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June 6, 2008

Musical Surprises from around the World

Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman

On Sunday, May 4, 2008, a surprising article greeted me in the morning paper: Saudi Arabia has had its first classical music concert ever. A string quartet played Mozart; one of the violinists was a Western woman who did not wear hijab; and men, women, and children were permitted to attend the concert together.These conditions would have driven the thuggish religious police wild - had they been there. The King permitted this concert and protected the audience. On little feet, change is tiptoeing into Saudi Arabia, a bastion of feudal values and a fanatical version of Islam.

That same day, I attended the final concert of the season of the Santa Cruz County Symphony orchestra - celebrating its 50th season.My head was filled with the surprise of the Saudi concert-and for this reason, I took a particularly hard look at the concert program, which was full of pointed reflections of Western civilization:

• Aaron Copland's 1942 Fanfare for the Common Man, a thrilling work that is undoubtedly the first and only "fanfare" for us, the commoners, whereas most fanfares are for nobility and kings. And who else would be better to compose this than Aaron Copland, a Russian Jew who found America to be an amazing homeland for people who previously had neither acceptance nor freedom.

• Britain's Ralph Vaughan Williams 1938 Serenade to Music, a romantic, lush work for orchestra and chorus. One line of the choral song was:

"The man that hath no music in himself/Nor is moved with concord of sweet sounds/Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils...Let no such man be trusted."

Indeed. This was a fit description of the Saudi religious police and the Afghan Taliban.

• Igor Stravinsky's 1930 Symphony of Psalms was an extravagantly percussive work for small orchestra and choir, with Psalms 39, 40, and 150 sung in Latin. Stravinsky was a Russian fortunate enough to escape the Russian Revolution; had he lived under Stalin, he would not have been permitted to write such an avant garde work.

• Jacques Ibert's 1922 work, Escales (Ports of Call), was a romantic tone poem imagining Palermo, Sicily; Tunis, Tunisia; and Valencia, Spain. I smiled as I listened to what had to be the godfather of so much Hollywood movie music! One could almost imagine Dorothy Lamour or one of the many Arabian Nights movies that colored the American imagination.

• And finally, Alexander Borodin's 1899 Polovtsian Dances, which was the source for the music in the popular play and movie Kismet. The Polovtsy were a Turkic tribe defeated by Russian Prince Igor a millennium ago. The chorus remembers "Where once we lived in hope and knew no sorrow/Where once we sang, Rejoicing in our freedom," a sympathetic nod to the defeated from the Russian composer.

What was so obvious in the Ibert and Borodin pieces was Europe's long-term fascination with the then Muslim world. It was to these (and many other) composers and their audiences the mystery, rhythms, and beauty of this exotic music and dance that attracted them. They created in Western culture an imaginary golden Muslim world that certainly did not exist, but did haunt the dreams of the romantic. Hollywood movies picked up that romance as well. As a child, I fell in love with this magical vision of rose gardens, moonlight, and romantic men - until later, married to an Iranian and living in Iran for a period, found little of this magical imagery real. Hollywood does it better.

Most interesting about the Saudi Mozart concert was that the same Mozart who wrote The Turkish March and Abduction from the Seraglio, reflected European fascination with Muslim culture. But the Muslim world from Mozart's time, until recently, did not return the favor of fascination with the West. They ignored us to their detriment. I would prefer that they be intrigued with our classical music culture rather than with our armaments.

Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman is an historian, lecturer, and author who also writes for the Santa Cruz Sentinel. You may contact her at Lfarhat102@aol.com or http://www.globalthink.net/.

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