About the creation

The Crying Souls was commissioned by the Australian Voices for their concert tour at the Palestinian Choral Festival in 2013. A number of concerts and workshops were planned at the West Bank including in Ramallah, Jericho and Bethlehem. 

The piece was never performed at the West Bank. It was banned by the organizers of the festival at the West Bank. The problem occurred when they discovered that a work by an Israeli composer is about to be presented at their festival. Few minutes before the choir went on stage to premiere The Crying Souls in Ramallah, and after all the preparation they had done, they were told they cannot perform this work. The reason for the banning it is yet unknown to me. 

But worse than all is that since then the death in Syria has yet never stopped and so the subject of the work is unfortunately still actual. 

The Crying Souls is a single movement work for 6-part a-cappella choir. It was written as a response to the chemical weapons attacks that happened in August 2013 in Damascus when more than 1,300 innocent civilians including children were massacred. This work expresses my endless sadness to the death of innocent people.  

My spiritual experience as a child chanting the Baqashot at the well-known Ades Synagogue in Jerusalem also inspired this composition. Baqashot are collections of supplications, songs and prayers that have been sung by the Sephardic Syrian Jewish communities for centuries. Every Shabbat during winter months my father woke me up a few hours after midnight to walk to Ades Synagogue to participate in the singing until dawn. Later in my life I was able to distinguish between different Maqamat. This attracted me to explore classical Arabic music and heterophonic textures, and, just as has occurred in Baqashot, to compose works that merge Maqamat with Jewish themes. Since I trained in Western classical music and practice improvisation (as a pianist) it seemed appropriate to merge these different influences.

And so, The Crying Souls is an authentic expression of new music which incorporates a wide spectrum of contemporary and ancient styles. It creates a confluence between the heterophonic textures of Piyyutim and the compositional approaches of contemporary Western classical music.

The work consists of eight major sections. These sections have been created with a range of different approaches, and the musical elements have been developed in diverse ways. It ranges between up-tempi to slow, between Arabic melody and a Piyyut to a melancholic mood and between slow harmonic progression to choral Baroque style. 

I am a strong believer in the power of music to bring about understanding, change and reform in societies, and perhaps also between nations. In this work it is my wish to convey the idea of cultural pluralism.

Yitzhak Yedid