Samy Moussa’s newest compositions will be premiered at two of Europe’s most prestigious festivals: The Sick Rose for voice and piano will be premiered in Aix-en-Provence on July 10, and later in the summer Julien Leroy will lead the Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra in the world premiere of Crimson at the Lucerne Festival, on August 23. Learn more on our blog.

Crimson for large orchestra (2015)
“I always start a composition from the beginning. It is an imperative, otherwise no further invention is possible. Crimson was no exception. It took 62 different openings before I could reach something satisfying. Every single beginning was a plausible option, but I was searching for something else. It may seem like I have absolute power over the music I write, but it is not true. Music is alive and the material has very often its own will. I just knew it had to be resolute, loud, metallic, homophonic and equivocal.

The definitive opening contains elements of a conclusive gesture; the most striking being the crash cymbals at the very start and the harmonic clarity of the first chords. However, I created a large space within those bars: the large body of strings do not play and the pitch of the initial bars are relatively high.

These two elements explain the end, which is the opposite. It offers a resolution of the initial imbalance: the music consists then mostly of strings and later only of extremely low notes. What happens in between is the presentation of two new ideas:

The first one, briefly presented, is a soft passage where the celesta dominates a thin orchestra; the second is fast and rhythmical music that merges with the opening bars and then returns to the first idea to be further developed.”

The Sick Rose for voice and piano (2015)
“The prophetic books of William Blake have fascinated me for a long time. I waited, however, until 2012 before attempting to put one of his texts to music. I selected The Book of Ahania (1795), and set the fifth and final chapter to music. This piece became Ahania's Lament for female voice and piano.

In 2015, following a commission from the Académie du festival d’Aix-en-Provence, I decided to put another of William Blake’s texts, The Sick Rose, to music. It is taken from the second part of Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1789). Completely different in nature, this collection gave me the opportunity to confront different musical challenges.

The short poem, which is very enigmatic, provides the composer with a particular sound. As a matter of fact, the “O” in the beginning gave me the key for the composition of the piece and also shaped how it would sound. But it was the content of the text that inspired the musical form, which is expressed through the piano texture. It is extremely simple in the beginning and builds to an increasingly full accompaniment, then quickly recovers its initial calm for the last stanza, remaining bleak, before recalling the very beginning of the piece.

The vocal line avoids extremes and the reduced range promotes an understanding of the text. The Sick Rose can be sung by all types of voices, men and women included.”