Seeds of Hope for Nay, Oud, and orchestra

Seeds of Hope, written for nay (Middle Eastern flute), oud (Middle Eastern lute), and western orchestra, is an attempt at synthesizing two different musical traditions into a single cohesive work. The musical traditions that are consciously synthesized in Seeds of Hope are western classical and popular Arabic music, which is based on the Maqam system.;Maqam (plural Maqamat) is widely known as a conceptual organizational framework just like as scales or modes in western music. Each of the Maqamat is based on a theoretical scale, specific notes of emphasis, and a typical pattern of melodic movement. In many instances the Maqam begins around the tonic note of the scale, gradually ascends, and finally descends to the tonic. Unlike western music that is organized by half steps or half tones, most of the Maqamat include also quarter tones as part of their organizational structure.;The modal conception and organization of melody is paralleled by a modal treatment of rhythm. In Arabic music, metric modes are employed in various metric compositions and are widely known by the name Iqa-at (singular Iqa). Influencing the nature of phrasing and the patterns of accentuation of a musical composition, these modes are rendered on percussion instruments. Each Iqa has a specific name and a pattern of beats ranging in number from two to twenty-four or more, and each consists of rests and beats distinguished by timbre.;Seeds of Hope may be seen almost as a western concerto-type composition. However unlike the multiple-movement structure and the virtuosic writing for the soloists in western concertos, Seeds of Hope is written as one long movement and my goal was to write as simple as possible for the soloists in order to stay loyal to the tradition and character of the instruments. Also, unlike western concertos where the soloist should play the part exactly as written, the nay and the oud players are encouraged to embellish the lines according to their own tradition without changing durations in order to achieve as authentic sound as possible just as they would embellish their parts while playing in an Arabic music ensemble setting.;The piece is based on the melody that occurs on rehearsal numbers A24 to A26, which is the culmination of the piece and is the only time that this melody is played explicitly from beginning to end. I worked my way toward this melody by leading to it through increasingly more explicit fragments of the melody. From the beginning and throughout the course of the composition I disguised fragments of the melody through Cellular rhythmic and melodic motivicism, which means small rhythmic and melodic fragments that could be varied and developed by using simple procedures of permutation such as, augmentation, diminution, extension and elision. The first recognizable fragment of the melody is played by the obo in the third measure of rehearsal number A10. The melody is an integration of different Maqamat and Iqa-at..;The piece was genuinely written with seeds of hope for a better future in the Middle East.