A luminous celebration of sacred and personal beginnings, the piece draws on the Advent chant “O Adonai” and the microtonal colors of Nicola Vicentino’s arciorgano, blending Arabic maqam inflections with Renaissance chromaticism in a spirit of renewal.
Premiered by: Ensemble Proton Bern
Venue: Dampfzentrale Bern, Switzerland
Commissioned by: Ensemble Proton Bern
Wilada (Arabic for “birth”) is a celebration of new beginnings, both sacred and personal. I have always wanted to write a Christmas piece that reflects my own musical language, and when my daughter was born last September, I finally found the reason to do so. The work commemorates two intertwined births: the arrival of my child and the Nativity itself. The piece draws inspiration from the Advent chant O Adonai (“Oh Lord”), heard here not as a quotation but as a source that continually permeates the music, sometimes emerging clearly and sometimes receding into the background. Its contours appear most subtly in the harp, stretched and slowed almost beyond recognition, before coming fully into bloom in the lupophone about halfway through the piece. At the heart of Wilada is the arciorgano, an instrument devised by Nicola Vicentino in the mid-1500s, whose microtonal tuning opened new harmonic worlds. In this piece, its unique sonorities guide the ensemble’s pacing, harmonic color, and rhythmic flow, shaping the musical landscape from within. By fusing Vicentino’s chromatic ideals with the nuanced modal inflections of the Arabic maqam, Wilada becomes both reflective and jubilant, a meditation on how every birth, divine or human, carries within it the echo of transformation and renewal.
