Ash Embers

Klaus Hinrich Stahmer

General Info

Year of Published: 2013
Publisher: Verlag Neue Musik
Difficulty: (see Ratings for explanation)
Duration: c.
ISBN: 978-3-7333-1280-0
Cost: Score and Parts - $0.00   |   Score Only - $0.00

Instrumentation

Player 1: Snare Drum
Player 2: Piano

Program Notes

The composition of "Aschenglut" was inspired by the poetry of the Lebanese poet Fuad Rifka (1930-2011). Never before had I heard an Arab recite with such expressiveness as this poetic philosopher, who presented selected texts from his poetry collection "Die Reihe der Tage ein einziger Tag" (The Series of Days, a Single Day) at a poetry reading. Enchanted by the sound, I also immersed myself in the imagery and thoughts conveyed in his diary-like entries. The way this old man lived with his land, with its wooded hills and blooming gardens, its arid deserts and destroyed villages, how abandoned he felt because all his friends had left during the years of civil war, leaving him a lone fighter – all of this inspired me, and in collaboration with the poet, the CD "Songs of a Woodcutter" (artist cd ARTS 81092) was created, as well as the piano cycle "Ghina'û Hattab," the qanun solo "Zikkrayat," and finally the duet "Ash Glow." The latter is a four-movement cycle for oriental frame drum and piano, with the piano part often sounding like a Middle Eastern qanun. Resembling a funeral march in its character, the first movement follows the poet's words, "He has aged now / and no one is with him" – words of an old man taking stock and seeing himself as a woodcutter; who feels as if he himself is turning to wood, which he then gathers and transforms into charcoal in his charcoal kiln, only to rise again in the smoke of the fire he has lit. In the second movement, the references to Fuad Rifka's poems become even clearer, as the frame drum, in imitation of the spoken word, "recites" the following texts: "Speechless, the poet wanders through the deserts," it says in the first text. Twilight breaks, and the lonely old man dreams of his hut. "You wood gatherers," he calls out in the second text, "eagles of enlightenment and silence, here is the last of you, his ashes in the air." In the third text, he speaks of his end and sees himself as part of the fire he has kindled: "Smoke veils the sun, ashes swirl up, a requiem rises." At these points, the player should try to approximate the poet's style of speech as closely as possible. He can also murmur or whisper the Arabic text to himself while playing. […] This vision of death is interrupted by the third movement with bright piano sounds, leading into a fourth movement which, in the sense of a finale, attempts to trace the transformation from the corporeal to the spiritually essential.

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Works for Percussion by this Composer

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