AL CHIMIYA
Author(s) Norbert Sterk
Co-author(s) Elisabeth Holzer
AL CHIMIYA for narrator, flute/bass flute, and string quartet (vl., vl., vla., vlc.) based on a text by Semier Insayif (2020/21)
For years, the visual artist Elisabeth Holzer and I have been working on the cycle "land of sleepless mirrors" (the title refers to a passage in Octavio Paz's work "Blanco"), in which image and music reflect each other.
Paintings and compositions are usually created simultaneously. Elisabeth listens to my music—at least what I present to her at the piano—and continues painting, reinventing what she has heard, so to speak, while I build on what I see, observe, and hear. We react to each other in diverse and complex ways. Music and image engender each other. This ultimately allows us to see the music and hear the image...
As a further layer, the poet Semier Insayif, inspired by the paintings and compositions, has created new texts (partly in German, partly in Arabic) for parts of the cycle. He could assume the role of the poetically reflective observer who, insofar as he is woven into the structure of the composition, seems to provide his own impulses (melodrama).