The Symphony of Sorrowful Songs concert opened with a recital of an original composition by Syrian violinist and composer Ali Moraly. Moraly was violinist with the Syrian National Symphony Orchestra. He has performed with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, founded by Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said, and is known for his performances of Bach’s Art of the Fugue. In 2012, Moraly fled his home city of Damascus for Istanbul, where he performed with the Istanbul Symphony Orchestra. Since 2013 has been resident in Mannheim where he studied and taught at the Hochschule für Musik, Karlsruhe. In October 2016, I sent Moraly a theme for a fugue based upon notes transposed from a line of Paul Celan’s powerful response to the Holocaust in Death Fugue [Todesfugue] (1948). Beginning with this initial theme as a catalyst, Moraly developed a four part composition for violin: Quatrain for Solo Violin after Paul Celan’s Death Fugue (2017).
The Fugue project was devised in response to the shared etymology of ‘fugue’ and ‘refugee’: ‘fugue’ is derived from the Italian ‘fuga’, and the Latin ‘fugere’, which compares to the Ancient Greek ‘phugé’, meaning ‘to flee’, and from which also stems the word ‘refugee’. Fugal counterpoint is characterized by the interplay of multiple voices or themes which explore the dynamic relationship between ‘subject’ and ‘countersubject’. Research into fugal counterpoint was informed by the studies of Paul Mark Walker, Alfred Mann, George Oldroyd, Glenn Gould, Jacob von Uexküll, Edward Said and Daniel Barenboim. The tensile architecture of fugal form resonates with wider social and political tensions across Europe and the Middle East today:
As subject and countersubject, it is essential for both peoples to understand not only their own narration, but also the human experience of the other. In a fugue, the subject does not have the luxury (or the misfortune) of hearing its own voice alone, again and again. It makes its statement once and when it repeats itself it shares the stage with the countersubject, which, from then on, is a constant companion and a permanent reminder of all that the subject itself is not. Subject and countersubject complete each other and depend on one another for their existence in the world of sounds. If the Israelis and Palestinians could see the parallel between their own dialogue - or lack thereof - and the structure of the fugue, they, too, would realize the urgency of coexisting.
Daniel Barenboim, Music Quickens Time (2008)
Fugue was performed as the opening recital the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs concert – the first of the documenta 14 music programme – on the opening weekend of documenta 14 in Athens, Megaron Concert Hall, 8 April 2017 and again at the opening press conference of documenta 14 in Kassel, 10 June 2017. A printed score of Fugue, including the initial theme and a text by myself ‘Musica Activa’ and a separate score of Moraly’s Quatrain for Solo Violin after Paul Celan’s Death Fugue were exhibited in the Remise of Palais Bellevue, Kassel, 10 Jun - 17 Set 2017.
