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Liza Lim

Fatimah/ Jubilation of Flowers

Part 3 of Annunciation Triptych, 3-part work for orchestra (2019–2022)

Jointly commissioned by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, WDR Sinfonie-Orchester and Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks

Premiere of the full Annunciation Triptych: 29 April 2022, soprano Emily Hindrichs, WDR Sinfonie-Orchester conducted by Cristian Măcelaru, Musik der Zeit, Cologne Philharmonie

Fatimah/ Jubilation of Flowers work was composed in Dec 2021-Jan 2022 during my residency at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (Institute of Advanced Study)

Liza Lim

Fatimah / Jubilation of Flowers (2021–2022)

For soprano, orchestra and singing audience

Text by Etel Adnan. Excerpt from The Spring Flowers Own & The Manifestations of the Voyage (The Post-Apollo Press 1990) is used with permission granted by The Estate of Etel Adnan. All rights reserved.

Part 3 of Annunciation Triptych, 3-part work for orchestra (2019–2022)

Instrumentation:

Piccolo

2 Flutes

2 Oboes

Cor Anglais

2 Clarinets in Bb

Bass Clarinet in Bb

2 Bassoons

Contraforte (needs low A)

4 Horns in F

3 Trumpets in C

2 Trombones

Bass Trombone

Tuba

Timpani

Percussion 1 Vibraphone

Percussion 2 Vibraphone

Harp

Piano

Violin I

Violin II

Viola

Violoncello

Double Bass (need low-C extension)

(strings at least: 14.12.10.8.6)

Score is in C

Duration: approximately 10 minutes

Notes for performance

Quartertones

Flute

I am indebted to the work of Salvatore Sciarrino in relation to the trill techniques using the D and D# trill keys. Trilling these keys alternately whilst chromatically fingering the left-hand keys results in a microtonal glissando between C# and D#. A more complex result is achieved when the right-hand trill motion is not rhythmically aligned with the left-hand finger movement.

Clarinet / Bass Clarinet

Left hand plays notated pitches whilst right hand holds down/ trills the B key as indicated by the graphic.

This microtonally alters the pitch when the key is depressed or interrupts/distorts the pitch when the key is trilled at different speeds.

Strings

maintain same finger distance for harmonic ripple, “seagull” effect

double harmonic gliss. — light harmonic pressure with two fingers on the same string to produce looping harmonic ripple, “seagull” effect

Movement of singer from hall to stage

The singer is located within the body of the audience (or similar position in hall) and later moves to the stage to join the orchestra. The intention is that the singer acts ‘as if a member of the audience’ who rises up to convey a message.

Audience participation

The audience are invited to sing at Letters L and M (bars 100-107); they are free to sing/hum along to the basic pitches in these bars reinforcing the resonances of the orchestra. The ‘cellos and basses also sing at Letter M which may further encourage the audience to join in. The requirements are very simple and the conductor plays a role in making the experience warmly invitational, non-threatening and hopefully, joyful and natural (!) The intention, especially in the context of a performance of the full triptych, is that the audience is offered an opportunity to add their voices to the music. This is the central message of the triptych: hearing is an act of receptivity that fills the listener so that their vocal expression is an overflowing response to the listening: ‘after listening, comes responding’.

The audience can be informed of the participation verbally by the conductor and it may be useful to have a short explanation/ ‘rehearsal’ before the performance. It may also be useful to pre-arrange to have a few people in the audience that have agreed to sing (like a flash mob). Other possibilities include a short projected instruction in the hall—in any case, the general audience should not feel coerced—they are free to sing or not sing as they wish.

Acknowledgements

With gratitude to Harry Vogt for his immense support and trust in commissioning and producing the premiere and recording of the full cycle of works.

Thanks to Pete Readman and Stuart MacRae for typesetting work and to the team at Ricordi including Marco Mazzolini, Silke Hilger, Max von Aulock and Martha Agostini, Lasse Müller, Henrik Almon, Jascha Zube and Verena Berger for supporting me over the three years of the composition of the triptych during pandemic times!

Program note

Annunciation Triptych, 3-part work for orchestra (2019–2022)

I. Sappho/ Bioluminescence

II. Mary/ Transcendence after Trauma

III. Fatimah/ Flowers of Jubilation

This orchestral trilogy celebrates three key icons of women’s spirituality & explores themes of revelation and ritual as the connecting tissue between different traditions. Sappho’s world of erotic trance and hallucination, Mary’s Visitation by the Angel and Passion Play, Fatimah as the ‘seed of light’ in Islamic traditions – these stories are also commentaries on ecological, spiritual and transcultural themes in our times.

Fatimah/ Jubilation of Flowers (2021–2022)

For soprano, orchestra and singing audience.

This work forms the third part of a cycle of orchestral works called Annunciation Triptych (2019–2022) which celebrates three female spiritual leaders: Sappho, Mary and Fatimah. I wanted to explore the figure of the Lady Fatimah al-Zahra, the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon them), as the ‘seed of light’ that radiates into the world.

One of the questions or challenges of the ‘Annunciation’ theme is that something is being announced, but can one answer? Can one respond to it? I have thematised this in the cycle as a relation between a profound receptivity through hearing and a speaking forth that is a spilling over after having been filled up — receptivity generates response. It is in the third and final part, ‘Fatimah’, that this dyad: the state of receptivity passing into voicing, comes to fruition. The music is set in a devotional, elegiac register. Through Etel Adnan’s words, the soprano sings of the luminosity of a woman, of flowers whose beauty and seeming fragility contain an unshakeable resilience that rises above violence. The words for me condense lamentation and love into lyric space.

In the musical work, the intention is that the singer begins her song from amongst the audience — she is ‘one of us’ — before making her way to join the orchestra on stage. A little later, there is a section of audience participation where the listeners are invited to join in singing/humming to the resonance of the orchestra – a very simple, natural and hopefully non-coercive gesture (!)

I would like to express my deep gratitude to Etel Adnan’s partner Simone Fattal and to E. Tracy Grinnell and Rachael Wilson of Litmus Press for their graciousness in allowing me to set these words which are just one part of the expression of Etel Adnan’s extraordinary light as an artist and poet. Fatimah/ Jubilation of Flowers is dedicated to her memory.

Text:

CopyrightbyG.Ricordi&Co./Forperusalonly

She moved through crowds like a bunch of flowers breathless was I like a young mare she was a light-wave through my hands nations were at war and men falling faster than leaves on that Indian summer

but she was the beginning of the day flowers do not grow on rifles believe me they rise and never bend

they use colours as we use words they recite poems in my ears they never die, oh no! we only cease to see them . . . as I stopped seeing her in my dreams.

In memoriam Etel Adnan (1925-2021)

Liza Lim

FATIMAH/ JUBILATION of FLOWERS

Flutes

Oboes

Cor Anglais

Clarinets in B b

Bass Clarinet in B b

Bassoons

Contraforte (with low A)

Horns

Trumpets in C

Trombones

Tuba

Timpani

Piccolo

Vibraphone 1

Vibraphone 2

Violin II

(brushing, vibrant)

Vib. 2 Hp.

Vib. 1

Vib. 2 Hp.