Tenor & String Quartet
SKU: PE.EP72822
Composed by Jonathan
Dove. Voice(s) & Various
Instruments. Edition
Peters. Living Composer.
Score and Part(s). 164
pages. Duration 00:30:00.
Edition Peters
#98-EP72822. Published by
Edition Peters
(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
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