Sarah Shoham: Yearning (2007)
Ron Merhavi – Double Bass
Thoughts about my works "Yearning"
"Art is impossible without heritage…" (Albert Camus)
The works express a yearning for a place that was here once, not so long ago, a place where everything was possible and wrapped in a dream. Longing, even if not fulfilled, leads us to a better place within us, a place of talking to the inner self, a place of love for the dreaming and daring self.
In these works I have a dialogue with the landscape.
I composed the first one inspired by "Fields in the Valley" (1950), Lyrics: Levi Ben-Amitai, Composer: Ephraim Ben-Haim. The second is inspired by "Legend", lyrics: Yaakov Fichman, Composer: Hanina Karczewski and the third inspired by "My Field is still Blooming", Lyrics: Fanya Bergstein, Composer: David Zehavi.
It is a work with a spatial musical identity that maintains inner mobility and a fertile dialogue between East and West. East and West are not opposites but merge equally and form a multi-voiced musical identity.
The work's connection to folk song does not stem from a longing for the past but from a yearning for spiritual fit, a longing for innocence that is the mother of the human connection and re-establishes the taste of forgotten childhood, in which, as Rina Litvin says,
'The lemon smells like lemon,
the flowers give their fragrance
and the world overcomes its banality.
A world in which life meets with its interpretation.'
This is not nostalgia.
It is a search for meaning and depth in life existence.
It is not to be tempted to the obvious and available visible above the surface.
It is to be a hunter of the sounds hidden from the ear.
It is to be attentive to the spirit and create as the native of this bubbling place.
Give different ethnic capillaries a way out of the classic work.
Be pluralistic and able to live with multiple meanings.
Sarah Shoham, September 2007