Book,” but here the most common translation is a flawed one: the Arabic word“ahl” means “family” and not just “people.” A better translation would be “Family of the Book.” Each of the eightmovements of Prophesies grows from a single musical cell.This quartet is a family album.—Mohammed Fairouz (2018.

SKU: BT.DHP-1125359-070

9x12 inches. International.

Jupiter Hymn is a beautiful, easy-to-play arrangement from the wonderful fourth movement of the seven-part orchestral suite The Planets by Gustav Holst: Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity. Holst took inspiration for this suite?one of his best-known works?from the astrological aspect of the planets rather than their astronomical or physical characteristics. Holst wrote The Planets at the beginning of the 20th century, at a time when certain features of the work, such as exotic time signatures (5/4), dissonances and unusual instrumentation were uncommon.

Jupiter Hymn is een mooie, eenvoudig speelbare bewerking van het schitterende vierde deel uit de zevendelige orkestsuite The Planets van Gustav Holst: â??Jupiter - The Bringer of Jollityâ??. Holst liet zich voor de suite, een van zijn bekendste werken, inspireren door het astrologische karakter van de planeten, en dus niet op de astronomische of fysische eigenschappen. Hij schreef The Planets aan het begin van de 20e eeuw. Voor die tijd in het oog springende bijzonderheden zijn de toepassing van ongebruikelijke instrumenten, de ongewone maatsoorten (5/4) en de dissonante samenklanken.

Jupiter Hymn ist eine schöne, einfach spielbare Bearbeitung aus dem glanzvollen vierten Satz der siebenteiligen Orchester-Suite The Planets von Gustav Holst: Jupiter - The Bringer of Jollity. Holst lie� sich für dese Suite, die eines seiner bekanntesten Werke ist, von dem astrologischen Aspekt der Planeten inspirieren und nicht von deren astronomischen oder physischen Eigenschaften. Er schrieb The Planets zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts. Auffällig für seine Zeit waren die Verwendung ungebräuchlicher Instrumente, ungewöhnlicher Taktarten (5/4) und Dissonanzen.

Jupiter Hymn est un arrangement délicieusement accessible du quatrième mouvement extrait du poème symphonique en sept mouvements The Planets (Les Planètes) de Gustave Holst : Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity (Jupiter, celui qui apporte la gaieté). Holst sâ??inspira de notre système solaire lorsquâ??il composa cette suite, lâ??une de ses ?uvres les plus connues, donnant chacun des mouvements sa propre couleur. Holst écrivit Les Planètes au début du XXe siècle, employant une certaine signature alors inhabituelle (mesures 5/4), faisant appel de nombreuses dissonances et une instrumentation atypique.

SKU: BT.1555-08-070-MS

ISBN 9789043130646. 9x12 inches. English-German-French-Dutch.

The adventures of Popeye, the famous spinach-eating sailor first entered the world in the animated drawings of Sammy Lerner in 1933. As popular today as back then his theme tune is presented here in a wonderful four-part flexible version. A must for all woodwind/brass groups. Part 1 Fl Ob Bb Clar S Sax Tpt Part 2 Fl Cor Ang Bb Clar Eb Clar A Sax Tpt Hn Part 3 Bb Clar Eb Clar T Sax Bsn Hn Trom Euph Part 4 Bass Clar Bari Sax Fg Bsn Euph Tuba Opt. Drum

Sammy Lerner schreef in 1933 het lied I'm Popeye the Sailor Man voor de tekenfilm-serie Popeye. Lerner liet zich voor dit lied inspireren door de eerste twee delen uit Gilbert en Sullivans operette The Pirates of Penzance. Lorenzo Bocci arrangeerde deze titelsong op uitstekende wijze voor een vierstemmig variabel blazersensemble. Part 1 C' C Bb Part 2 C' C Bb Eb F Part 3 C Bb Bb [TC] Bb [BC] Eb F Part 4 C' C Bb [TC] Bb [BC] Eb [TC] Eb [BC] Opt. Drum

Zum Titelsong der beliebten Zeichentrickserie über den Spinat essenden Supermatrosen Popeye ließ sich Sammy Lerner 1933 von den ersten beiden Zeilen aus Gilbert und Sullivans Operette The Pirates of Penzance inspirieren. Lorenzo Bocci wiederum ließ sich von Sammy Lerners eingängiger Melodie zu dieser Bearbeitung für eine vierstimmig variable Bläserbesetzung anregen.Part 1 Fl Ob Kl B S-Sax Trp Part 2 Fl Cor Ang Kl B A-Kl A-Sax Trp Hn Part 3 Kl B A-Kl T-Sax Fg Hn Pos Euph Part 4 B-Kl B-Sax Fg Pos Euph Tuba Opt. Drum

Les aventures de Popeye, le plus célèbre marin et mangeur d'épinards, ont fait le tour du monde. Le titre-phare du dessin animé a été écrit en 1933 par Sammy Lerner.Part 1 Fl Htb Cl. Si♭ Sax. S. Trp Part 2 Fl Cor Angl. Cl. Si♭ Cl. Alto Sax. A. Trp Cor Part 3 Cl. Si♭ Cl. Alto Sax. T. Basson Cor Trb Euph. Part 4 Cl. Basse Sax. B. Basson Trb Euph. Tuba Opt. Batt.

Le avventure di Popeye, il più celebre marinaio e mangiatore di spinaci, hanno fatto il giro del mondo. La sigla di questo cartone animato è stata scritta nel 1933 da Sammy Lerner. Lorenzo Bocci ha realizzato un arrangiamento a quattro voci per ensemble a strumentazione variabile.Part 1 Fl Ob Bb Clar S Sax Tpt Part 2 Fl Cor Ang Bb Clar Eb Clar A Sax Tpt Hn Part 3 Bb Clar Eb Clar T Sax Bsn Hn Trom Euph Part 4 Bass Clar Bari Sax Fg Bsn Euph Tuba Opt. Drum.

SKU: PE.EP73184

ISBN 9790577015453. 190 x 272mm inches. English.

A New World is a musical story across five movements with texts by authors from Cicero and Ovid to George William Russel; from nursery rhymes to war poets.

The music and texts link to form a narrative that questions what sort of ‘New Worlds’ have come into existence, or could be created in our future, and considers how we balance human traits of fear, displacement, isolation and conflict with equally human traits of love, hope, forgiveness and unity.

2. The Dream

A standalone work for SATB choir and SATB solo quartet, painting a picture of the different characters of a dream. This movement is both comforting and confusing, and is inspired by the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish.

Series information

The internationally-renowned British vocal ensemble VOCES8 is proud to inspire people through music and share the joy of singing. The celebration of diverse musical expression is central to the ensemble’s ethos, and this is shown in their versatile concert programmes and innovative educational work. The ‘VOCES8 singles’ series includes songs for which the group is particularly well known and which have been composed or arranged specifically for VOCES8.