- Text: Michael Roes
- Genre: Song-Cycle
- Instrumentation: 3 Soprano's, Flute (+Piccolo), Trumpet in C, Tenor Saxophone, Cello, Electric Bass Guitar, Drum Set
- Duration: 40 minutes
- Date of composition: 1997-8
- Commissioned by: The Berlin Festival and The City of Tel Aviv
- Premier:
March 7, 1998 - Enav Center
for the Arts / Tel Aviv, March 9, 1998 - Konzertsaal der
Hochschule der Künste / Berlin.
Konstantia Gourzi - Conductor, Ulrike Sonntag - Soprano, Lilach Refaelovitch - Soprano, Maureen Nehedar - Soprano, Yossi Arnheim - Flute, Itai Morag - Trumpet, Tal Varon - Saxophone, Hillel Zori - Cello, hagar Ben-Ari - Bass Guitar, Oron Schwartz - Percussion
Notes: The 13 poems that make the Arabic Lessons song cycle were written by the poet Michael Roes. Dr. Roes wrote the poems in Arabic and then retranslated them into German (see the notes from the poet below). Professor Sasson Somekh of the Tel-Aviv University has kindly agreed to translate the poems into Hebrew from the Arabic original.
The musical score of Arabic Lessons makes use of all the three languages. Some of the songs are sung simultaneously in Arabic, Hebrew and German. Each Song is scored using various instrumental combinations. There are two purely instrumental movements - one is the instrumental introduction "4 Loops" and the other is a solo for drum-set titled "Cannon". The work is composed in a such way so that it can be performed from beginning to end with no pause (ca. 35 minutes) or each song can stand alone as a composition by itself.
[If you are interested to know more about the compositional
method that was used to create this work then check out the
PDI method here].
Notes From The Poet:
The consonant-alphabet of the Arabic writing allows more interpretations than the approximate phonetic writing of the western European languages. Also the syntactical relations inside the linguistic usage are more ambiguous than in most of the European languages.
On the other hand the "linguistic material" of the Arabic language is organized much stronger. It offers models, how to form from the constitutional consonants of a word family (for example k t b for the field of writing) verbs, adverbs, adjectives and objects: kataba - to write, kitabi - written, kitab - book (writing), katib - author (writer), maktab - library / desk (place of writings)...
As well all words could be led to their three radical roots. There are more precise languages but hardly more poetic ones: The root of sadiq - friend, is sadiqa - to tell the truth, the root of scha'ar - poet, is scha'ara - to feel. masrah - the theatre, goes back to saraha - to beat into the open, madrasah - the school, to darasah - to devastate.
'athuba - sweet, is changing its meaning by doubling its second consonant to torment / tease / punish
(aththaba). The symbol of doubling is usually not written. The correct version can only be read out of the context.
The DURUS ARABIJ (Arabic Lessons) have their origin in my study of the Arabic language. Language sets the possibilities and limits of thinking and (verbal) expression. What we cannot say in words, we can hardly think. By retranslating the poems which are originally written in Arabic I tried to widen the possibilities of expression in my own language and to find new forms for till now unthinkable thoughts in my mother tongue.
Behind the difficulties of translation is hidden a basic problem of communication: For understanding a language it is not enough just to understand the meaning of words and grammatical structures. We have to know too the social context, the meaning of gestures, of the intonation (the speech melody), the idioms, the dialects.
We can go one step further: In every conversation, not only between strangers, we have to make sure, that we interpret our words in the same or similar way. Human languages are so complex that in acts of communication the matter cannot be a definite translation but a common approach or convergence. Actually we are leaving now the sphere of poetry or philosophy of language and turn into the section of politics.
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