Initiated by Christine Fischer, director of Musik der Jahrhunderte/festival ECLAT in Stuttgart, and of the vocal group Neue Vocalsolisten, along with the Ultima Festival in Oslo, the “Voice Affairs” project will finally start taking shape with online rehearsals.
The festival will include my composition for 6 voices entitled Madrigal d’essilio (Madrigal Of Exile), that I wrote during covid lock down, Lebanese economical collapse and post August 4 explosion of the Beirut port. The composition is inspired by the elements related to astronomy in Dante’s Divine Comedy, and Sayat Nova’s poem, Tamam Ashkhar (The Whole World).
Dante and Sayat Nova were both timeless poets addressing human nature while in exile. They both wrote and narrated their stories in vernacular: Dante in Tuscan Italian, Sayat Nova in Tbilisi Armenian.
While Dante Alighieri is well known in the west, Sayat Nova is not. An Armenian ashough, or troubadour, Sayat Nova was born in Georgia in the 18th century, at a time when nation states did not exist. He traveled the Caucasus, speaking fluent Eastern Armenian, Azeri, Georgian, Persian, and some Arabic. His works are mostly secular and full of romantic expressionism.
Both writers were in exile, literally as well as figuratively, finding home in their works, or in love.