Daheim in der Fremde (2016)
(Scene for baritone, voice (speaker), oud, percussion and orchestra)

Daheim in der Fremde combines language and music. Franke differentiates further: Sung text meets spoken text, German language (in the poems written in German by Syrian-born Adel Karasholi) meets Syrian language (in the songs sung by Cham Saloum to the oud). Western musical tradition meets Eastern: in the orchestral writing, but also in the juxtaposition of Western orchestras and Oriental solo instruments. Alongside the oud, the percussion counts as an instrument in its own right, not merely as ‘accompaniment’, ‘colour’ or ‘accentuation’. Two soloists from the West and two from the East complement each other.

Daheim in der Fremde is also dualistic in its clear and well-organized large-scale form. A purely instrumental prologue corresponds to an instrumental-vocal epilogue in which the speaker has ‘the last word’. Adel Karasholi quoted the verses of the epilogue from traditional Sufi mysticism. They form a bridge of hope and reconciliation - for himself and all those who share his fate. But also for people as a whole. A bridge is firmly built and safe to walk on. The scene as a whole, however, is pervaded by the motif of the tightrope walk, which is explicitly addressed in the fifth movement. The image of the tightrope walk condenses the feeling of always being in danger of falling between two poles: home and abroad.

Movements one to six are also divided into two groups, both divided into three parts: song - carpet - memory. The song indicates the perspective from which the opposites of ‘home’ and ‘foreign’ are illuminated in the following: ‘uprooting’, i.e. loss of home, in the first part, ‘rooting’, i.e. arriving in a new home, in the second. The terms prove to be two-faced: the emigrant can never completely separate himself from his original homeland. He remains rooted in it, even if he has to leave it. Conversely, he retains the feeling of being uprooted in his new home, because it will never be able to replace his first home. Here, Adel Karasholi recounts an experience that he shares with many emigrants of his age. No matter how much they may have ‘arrived’ and integrated perfectly like the poet: In old age, pain and sadness become overwhelming in the face of a lifetime of separation from the places and people that fundamentally shaped them in their early years. It is hardly known that many older emigrants take their own lives because they can no longer bear these emotions.

Franke calls the respective middle section a ‘carpet’. This refers to the compositional design, in which a ‘carpet of sound’ accompanies, complements and comments on the speaker's recitations. The listener may make associations between the ‘Flying Carpet’ and the carpet as a characteristic element of oriental living culture, which are not far-fetched. The programme concludes with a Syrian folk song, selected by Adel Karasholi, sung to oud and percussion. This is where the world premiere comes full circle: The 80-year-old poet, who writes and speaks German, encounters the language and sounds of his youth, his longing. The 21-year-old Cham Saloum, on the other hand, is in the process of building a life in Germany that she doesn't know how long it will last. Adel Karasholi has lived such a life. He knows where it has taken him and can tell the young musician about it. Conversely, when he looks at Cham Saloum, he looks at the potential of his own youth.

In ‘Remembrance’, Syrian music can be experienced in its original form and performance style, which is characterised by rhythmic elements and improvisation. In the song and the ‘Carpet’, on the other hand, the orchestra plays music that incorporates elements of both Western and Eastern traditions. In preparation for the composition, Franke intensively studied the music and history of the Oriental cultural area, exchanging ideas with Arab musicians and the Egyptian musicologist Issam El-Mallah. His experience with modal music, i.e. music that is not based on major-minor tonality but on differently structured scales, stood him in good stead for the conception of the work. Franke developed his own mode for ‘Daheim in der Fremde’, a kind of ‘scale’ that characterises the sound and melody of the work. It appears in the course of the work at different pitch levels, marked by a central tone, from which intervals are formed and around which the harmonic-melodic design moves. An important interval is the fifth, in the form of both the perfect and diminished fifth, the tritone. This oscillation of the fifth musically takes up the motif of the tightrope walk.  The atmosphere of the respective passages changes with the change in pitch.

Rhythmic clapping, as can be heard here and there in the orchestra, is an inseparable part of the performance of Arabic music. The musicians also echo and comment on what is being performed. In this way, they refer to the role of the choir in ancient Greek drama. At the same time, however, they also refer to today's global public, which, thanks to modern communication methods, accompanies almost every event simultaneously and lingeringly in the media.

May the work succeed in awakening or deepening empathy and understanding for people who leave their homeland for an uncertain future because they see no other choice.