The moving of a petrified forest: La forêt pétrifée, String Quartet No.I by Stefan Pohlit Both, the composition and the poem break with conventions and gain the freedom to explore the spaces 'in between'.
#Compositions music free#
This poem served as the inspiration of Rami Chahin’s composition in which he used the maqamat well-known in the Levante region called jharka, al-desht, bayati, and rast.Īl-Maghout is credited the father of the Arabic free verse poetry, liberating the Arabic poems from the traditional form and revolutionizing the structure of poems. This remains a dream they give up, because they have fathomed living in the desert possesses their hearts. He dreams of emigrating his home country together with his beloved one. In this poem a man is searching for love, guidance and his own roots in times of 'electric minds'. In this unique piece, tenor singer Hussain Atfah performs a poem by the Syrian poet Muhammad al-Maghout (1934-2006). One example is Chahin's composition 'hulm' (Arabic for dream). To make the entire sound spectrum audible, Rami Chahin gathered musicians to play new interpretations of traditional maqam. What the rainbow with its richness of nuances is to the world of colour, is the microtonality to the world of music. The Sound of the Rainbow: Hulm | Dream | Traum by Rami Chahin Later in the 17th century, musicians started to use the well temperament, which was developed by the German organist, composer and theorist Andreas Werckmeister.” However, this was not always the case as Rami Chahin explains: " The temperament twelve-tune system started to replace the variable microtonal systems only in the 15th century, when keyboard instruments and fretted instruments like the lute started to dominate live music performances. While the microtonal maqam intervals are deeply rooted in Arab culture, it can be an unfamiliar experience for Western European ears. Through the rich possibilities of microtones, it creates a musical rainbow in which every shade can be expressed tonally.
The merge of traditional Arabic and classical Western music does not create only 'one' new acoustic colour. The microtonal system offers a broad spectrum from which to draw. Since the beginning of the 20th century, a large number of composers have been grappling with the question of an alternative tone system for their innovative works. These diverse tonal possibilities and modes of expression lead to a great richness of tonal patterns, which open new horizons for classical Western music. Different intervals are used to express various feelings. Another main characteristic of Arab music is a high share of improvisation: Arab musicians have developed high skills to perform freely different kinds of sound techniques and maqamat modulating creatively between them. The microtonal interval is the tonal basis for the so-called maqamat, which is a concept from Arabic music theory. It is known for its richness and variety of tone intervals that differ from Western twelve-tone. Arab music follows a microtonal system: a tonal system, which has specific intervals smaller than a semitone. Traditional Arab music and classical Western music are entangled in different philosophies, aesthetics, and – most strikingly – tonalities.
Microtonal music – exploring the richness of ‘in between’ With this project, we try to connect the shared heritage of microtonal music in Europe and the Arab countries. As a result, five innovative pieces of contemporary music compositions have been recorded. Musicologist Rami Chahin gathered a diverse ensemble of composers and musicians from Brazil, Canada, Egypt, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Palestine, Poland, and Syria who ventured a contemporary interpretation of traditional Arab maqamat. Mohammed Alkatan are immersed into this soundscape to further explore this exceptional interaction.įive pieces of contemporary music are waiting for curious ears to listen What happens when the Arab string instrument Qanun and the Arab flute Ney meet traditional Western bowed string instruments like the violin, the viola, and the violoncello? Their interplay creates a new and exceptional world of sound. Tandem Project Avant-Garde Arab Music: New Compositions Music Workshop & Recordings