Gaza Cantos

There is no such thing as po­lit­i­cal music. It is an il­lu­sion to think that notes – sounds – can teach you how to be­have, be a good cit­i­zen or con­tribute to so­ci­ety. Music is an ex­pe­ri­ence, a cel­e­bra­tion of our ex­is­tence, not a lan­guage which can con­vey mean­ing. Beauty can be ex­pe­ri­enced by every­one re­gard­less of po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tion, re­li­gious tenets, morals or habits, but does not have the power to change these. Nonethe­less, it is a form of com­mu­nity. We share our mu­si­cal ex­pe­ri­ences: our souls lifted by the sounds of Beethoven’s A minor quar­tet; the ex­hil­a­ra­tion, blood-pound­ing in our ears, of Mes­si­aen’s Tu­ran­galîla; glit­ter­ing med­i­ta­tions on the mo­ment in the music of Sal­va­tore Scia­r­rino. While tak­ing care never to use music as a pul­pit from which to preach, it is an op­por­tu­nity to pro­voke thought and con­tem­pla­tion.

After the in­va­sion of the Gaza Strip by the Is­raeli De­fence Forces on 27 De­cem­ber 2008 and the en­su­ing con­flict, I felt the need to give voice to a des­per­a­tion I felt at the seem­ingly never-end­ing legacy of vi­o­lent id­iocy in the re­gion, a legacy in which we are all im­pli­cated. I do not wish to pre­sent any par­tic­u­lar opin­ion, each must think for them­selves. This is writ­ten in sol­i­dar­ity with all those cit­i­zens of Pales­tine and Is­rael whose hearts are filled with love and peace – 11 mil­lion songs of hope.

Gaza Can­tos was writ­ten for Robert Guy and was pre­miered at a lunchtime con­cert on 9 May as part of Wrex­ham Arts Fes­ti­val 2009.