Weblog of a Syrian Diplomat in America

Gilgamesh at Maryland

While music-in-the-making is an artistic experience that music lovers often attend and enjoy, the actual creation of a drawing or a painting is usually confined to educational purposes. People seldom go to public events to watch artists creating their paintings; however, they go to art galleries and museums to look at the creative output of an artist after it has been completed. Music is an art form that exists through time; we enjoy it while it is being performed. The moment the musician is silent, our musical experience ceases. Only impressions and recollection of memorable moments retain their effect on our heart and mind. In contrast, the full impact of a painting is only fully assimilated after the artist ends the creative process.

This is why the project that was presented at the Performing Arts Center of the University of Maryland could be described as unique. Music and visual arts combined with the earliest literary epic humanity has ever known, Gilgamesh, to offer the audience a most fascinating visual and musical performance, presented by a couple of two young but exceptionally mature artistic talents from Syria.

       

Despite the fact that the epic of Gilgamesh is at least 5000 years old, its connotations to the modern scene in our region - particularly in Iraq - had added another dimension to that already extraordinary event.

The concept of the performance was based on selecting excerpts from the Gilgamesh epic portraying his search for friendship, love, immortality, the meaning of life, and man’s place in the world.

Kinan Azmeh, the eclectic musician, composer, clarinetist and saxophonist, joined Kivork Mourad the Syrian artist of Armenian descent in creating this interactive musical/visual project that engaged the audience on all levels of senses and perceptions. After presenting an image of a Sumerian tablet on which the epic was engraved, Kivork started drawing visuals depicting various milestones from the epic, while Kinan played music to accompany each visual, bestowing on it tonal coloration, depth, and ambiance.

       

           (With Samarah Siddiqui, Rafif, Kivork, and Kinan)

At the very end, a modern twist was introduced by Kinan and Kivork. Kivork drew a dramatic and powerful image of an aging Gilgamesh commenting in a most captivating and mysterious way on the present scene in the Kingdom of Uruk (now Iraq). Kinan used special effects to create a vocal message in a language that was evocative of Arabic, expressing grave sorrow and concern, without using a single intelligible word. Understandably, the response from the audience was overwhelmingly enthusiastic, the mixture of history, drawing and playing music was stunning, and I was glad for yet another presentation to the American audience of an example of the rich and diverse cultural life in Syria.

Amadeus

Today, the world celebrates Mozart’s 250^th birthday. This is a good time for me to reflect on this great composer and his genius. My life has been enriched and made more beautiful by the music he composed, the grace he communicated, the elegance he radiated, and most of all, what I personally consider the most striking element in his music: the simultaneously subtle and dramatic universe he has created in some of his major operas and piano concertos. Here are some highlights from my lifelong infatuation with Mozart.

            

Childhood

I was fortunate enough to have a dad who appreciated good music. I am not claiming that my father was an ardent music enthusiast, but he had a small respectable collection of recordings that he was keen to listen to, and most importantly, he was eager to engage us with him while listening to Mozart’s records. He would use his affable funny way of arousing our curiosity about his music, some times by merely loudly expressing how sublime and beautiful his music was, inviting us to join him in the appreciation of this greatest of music, which we, of course, as children, would oblige without hesitation. Thus, I grew up familiar with the name Mozart, with his four Horn Concertos, and his Eine Kleine Nacht Music - the only two recordings my father had of Mozart.

Rediscovering Mozart

When I was preparing for my 12th grade exams, the much feared Syrian Baccalaureate, I wandered once to the basement of the Al-Zahraa bookshop in Damascus (Al-Salhia Street) to discover that they had there a small collection of Russian long-play records, offered for sale for a ridiculously low price: S.P. 12 per record! I browsed through the small collection and chose Mozart’s 25th symphony, the only Mozart available. At that point I had not even known that Mozart had any symphonies whatsoever. This was my real introduction to the universe of Mozart as a very young man. I listened to this symphony time and again throughout that wonderful summer that separated my school years from my university life. Mozart’s music was simply a revelation; his world of ephemeral elegance and apparently light hearted melodies captured my heart, and I am still his captive today.

A Piano Concerto for my Birthday

In March 1979, I threw a birthday party at my house for a very small number of friends. Samer Haj Houssein brought me as a present Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor. That was my first encounter with Mozart’s Piano concertos with Julius Katchen on the Piano, and Raphael Fruhbeck de Burgos conducting the London Philharmonic. Today, I am quite familiar with all 27 Piano Concertos written by Mozart, but none of them equals in my heart the position this concerto occupies. Its dramatic expressiveness and somber dark shades makes of this concerto a work that surpasses all what Mozart has written in this genre.

            

(from left: Hazem Mashnouk, Nabil Khoury, Munjed Arnouk, Samer Haj-houssein, Fariza Dalati, me, my sister Maya - front row: Rana Alloush), Damascus, March 1979

My first Visit to the Wadis

In one of the most fortunate incidents of my life, the legendary Solhi Al-Wadi invited me to have dinner and listen to music at his house while I was still at the young age of 20. This was the start of a splendid friendship that bonded me with the Wadis for the rest of my life; all of them: Cynthia, Solhi, Sarmad, Hamsa, and Diala. At that wonderful evening, Solhi chose some of his favorite records to play for his young and overwhelmed guest, this included, among other pieces, a recording of Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante for Violin and Viola, played by David and Igor Oistrach. While I do not consider this work as one of Mozart’s greatest compositions, yet listening to it always brings to my mind fond memories of that memorable evening.

            

                        With Hamsa Al-Wadi, Damascus 1980

A Night at the Opera in Paris

The first Mozart opera I have ever heard was the Magic flute. It was also the first live Mozart opera I happened to attend, which was in Budapest in 1982. However it was in Paris in 1986, while being trained as a computer specialist, that I attended two of my favorite Mozart operas: Don Juan, and the Marriage of Figaro. The experience of Figaro was breathtaking. The seemingly comic opera flabbergasted me, and raised the status of Mozart in my eyes to the highest possible level a composer or an artist can occupy. For six months to follow I became addicted to this opera. My training in Paris was over, and I moved from there to Aleppo to help open a Computer Center at the University of Aleppo. I rented a penthouse in the Shahbaa residential quarter there, and managed to irritate all my neighbors in the summer of 1987 with the loud arias and recitatives emanating from my powerful woofers reverberating with the eternal arias of Figaro.

            

                          Paris, Centre Baubourg, April, 1986

The Delicate Charm of the Clarinet

Today, with the benefit of age and maturity, I would add too other works of Mozart to the Concerto in D minor and Figaro: the Clarinet Concerto and the Clarinet Quintet (both in A major). I appreciate that what I will say here might offend some Mozart fanatics, but I wholeheartedly believe these two works to be the most sublime of his oeuvre, and two examples of great perfection in the whole history of music. Every phrase, theme, harmony, and technique in these two works creates a transcendent effect that is only matched by very few masterpieces of the most greatest of all composers. If Mozart had only written those four works, they would have sufficed to make my life a far better one. With Mozart, I have appreciated the true sense of what Keats has once written: “A thing of beauty is a joy forever”.