photo courtesy of Peer Music
Mohammed Fairouz
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Mohammed Fairouz is one of the most accomplished and sought after young composers around. While taking a lot of inspiration from Western music, his Arabic sensibility permits him to see things that only artists may see. One of his most recent projects is “Sumeida’s Song,” an opera with some of the most universal themes that have been playing out since families began.

Tawfiq El-Hakim was a creative force in the Arabic world, who experimented with, for that culture, non-traditional media. El-Hakim’s work, “Song of Death,” is an original story in an art form that was less popular in the Arabic world, the play, as it was viewed as a Western-influenced art. The most popular art form there to this day is still the poem, as it has been for thousands of years. El-Hakim wrote this story that was new in 1947 but resonates with ancient themes about love, loyalty, family and duty, and above all sacrifice.

Fairouz chose Hakim’s story in part for its operatic sweep, but feels that it’s like a Passion or a re-telling of Christ on the Mount of Olives. He contemplated and composed the specific melodic lines that Sumeida sings both as the herald of Alwan’s arrival and then later, of his death. It’s in the dialect of Upper Egypt and contains enduring religious connotations. No matter what your belief system contains, or whether agnosticism or atheism, the story is universal and universally powerful.

It takes a lot more effort to present societies, says Fairouz, as fully rounded when it’s so easy to represent people as one threatening entity. It’s very convenient when you want to fight them to create that simplistic view, but it’s not accurate. “Sumeida’s Song” challenges that heterogeneous view that one single statement can define a people. Fairouz took a few moments from the final preparations for this performance to spend some time with QonStage.

Q on Stage: When did you first become aware of the short play “Song of Death” by Tawfiq El-Hakim?

Mohammed Fairouz: The story is a really interesting piece. El-Hakim is the standard of Arabic literature, and someone who is well-read in that canon will know him as a presence. I’ve written hundreds of art songs, more than a dozen song cycles and I’ve got a book of songs coming out this fall. I delve into the more obscure lyrics and work of writers like El-Hakim, and Wordsworth and Auden, and this piece was so interesting that when I found it, I began immediately to translate the play and write the libretto.

QoS: The theme seems to be that there is no escaping Fate, as Death seems to surround Alwan. Is change possible? Can one escape a tradition that supports blood feuds?

M: Alwan went to the big city, to Cairo. He introduced the element of education acting as a force of change to combat violence. His death is actually uplifting, because he introduced something cataclysmic into his society that changed them forever. Men and women like Alwan are all over the world and, while some of them die for their cause, they are making changes that make the world a better place. Possibly their Fate might be the most poignant expression of the philosophy they espoused.

QoS: You’ve got a tremendous cast for your world premiere–were you open to the texture of the voices of the singers who were there, or did you have a specific combination of timbre in mind, transcendent of vocal range?

M: The cast is composed of excellent singers, who all work with the best companies. This performance is an unstaged concert version of the opera that will hopefully lead to a fully-staged version of the show. I’m so happy that the conductor, Scott Dunn, made the prime recommendations based on his study of the score. I’m so pleased he’s in charge of this project. The conductor is and was in charge of the production.

QoS: What has been most inspiring for you in creating this “Sumeida’s Song?”

M: The counterpoint of civilizations is a very powerful inspiration for me. I’m a composer who is coming out of the tradition of the songwriting and operatic composers of the last hundred years including Benjamin Britten, Samuel Barber, Gian Carlo Menotti, Tobias Picker, Ned Rorem and others. In that capacity, that explains a lot of my work’s popularity with singers. In a sense, what is new about “Sumeida’s Song” is that it uses elements of the Arabic maquam (musical modes) and can create the atmosphere of what is attempting to be conveyed. Raised in the West, I’m one of the more recent generation of those composers I mentioned earlier, but I’m also including elements of my unique background. The work is inspired by its narrative, as well as the structure, and its universal power as well as opera itself as an art form.

QoS: What’s next for you, in terms of inspiration and projects?

M: I mentioned a songbook coming out in the fall, and I began by writing songs at a very early age. I set poems by Oscar Wilde when I was just seven years old. The poems in the cycle of 40 songs range from Wordsworth and Yeats to Shakespeare and contemporary poets as well. These are only selections of my songs for voice and piano.

My latest song cycle, “Jeder mensch,” just premiered with the incomparable mezzo soprano Kate Lindsey and Craig Terry on piano, and it’s Alma Mahler searching for her own voice. From her journals, she acts as a vessel for the talent of the men in her life, often at the expense of her own talent. Kate performed them with songs that Alma Mahler had written. It was a fascinating juxtaposition. It was at the Caspary Auditorium and was part of the Peggy Rockefeller concert series.

I’m working on a new opera that is coming into existence through American Opera Projects, and the title is “Eichmann in Jerusalem,” based on the book by Hannah Arendt. The testimonies from the Eichmann trials are included. The testimony of the victims and the ultimate end where Eichmann is hanged is documented. This is the journey. The first parts of this were presented earlier at this month at American Opera Projects.

While I seem very serious, and intense, I do have works that are much lighter. Humor is very valuable to me, like my piano quintet “Canto”, that’s a humorous poke at the Schubert “Trout Quintet.” I have explored many different aspects of humor and I value that very highly.

Even when my music is very serious, it’s got a witty side, including the last movement of my first symphony, called “Homage to a Belly Dancer,” that references a humorous essay by Edward Said.

QoS: Did you have a sense when you wrote “Sumeida’s Song” of the changes that were coming in Eqypt?

M: Absolutely! Yes, there is a sense of change with what’s happening everywhere in the world today. An artist who is tapped into the zeitgeist of the time needs to articulate that connectedness, and to do that, one must be sensitive to what’s happening in the world everywhere around you. This is nothing new. Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony took a different turn when Napoleon declared himself Emperor. And Benjamin Britten’s “War Requiem” happened at exactly the right time.

Returning to humor in music, my double concerto for violin and orchestra is inspired by Jacqueline Rose’s famous book “States of Fantasy,” and it’s quite humorous, though the author says that when the book was published most people thought it was soft-core porn! This work is a double concerto–not voice and orchestra—and it’s like throwing a boomerang through music history. At the performance, people burst out laughing at the right moments and do you know what that means in an instrumental piece? You don’t need to have a knowledge of critical theory to enjoy it and that provides a tremendous sense of accomplishment.

Join QonStage for the concert version of “Sumeida’s Song,” being performed at the Ethical Culture Society on April 13 at 8pm at 2 West 64th Street, New York. Tickets are still available at this time via SmartTix, so visit the website: www.SumeidasSong.com for more information and details. A portion of the proceeds benefits the Association for the Protection of the Environment (A.P.E.), a charitable organization that works to improve the lives of the poor in Egypt while making less of a footprint on the environment. Tickets are going fast! I’ve got mine and I look forward to seeing you there.