1 / 35
0:00/0:00
Pierrot
2024
Cello
Clarinet
Flute
Piano
Unpitched Percussion
Violin
- Program Notes
- The writings of Egyptian-Jewish poet, Edmon Jabès, are consistently and intensely interrogrative. The stream of questioning in the dialogues he constructs between rabbinical, fictional, and biblical characters throughout his many books maintain between them a fixation on notions of origin, hospitality, language, and on writing itself that captured the attention and thought of poststructuralist writers, namely Jacques Derrida. These spiritual investigations formulate recursive and, at times, interchangable concepts to describe the sites of these fixations and discourses, namely, 'The Book' and 'The Desert'. In his Book ofQuestions, Jabès dedicates a single poem with the title: The Desert. The rather short poem is no less rich and intense in its language and thought, beginning with an exclamation: "O word of our origin, Desert of our words!" In this first musical investigation of the text, Desert 1, I have decided to fixate on these first words for its musical considerations and philosophical ramifications. I attempt to represent this 'opening' into language through these primordial whispers and murmurings of the Desert (of God?) that fill the pages of his Jabès' writings. The motion of this opening, however, like the wandering Jew or the Desert itself, is nondirectional and nonlinear: in the sand, there appear to be steps retraced, steps not taken, steps beyond other steps. Through questioning, desperate, playful, and at times asphyxiated moans and motions, Desert 1 seeks to find its footing in the crying sands of Jabès' 'Desert'.
- Recording Notes
- Conducted by Gabriel Fynsk
- Performer Credits
- FontanaMIX Ensemble