- Ella Milch-Sheriff
The Eternal Stranger (Der ewige Fremde) (2019)
(A Monodrama for actor and orchestra (English Version))- Henry Litolff’s Verlag GmbH & Co. KG (World)
- actor + 2+pic.2+ca.2(II:bcl).2/2.2.0.0/timp.perc/str
- Actor
- 17 min
- Joshua Sobol
- English
Programme Note
The work was commissioned for the occasion of 250 years to Beethoven, initiated by Israeli conductor Omer Meir Wellber, to whom this work is also dedicated.
It all started with Beethoven’s surprising and relatively unknown dream about which he wrote to his friend and publisher Tobias Haslinger on September 10, 1821.
This dream deals with a very long journey that he undertook, “as far even as Syria, as far even as India, as far even as Arabia” and finally he arrives in Jerusalem. There, he experiences some kind of religious experience and his friend Tobias appears. Beethoven describes a musical Canon he heard in this dream and includes the Canon in his letter to Tobias, even using his friend’s name as lyrics to the music *).
This dream inspired the Israeli playwright and author Joshua Sobol to write the text that inspired me to compose The Eternal Stranger.
This work is about a stranger, a refugee or any other person who finds himself in a hostile environment with no legitimate reason to be rejected but the fact that he or she is different, looks different, moves different, speaks differently.
But the stranger is a human being who has the same desires as every other human being. Beethoven’s dream enabled me to use vast musical connotations from my home country of Israel, and the sounds of my childhood – a mixture of Arabic music, Jewish music of all kinds (eastern and western) as well as the old European world.
Beethoven’s Canon makes an appearance in the piece, especially in the first part, modified in various ways. It is mixed by middle-eastern sounds into two completely different worlds that meet but perhaps fail to connect at all.
*) Canon “O Tobias!”, WoO 182
Ella Milch-Sheriff, October 2019