Morning Wind
Notes on the Program of the Joolaee Trio


Both of us, the morning wind and I,
Are wandering souls;
I am inebriated by the enchantment of your eyes
And he by the scent of your tresses.

—Hafez


The morning wind—bad-e-saba in Farsi—plays an important role in Persian poetry. It blows from the East and is said to not only transport the secrets of lovers, but also have a stimulating effect and bring springtime. The title of this program, then, refers both to the poem from Hafez’s Divan that inspired Misagh Joolaee’s composition Shohud, but also to the idea of a musical “springtime” or new beginning, arising from the combination of different musical traditions.

           
From Afar
This piece for solo kamancheh is based on the dastgāh (mode) shur, one of the seven modes of the classical Persian musical repertoire known as radif. Misagh Joolaee transferred the plucking techniques used here from flamenco guitar and the Persian long-necked lute setar to the kamancheh.

Marmarameer (Sea of Marmara)
The composition was written on a journey to Istanbul and in memory of the Sea of Marmara, or rather the banks of the Bosporus in the Kadiköy quarter with its old fishing boats. Free improvisation precedes a rhythmically accented section in 7/8 meter. The percussive figures of the beginning are inspired by the wooden sound of the boats moored to the shore, as they bump into each other on the waves. The waves can be heard as well in the form of numerous arpeggios. The percussion part provides many other musical depictions of specific sounds. An inland sea with a European north and an Asian south shore, the Sea of Marmara symbolizes the notion of straddling the border between East and West in a special way, creating a natural connection between the two continents.

Sharar
The Persian title (“spark of fire”) points to the inspiration for this piece—the festivities surrounding Nowruz, the Persian New Year’s celebration, especially Chaharshanbe Suri, a holiday celebrated a few days before the passing of the year. It involves lighting campfires at sundown and people jumping over them to drive away evil spirits and experience a kind of inner cleansing. The rituals surrounding Nowruz go back to the Persian cult of Zarathustra and the pre-Islamic era. The composition is written in the shur mode, but it also includes modulations into other Persian modes, such as isfahan and mahur. The melody is strongly reminiscent of folk songs, partially alluding to Armenian folk music. The frame drum heard here is reminiscent of the zarb e zourkhaneh, a traditional clay drum used to accompany the playing of sports in antiquity in Persia.

Fantasy and Fugue
Schaghajegh Nosrati’s composition is based on the idea of creating a connection between the Persian mode chahargah and Western fugal technique, highlighting the tension between improvisational and through-composed sections. One important inspiration was Johann Sebastian Bach, especially his Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue. The percussion part required a melodic instrument capable of rendering the exposition of the fugal subject and the following countersubjects, which led to the idea of having a stone marimba built, a rarely used instrument with very interesting sonic possibilities. The tone plates are made of slate and in addition to being struck can also be scraped or scratched with the help of various mallets and stones. The fantasy is entirely improvised; like the following four-part fugue, it is based on the mode chahargah. Typical contrapuntal techniques such as stretto, augmentation and diminution, abbreviated expositions, etc. are employed. In addition to strictly composed expositions of the theme, there are also two interludes in which improvisation plays a larger role. At the end of the piece, the sequence B–A–C–H is heard (B flat–A–C–B in German notation).

Barcarole
This solo work for piano is based on the folk song Javoonay Ghaleye Pir from Khorasan. The piece begins as a simple siciliano in 16/8 meter, gaining rhythmical and harmonic complexity in the middle section and even approaching jazz-like elements, before leading back into a feverish reminiscence. One source of inspiration was Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea.

Be Hich Diyar
This piece, whose title might be translated as “belonging to no homeland,” was written in the context of the protests in Iran following the murder of Mahsa Amini by the Islamic regime. The music is dedicated to her and the many courageous people who have fought for freedom and equality, risking their lives in doing so. Its sound palette is particularly dark, due to the use of a large frame drum and the piano’s lower register. The odd meter of 13/8 is maintained throughout. The piano part begins with seemingly archaic fourth and fifth intervals, intensifying as the piece progresses. Sections with impressionistic colors in the piano part grow more and more dissonant, culminating in a great outburst. The kamancheh melody that follows is marked by a sense of great fragility and loneliness, leading into the chorale-like postlude in the piano.

Vashagh
Misagh Joolaee’s composition is audibly influenced by the traditional Anatolian musical idiom. It also plays with a variety of rhythmic syncopations in a modal blend of two Persian dastaghs, nava and shur. Vashagh is an ancient Persian word meaning “flowing” or “transient.”

Negarin
Originating from Persian poetry, the word negarin has different meanings—“female lover” and “adorned” or “ornamented” are some of them. This piece for solo kamancheh draws from the rich tradition of folk music from Khorasan in northwestern Iran and features not only the traditional way of playing the strings with a bow, but also new techniques developed by Misagh Joolaee, such as plucked triplets, a swirling bowing technique, rasgueado as known in flamenco, or drumming techniques derived from Persian percussion. Double stops and chords from European classical music and common jazz scales are used as well. All of these, however, are never an end unto themselves but serve to expand the musical means of expression on the kamancheh.

Mahjur
With a title that can be translated as “archaic,” “lost,” or “lonely,” this composition is written in avaz bayate kord and inspired by the idea of a funeral procession as it can often be seen in southern Iran. The percussion is provided by the davul (large drum) and stone marimba. The piano part employs several EBows, small devices that are placed on the strings to make them resonate using a magnetic field—thus creating sustained notes that do not fade.

Erzincan düz halayi
Named for the city of Erzincan in eastern Turkey, this piece is an arrangement of a Turkish folk dance. Traditionally, it features a davul and the wind instrument zurna, often played at wedding ceremonies. The piece is in 9/8 meter throughout, but the accent pattern varies, lending the music a particular vibrancy. The strict rhythmic structure is broken only by a short improvised section in the piano. The main percussion instrument is the Turkish darbuka. Erzincan düz halayi is dedicated to Levent Özdemir, the bağlama master who was the first to introduce Misagh Joolaee to this music.

Verdichtung (Intensification)
Sebastian Flaig’s composition for solo darbuka is characterized by rhythmic ambiguity: by superimposing three different pulses, the possibilities of continuing any given passage are expanded and intensified. This tension is discharged in rapid changes—but each pulse not chosen is also continued inwardly and can be resumed, leading to a variety of different developments that continue simultaneously and are treated in an improvisational manner.

Fragile Balance
This piece was inspired by a press report on the “Four Pests” campaign in China in 1958. Mao Zedong had ordered the extermination not only of rats, mosquitos, and flies but also of sparrows, which led to one of the causes of the Great Chinese Famine: with the natural of enemies of crickets eliminated, almost the entire harvest in China was destroyed. The composition explores the idea of how closely humans are connected to all other forms of life—in a fragile balance. The musical point of departure is a three-measure phrase in 7/8 meter whose bass focus shifts, keeping an unstable balance with one single note in the melody. This motif is given different treatments in the piece’s three sections.

Shohud
The Persian word shohud means “intuition.” One important source of inspiration for Misagh Joolaee was the image of the morning wind from the Hafez poem quoted above. Apart from Persian and classical European influences, the music also features elements of Armenian music and jazz. The piece, in A–B–A form, resembles a passacaglia, with a recurring descending motif that is prevalent mainly in the A sections. The notion of the “intuitively unpredictable” is associated with the B section, which begins with a polyrhythmic passage in the kamancheh that is then augmented, both in dynamics and in its rhythmic complexity. A new motif is presented by the kamancheh and piano, partly in different tempos (in the manner of a fugal stretto with an augmented voice). The percussion adds rhythmically independent figurations. After reaching its dynamic climax, the music returns to the ostinato figure of the beginning. Finally, in another augmentation, two vocal lines are added (treated as instrumental voices). In this section, the audience is invited to sing along.


Translation: Alexa Nieschlag