Yaël (2004)
(concerto for violin and orchestra)

Yaël is in terms of character a feminine work. The violin is the soul of Yaël, herself a spirit from the lost and ancient past, who travels among the ruins of what has remained from a Judaic culture which God has abandoned, ruins comprised of questions, letters of the Hebrew alphabet and books written in it. Sometimes Yaël hangs above the polyphonic questioning voices, other times she dances with those groping in the dark, sometimes she sings into an echoing void.

Yaël is a biblical figure and also the title of one of the Edmond Jabès’ „Book of Questions“, a book which is the primary source of inspiration for my piece. Jabès’ writings are in fact one single, long and multi-volume book: „Once, when I was still a child, as I wrote my name for the first time, I realised that I was the beginning of a book“. In her obituary of Jabès for the Frankfurt Allgemeine Zeitung, Iris Radisch wrote, „The Book of Questions“ is full of people who in short and unconnected sentences and puzzling epigrams speak of these things yet without actually leading a conversation. They are multi-voiced telegrams in the desert and mini monologues on the eternal questions which are always ultimately the same: on abscence, memory, being Jewish and about exile“. Concerning the movements of the work: in „breath“, what is meant is Yaël’s breath, a quiet wind, which in gentle harmonics softly blows over the desert. Returning questions (the whole piece is a constant questioning back and forth) which ultimately involve the entire orchestra answer the questioning violin. The second movement, „the dark“, is kind of dance in the dark. The solo violin and steel drum play a colla parte line, are surrounded by invisible spirits that spin around in the dark, all in their own tempo and and with changing partners, but always with the solo violin in the lead. The title of the third movement, „Shira Yaël“, means Yaël’s song. The fourth movement, „archipelago“, refers to Jabès’ idea of the letters of the alphabet as islands or perhaps an oasis in the middle of an empty desert.

Yaël is dedicated to the violinist Kolja Lessing, with whom I developed this work in a series of meetings, letters and discussions over the period of more than a decade.

Sidney Corbett
Berlin, Februar 2005