When the Violin by Reena Esmail

Upon hearing this piece live in the Barbican with the BBC singers, I was immediately enraptured by its beauty. When the Violin by Reena Esmail is an incredibly emotional piece based on a text by Persian poet, Hafiz: When the Violin. As a companion piece to Victoria’s O Vos Omnes, a text that is asking, simply, to be seen in a moment of sorrow – to be beheld trough suffering and darkness – Hafiz’s text responds beautifully. The text moves past the sorrow and darkness, allowing a sliver of hope to enter in its place.

“This piece is about that first moment of trust, of softening. About the most inward moments of the human experience, of realizing that ‘breakthroughs’ often don’t have the hard edge, the burst of energy that the word implies, but that they can be about finding tender, warm, deeply resonant spaces within ourselves as well.”

Indian-American composer, Reena Esmail, creates music between the worlds of Indian and Western classical music. It comes to no surprise, therefore, that this piece is based in a Hindustani raag, Charukeshi. The Charukeshi raag is a particularly evocative raag, which, explained in Western harmonic terms, includes the first five notes of the scale being in a major ‘happy’ key, and the last four notes being in a minor ‘sad’ key. This allows for a lot of interesting juxtapositions between the two tonalities and Esmail’s use of harmony creates a brilliant fusion between the Western and Eastern musical worlds.

Miss Murata
Composer in Residence