ANTAR
20′ – 2017
for ensemble & voice
Antar
Antar is the name of an epic as famous in the Arab world as the Arabian Nights, she paints the war and amorous adventures of a pre-Islamic poet, conveyed by the oral tradition. Antar has put out the eyes of his cruel enemy, who learns to shoot at the bow guided by the sounds, the voice, the song of the birds, the wind, the storms …
the “historical” Antar is a 6th century poet, in the days of Jahiliyya, a period of “ignorance” preceding the revelation of Islam. Author of seven Mu’allaqat, the “suspended” poems, he is almost contemporary with the Prophet who, according to tradition, is considered that he is the only Bedouin worthy of being known for his chivalrous spirit and love, his taste for adventure and freedom, his valor, his exalted feeling of honor.
The life of this “wandering Arab” warrior and poet and the myth attached to it, inspired a song of gesture, epic chivalrous written in prose that has crossed the time and the Arab world from the twelfth century to the Homeric epics, Thousand and One Nights, de l’Erotókritos Cretan orJerusalem delivered from the Tasse.
According to the Roman, Antar was born in one of the great Bedouin tribes, one of the first among the nomads of Arabia, the illegitimate son of Emir Chaddad or Cheddad and a black slave of Abyssinia to whom he owed the color of his skin and its nickname “raven of the Arabs”. Slave too, in love with his cousin Abla, his intrepid temperament, his poetic refinement will allow him, after many trials, tribulations and fabulous exploits to transgress his condition, to be recognized by his father, to marry his beloved and suspend his poem in Mecca. He then carries the war to the desert tribes.
But he meets the fierce Ouezar. Twice Antar is being liberal and saves his life. At the third recurrence, he puts him out his eyes. Ouezar, blind and full of acrimony, meditates his vengeance by exercising his ear “by a long learning which is to follow the movements of ferocious beasts on the sound of their footsteps”.
At the edge of the Euphrates, armed with his bow and poisoned arrows, Ouezar, guided by the voice of Antar in the storm, strikes the warrior. Believing he missed his target, he literally died of fear as Antar was dying at the camp.
CP
An excerpt from Antar’s novel, an Arabic text, was published in Paris in 1841. A Latin translation of the work was given by V.-E. Menil in Leiden in 1816. At the same time, Terrick Hamilton translated the third into English under this title: Life and Adventures of Antar, a celebrated bedowen … (London, 1816). It was made on this translation a French version (anonymous) in 1819. Alphonse de Lamartine gave fragments of the Arab novel in his Voyage en Orient (Paris, 1835), including the episode of the Death of Antar, that he calls “one of the most beautiful lyric songs of all languages”. Other extracts were published in the Asian Journal by Caussin de Perceval, Cardin Cardonne (1834, 1837), Cherbonneau (1845) and Dugat (1848, 1853), and in the Algerian Review by the latter. Finally, we owe a free translation of this novel to L.-Marcel Devic (1864). © espacefrancais.com
set
soprano & basse, trumpet in Bb and bugle, saxophone I : alto-sopranino / saxophone II : baritone-alto, contrebassoon, qanun, harpe, accordion, double bass
extract
When darkness had darkened on the earth, Ouézar said to his slave:
Let’s leave this place; the voices that strike my ear seem distant to me. Move closer to the river: my heart tells me that a reported blow will forever illustrate my name ….
Ouézar chooses the sharpest of his arrows, the place on his bow, and, listening attentively, he awaits the moment of revenge.
Antar, in deep security, indulged in the pleasure of seeing Abla, his beloved, after a long absence. He forgot, in the arms of this beloved companion, his labors, his dangers, when the dismal cries of dogs, faithful guardians of the camp, succeeding their prolonged barking, throw into his soul an weird trouble. Worried, he gets up and leaves his tent. The sky was dark and full of clouds. Antar wanders for some time in the darkness; he hears new barks which seem to him to come from the shore of the river. Driven by fatality, he advances to the edge of the water and, suspecting the presence of some stranger, he calls his brother Jirter to check on the other riverside. As soon as he raised his powerful voice, resounded into the valleys and the mountains, an arrow reaches him to the right side and hit him into its entrails.
No complaint, no groan unworthy of his courage, betrays his pain. He tears the iron from his wound, and exclaims:
O thou, whose treacherous hand is guided by the sound of my voice to strike me in the shadows of the night; traitor, who has not dared to attack me in the daylight, you will not escape of my vengeance, you will not enjoy the fruit of your perfidy.
Ouézar hears these words, and the fear seizes his heart. He thinks that his arrow has badly served his resentment, and, at this moment, thinking of Antar’s anger, tortured him, a spirit of terror seized him; his strength abandonned him, he felt deprived of feeling.
(…) Abla makes the air resound with her moans; she tears her clothes, tears off her long hair and covers her head with dust. The women around her imitate her pain; soon the whole camp responds to their plaintive cries, and the silence of the night succeeds the tumult and the accents of despair.
Marcel Devic Translation, 1864 © Libretto
after a traditional Arab tale
Singing language: Arabic
Premiere: April 25, 2017
Venue: Paris RRC
by the ensemble 2e2m & Mezwej, Amel Brahim Djelloul & Andreas Fischer, direction Pierre Roullier
© ŠamaŠ editions musicales 2017
