On March 26 at the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome, as part of the concert series Contemporanea, the world premiere of Riccardo Nova’s Wav Alif Ha Da for guitar, percussion, and tape will be performed by Luca Nostro and Flavio Tanzi.

Nova's title, Wav Alif Ha Da, spells out the Arabic word Wahid (one of the 99 names of Allah) which refers to the singularity - the oneness - of God.

In the Abjad order of the Arabic alphabet each letter had a corresponding numeric value. Wahid's value is 19 and, indeed, appears 19 times in the Koran. Nova's piece points to this impossible mathematical equivalence which his work (by using a rhythmic formule of 19 unity) is based on.

Riccardo Nova: works