Instrumentation
1(=picc+afl).1.1(=Ebcl).1 - 1110 - pno - strings (min 6.6.4.4.1)
Availability
Score and parts for hire
Programme Notes
The Persian national epic, the Shahnama (Book Of Kings) by the poet Abu’l-Oasim Firdawsi, was completed in about 1010AD. It is a poem of approximately fifty thousand rhyming couplets, and describes the history of Persia’s great rulers from mythical times to about the middle of the seventh century. With its assortment of myths and legends emphasising heroic deeds and the conflict of good (usually a Persian prince or hero) and evil (witches, demons, etc., plus an assortment of foreign potentates) the poem acted as something of a propaganda exercise for the ruling class, and over the centuries came to be seen as the embodiment of Persian royal and national aspirations. Some of these legends are concerned with actual historical figures (such as Alexander The Great, known as Iskandar, who is shot in the eyes by the Persian hero Rustam); others of a shared Middle Eastern provenance are equally well known in the West through such sources as the Bible (such as the story of Joseph/Yusuf), or by being borrowed and written about by European writers (such as Matthew Arnold’s Sohrab and Rustum). The importance of the Shahnama may be gauged form the fact that it was copied several times for the libraries of various Persian rulers between the early fourteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Each of these copies was lavishly and beautifully illustrated by some of Islam’s greatest artists, and they provide some of the finest examples of the Persian tradition of illustrative and decorative painting.
My work was written entirely as a response to the visual experience of these beautiful illustrative paintings; I have deliberately refrained from investigating too closely the legendary or historical background of the individual paintings I have ‘translated’ into music, as I didn’t wish to write anything resembling programme music in the accepted sense of the word. My musical Shahnama can also be seen as something of a book, or folder, of musical paintings, which the players present to the listener. At the end of each piece the piano has a little flourish (always based around the chord that opens the work) which ‘turns the page’ on to the next illustration, and which finally closes the book at the end. The work is also a set of quasi-variations on the opening Title, and is scored for a small orchestra of single winds (with various doublings), trumpet, horn, trombone, piano, and strings. The work is arranged in a sequence of nine short movements as follows:
Title
A recitative for horn and trumpet, accompanied by the piano.
Rustam And The Seven Champions Hunt in Turan
A vigorous piece characterised by repeated notes, and enclosing an appropriate ‘hunting’ solo for the horn. The painting is by the artist Mir Sayyid ‘Ali, and was probably executed around his twentieth year. It is one of the illustrations for the great copy of the Shahnama executed for the Safavid ruler Shah Tahmasp between 1522 and 1544.
Majnun Prostrates Himself At His Mother’s Feet
The touching story of Majnun and Layla bears some resemblance to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, and likewise concerns two ill-fated lovers from rival clans. (And as with Romeo and Juliet, it also includes a scene of the hero lamenting at his beloved’s tomb). It comes from another renowned Persian book, the Khamsa (Quintet) of the poet Nizami (1141 – 1209), and this painting by an unknown artist is from a copy of the book made about 1470. In his grief, Majnun has been living the life of a hermit in the desert, and his mother comes to seek him out before returning home to die. Restrained woodwind octaves are set against intertwined muted solo strings.
The Women Of Egypt, Overcome By The Beauty of Yusuf, Cutting Their Fingers As They Peel Oranges
This painting also comes from a volume of Nizami’s works, and was probably painted around 1430. It is a Persian slant on the story of Joseph in Egypt. (Several other Persian miniatures deal with Yusuf’s devastating effect on the Egyptian ladies). Six young women peeling oranges are seated on the ground, and they appear to be the attendants of a princess seated separately to the right of the picture. Yusuf enters to the left, carrying a pitcher in a bowl. All the orange-peeling ladies crane their heads around to gaze in rapture at the handsome young man as he comes into the garden, and consequently cut their fingers through lack of attention to the task in hand. The music alternates between a little phrase indicative of a sigh or swoon, and scherzando passages depicting the general atmosphere of scarcely suppressed excitement. In my version there are seven ‘cuts’, so clearly one of the ladies inflicts wounds on two of her fingers….
This miniature was painted in the city of Herat in the late fifteenth century, and subsequently altered and added to in Ottoman Turkey about fifty years later. Apart from the exquisite detail, the most striking visual characteristic of the painting is that two of the trees in the background burst the bounds of the pictorial space and spread to outside the frame. Although the subject matter apparently concerns the meeting of a wealthy man and the sons of a dervish at the derivsh’s tomb (for what purpose I don’t know), I was less interested in this than the appearance of the miniature and the very striking title. The whole short piece is an exercise in pianissimo; a subdued conversation between the three muted brass instruments with whispered interjections from the strings. It is the only movement that does not end with the piano flourish, there being a very quiet restatement on muted trumpet of the opening Title motive.
This painting, done in Shiraz in the early sixteenth century, illustrates an incident from the Khamsa of Nizami. The two maidens of the title are in fact enjoying a little nude bathing in the pool right in the centre of the picture, with their clothes carelessly thrown on the grass. Not surprisingly, the homecoming traveller entering his garden is looking a little surprised by the unexpected scene – but not by any means displeased. The music alternates between the dignified gait of the elderly traveller and the high jinks in the bathing pool. There is a rather elaborate piano part.
The vigorous drawing and glowing colours of this picture possibly derive from the ferocious and gory subject matter (one of many such scenes of bloody combat), but the general boldness of conception and execution suggest an art form at a peak. It illustrates yet another scene from Firdawzi’s Shahnama, and was painted in the last decade of the fifteenth century. Musically, the battle is a short one, and culminates in one of my favourite effects, a double forearm cluster on the bass of the piano.
This extraordinary painting, one of the most elaborate in Islamic art, is an illustration from the Khamsa of Nizami. It was painted by the same painter, Mir Sayyid ‘Ali, and commissioned by the same prince, Shaha Tahmasp, as Rustam And The Seven Champtions Hunt in Turan. This copy of the Khamsa was executed between 1539 and 1543, and was the last project in Persia on which Mir Sayyid worked before going to work in the painting studios of the Moghul emperors Humayun and Akbar in India. The painting presents a stylised view of the rooms and courtyards in a palace in the soft glow of an evening light. The artist paints a wonderfully varied and detailed description of the multifarious inhabitants, from the court entertainment going on in one of the gilded chambers down to the woodcutter staggering in with his heavy bundle through one of the outer doorways. My rendering of this scene aims at continuity by concentrating on the court entertainment (imagined as storytelling and music), and presenting it as a long melodic line on the violas that goes right through the piece. This viola line is inflected heterophonically by the alto flute, and underpinned by a sequence of rich and dense chords on the piano and tremolo strings. The scenes going on elsewhere in the palace are depicted as swift glances into other areas by means of strongly characterised motives interjected into the melodic line – as though one were taking a quick look at them in the painting. At the climax the music presents an overview of the whole warm and lively scene, then subsides into a dreamy coda. In the end the vision of the palace and its fantastic civilisation float off into the dark recesses of the night. The solo piano quickly closes the book.