Structural aspects of my music as illustrated in the tape work The Gown of Night and the cantata Like Two Branches

Abstract

This article deals with two of my works, both of which were composed to literary texts in Arabic. The first is one of my shortest compositions and the second is one of the longest. The Gown of Night (1988), for magnetic tape, is based on the voices of Bedouin children articulating a text by Muhammad Ghana’im (Israel) and lasts 2 minutes and 42 seconds. Like Two Branches (1989), a cantata for chamber choir, two oboes, kanun (or piano), violoncello and a set of supplemented tar drums, is based on text by Al-Khansa – who lived in the Arabian Peninsula in the sixth century AD – and lasts 42 minutes. The ongoing process involving the composition of these two works in the late 1980s resulted in their successive appearance in 1988 and 1990.