Anything Can Happen

Next April, the Grinnell Singers will be presenting the world premiere of Mohammed Fairouz's commissioned work, "Anything Can Happen." Mohammed Fairouz is composing this work for choir and solo viola to be premiered by the Grinnell Singers, in a consortium with four other ensembles across the country: the Marsh Chapel Choir and the Back Bay Chorale in Boston (Scott Jarrett, conductor), Cantori New York (Mark Shapiro, conductor), and the Mid-Columbia Mastersingers in Washington (Justin Raffa, conductor). In coordination with this commission, Mr. Fairouz will travel to Grinnell for five days to meet with student composers and other groups prior to the premiere. It also appears likely that Fairouz will appear with the Grinnell Singers at several of their concerts on their tour of the southwestern US in March.

Mohammed Fairouz is a truly phenomenal, prolific, twenty-five-year old composer. He has already been commissioned by some of the country's premiere ensembles and performers. There's a lot to say about this project and about this remarkable young man, but for the purposes of this posting, I'd like to focus on the text that Fairouz has chosen for the commission. It further heightens the experience to have the opportunity to ponder the poetry before we begin work on Mohammed's music. Fairouz happens to be a family friend of the Nobel Laureate, Seamus Heaney, and he has chosen to set a set of three Heaney poems, which I will paste in below. (There is some likelihood that Heaney will be in attendance at the premiere). The first poem, "In Iowa," was written when Heaney was in Iowa for a poetry reading in the early 1990's. The last poem, "Anything Can Happen" is an adapted translation of an Ode by Horace. Although the Horace original was written centuries ago, it is remarkable how the Heaney translation seems to be eerily applicable to the tragedy of the Twin Tower attacks. I wouldn't want to speak for the composer, but in our conversations, Mohammed has communicated that he intends for the last movement to constitute the main thrust of the work. Mohammed experienced the trauma of the September 11 attacks firsthand as a teenager living in lower Manhattan. and that world-altering event profoundly influences his artistic work. I should add that Mohammed may be interpolating additional texts in Arabic and Hebrew between these three poems--the work is still germinating, and the entire text is not yet completely determined.

So as we look at this poetry prior to encountering the music, perhaps we can consider together: What themes link these three movements? What are some of the responses that you have to this poetry? What kind of music do you think this poetry might engender? I am eager to hear your thoughts. For myself, I find the selections in "Anything Can Happen" to be powerful in surprising ways. I was in Iowa in 2001, and I remember the clear, blue, jet-free sky. The purity of the sky was beautiful and alarming. I gather from these poems something like that alarming sky -- the sense of being situated in nature, but distanced from it and unconsoled by it, disturbed all the more by the knowledge that all is not right with the world or with myself. I sense a multiplicity of layers, the feeling that many stories are left untold, that the speaker is sometimes taking on a prophetic voice, sometimes confessional -- all the while remaining a real person living in today's world. At one moment it draws on biblical themes, at another it refers to geological time, or to the ancient world -- and all of these images are brought back to the moment that is as immediate as the beating of a windshield wiper, or the condensation on the inside of a jetliner window. It's hard-hitting poetry; it does not shrink back from difficulty or tragedy, and it does not offer easy consolation.

I. In Iowa

In Iowa once, among the Mennonites

In a slathering blizzard, conveyed all afternoon

Through sleet-glit pelting hard against the windscreen

And a wiper's strong absolving slumps and flits,

I saw, abandoned in the open gap

Of a field where wilted corn stalks flagged the snow,

A mowing machine. Snow brimmed its iron seat,

Heaped each spoked wheel with a thick white brow,

And took the shine off oil in the black-toothed gears.

Verily I came forth from that wilderness

As one unbaptized who had known darkness

At the third hour and the veil in tatters.

In Iowa once. In the slush and rush and hiss

Not of parted but as of rising waters.

II.Höfn

The three-tongued glacier has begun to melt.

What will we do, they ask, when boulder-milt

Comes wallowing across the delta flats

And the miles-deep shag ice makes its move?

I saw it, ridged and rock-set, from above,

Undead grey-gristed earth-pelt, aeon-scruff,

And feared its coldness that still seemed enough

To iceblock the plane window dimmed with breath,

Deepfreeze the seep of adamantine tilth

And every warm, mouthwatering word of mouth.

III Anything Can Happen

Anything can happen. You know how Jupiter

Will mostly wait for clouds to gather head

Before he hurls the lightning? Well just now

He galloped his thunder cart and his horses

Across a clear blue sky.. It shook the earth

and the clogged underearth, the River Styx,

the winding streams, the Atlantic shore itself.

Anything can happen, the tallest towers

Be overturned, those in high places daunted,

Those overlooked regarded. Stropped-beak Fortune

Swoops, making the air gasp, tearing the crest off one,

Setting it down bleeding on the next.

Ground gives. The heaven's weight

Lifts up off Atlas like a kettle lid.

Capstones shift. Nothing resettles right.

Telluric ash and fire-spores boil away.

Here are a few web materials on Fairouz:

http://www.mohammedfairouz.com/

http://www.operatoday.com/content/2010/09/mohammed_fairou.php

Here's one that happens to be written by my daughter Helen Stuhr-Rommereim:

http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/node/491681

(Helen is working in Cairo as a reporter for the English-language newspaper, Al-Masry Al-Youm)

About a minute into this one, there is a great interview about Mohammed's opera:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bfUzSGgc1w