An orchestral meditation built around a single evolving melody, the piece layers string lines with flute “ghost tones” while scales drawn from Arab maqamat subtly color otherwise Western-style harmonies, creating the feeling of one lingering musical breath giving way to the next.
Premiered by: Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Stilian Kirov
Venue: Ozinga Chapel, Trinity Christian College, Palos Heights, Illinois
Commissioned by: Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra
Hawa (pronounced HA-wah), or ‘air,’ in Arabic, is in a sense a play on the word for the Western musical form typically composed for vocal-centric compositions, though also often employed in purely instrumental works. This composition seeks to expound on one melody, which is mainly orchestrated for the strings, that encompasses the entire work, beginning with just a few of the most important pitches that appear most often in the ensuing material. The flute section provides an important structural element, serving as the ‘ghost’ tones for the long melody, almost as if to harken to a distantly related ‘air.’ The epilogue provides a respite of ‘last remarks,’ as if to say farewell to one ‘air,’ which may or may not perhaps lead to another. The work’s scalar vocabulary relies on a series of maqamat, or Arab modes, which informed the selection of pitches on a more personal, sometimes unconscious, level, while the harmony itself follows mainly Western tertian constructs typically employed in much of the repertoire from the nineteenth to early twentieth centuries.
