Resonate Magazine | Australian Music Centre

Image: Elizabeth Younan  
© Louie Douvis

The Sydney Chamber Choir are preparing for the third concert of the 2023 season, The Human Spirit. A champion for Australian composers, this comcert program will feature four (out of five) Australian works, including a world premiere by Sydney-based composer Elizabeth Younan. We were lucky for Elizabeth to spare a few moments to share more about the inspirations behind her latest work, from the rich poetry of May Ziadeh to how synaesthesia colours her interpretation of words and music.

You were commissioned by the Sydney Chamber Choir to create a new work - how did this come about, how did you go about selecting the text for this new piece and can you tell us about the significance of the chosen text(s)?

Sam Allchurch emailed me in 2022, asking if I'd be interested in writing for the Sydney Chamber Choir. As an avid chorister for most of my life, I had always admired the musicality and adventurousness of the Sydney Chamber Choir, and I was delighted to have the opportunity to work with them. I thought about which text to choose for a really long time, as Sam gave me free rein. I wanted explore something unfamiliar to me, so I asked my mum if she knew of any poets I may not know. She steered me towards a brilliant Lebanese-Palestinian poet named May Ziadeh (1886-1941). Ziadeh was at the forefront of the literary Arab renaissance, a translator, a poet, and an essayist who wrote about women's rights and freedoms. I selected three poems from the collection Fleurs de rêve (1911), which is written in French. The first song is titled "A La Lune" (Song to the Moon), the second, "À La Muse" (Song to the Muse) and "Espoir" (Hope), which I chose as the title for the work overall.

What are some of the leading qualities of May Ziadeh's poetry that resonates with you?

Each poem explores one concept in rich and thrilling detail-a dreamy song to the moon, the delicate voice as muse, nature as hope-and delves deeper and deeper until one is all-consumed. The poems are full of rich, evocative language; symbolism, metaphors and glittering colours abound. It is not only the poetry itself which resonates with me; I also chose these poems as I wish to bring Ziadeh's relatively unknown work to a large audience. I grew up with the rich works of Kahlil Gibran, whom I recently discovered corresponded over several years with Ziadeh. It is my hope that Ziadeh's work will earn the same recognition that Gibran's work enjoys.

How did these qualities inform your musical approach to composing this work?

As I have synaesthesia, the combination of poetry and music is the perfect vehicle to express the colours I see when I hear music. I love translating the colours, auras, and varying other senses I feel through harmonies, textures, gestures, registers-the list is almost endless. Ziadeh holds up a dreamy microscope to a concept and sees it from different angles. This aligns with one of my happiest compositional approaches, that of the malleable, versatile motif.

How did you treat the voices of the choir and what can audiences expect to hear?

Though the first song is through-composed (that is, it is very free in its treatment of structure), it nevertheless features a varied sighing motif. The second explores floating, suspended harmonies which gradually ascend through the choir and build in intensity. The third song is perhaps the most traditional of the three in terms of tonal functions, though it quickly shifts through different keys. It starts in a soft unison, but splinters in texture before returning to a triumphant conclusion. It was a great deal of fun to write, and I hope it is fun to sing and listen to.

What can we look forward to hearing next from you?

I have plans to set more of Ziadeh's poetry for mezzo-soprano and two guitars: I'm excited to be working with the Johnston brothers, Ziggy and Miles, who currently study at Juilliard, and London-based mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts-Dean, to bring this work to life. I'm also delighted to be working on a piece for the Merian Ensemble, which is a mixed ensemble comprised of performers from the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra in Georgia, USA. My work, Metamorphosis, takes its name from the trailblazing scientific work of the ensemble's namesake, Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717). I'm also currently working on the music of season 6 of the podcast, Lost Women of Science. This season we are focusing on the lives of the female scientists who were involved in the Manhattan Project, and it is intriguing to not only learn about their lives, but to also bring their stories to the forefront.

The Sydney Chamber Choir will present the world premiere performance of Espoir at The Human Spirit, 7:30pm Saturday 23 September 2023 at Verbrugghen Hall, Sydney Conservatorium of Music. More info.