A new alphabet
A setting of the last seven lines of the first letter
in the collection One hundred love letters by Nizar Qabbani,
in Arabic and English, translated by the composer,
for twelve-part mixed chorus (SSMMAATTRRBB) a cappella
Commissioned and composed in April 2009
for Anthony Trecek-King and the Boston Children’s Chorus,
revoiced in August 2009 for The Esoterics and the concert MYSTERIUM.
Nizar Qabbani was born in 1923 in Syria to a traditional, well-to-do family. Qabbani’s poetry has been described "more powerful than all the Arab regimes put together" (Lebanese Daily Star), and "like water, bread, and sun in every Arab heart and house" (Tishreen). Qabbani’s verses are simple and direct, describing everyday life. He was a constant campaigner for women’s rights, and a great many of his poems praise the beauty of the feminine form. He was an Arab nationalist, but often criticized Arab dictators for the lack of freedom that they caused throughout the Arab world. He worked as a diplomat in Syria for more than two decades, but settled in London in the mid-1960’s for political reasons. Qabbani died in London in 1998, and is buried in Damascus.
In addition to the "wheel" of melody that sets the Arabic phrases in Qabbani’s poem, there are four natural images that intone every letter of the Arabic alphabet. The sounds are grouped according to linguistic similarity, and are marked in this score with their Italian names: the clouds (nuvole), the dust (polvere), the raindrops (goccie di pioggia), and the falling leaves (foglie cadenti). The clouds intone the seven vowel sounds in standard Arabic.These slowly rise through both lower and upper octaves. The voices of dust hiss dryly through each of Arabic’s eight unvoiced consonants. There are several non-English sounds in this group. The raindrops fall through fourteen plosive and fricative consonants in Arabic, and each is followed by an immediate hum. The six falling leaves reach to the lowest notes of the maqam (the Arabic scale) by way of semi-consonant glides.
The seven pitches of this piece (G Ab B C D Eb F#) comprise a transposed maqam called Suzidil. This symmetrical set of tones is said to connote the melancholy of autumn. The translation of Nizar Qabbani’s poem is my own, and has been tailored for A new alphabet.