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.