Dániel Péter Biró: Asher Hotseti Etkhem

Over the past twenty years, Dániel Péter Biró has focused his compositional work on issues of historical listening and understanding. In this way, the act of composing becomes a kind of sonic archaeology for him; a discovery of the complexity of sound as an unstable, multifaceted object of culture, a revelation of layers of history and meaning. Simultaneously, composing for him means creating new contexts for sound. Within this contradiction—understanding and preserving what is culturally and historically distant while transforming it in a modern context—the piece »Asher Hotseti Etkhem« (Who Led You Out of the Land) was born, based on texts by Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) and Jewish and Christian chants from Portugal, Beirut, and Montreal. This composition, like others of his works, seeks an understanding of history within musical material and allows sound to transcend its sonic and formal existence—becoming more than just a historical object rearticulated for individual expression.

In his philosophical treatise »Ethics,« Baruch Spinoza attempted to present a new kind of theology, one independent of organized religion, such as that of his own Portuguese-Jewish community in Amsterdam. The musical materials of the composition, which set a text by Spinoza, come from liturgical sources related to Spinoza’s philosophy and background, creating a contrast between the worlds of Spinoza’s highly rational philosophical ideas and a 15th-century melody from Portugal, from the time of the Jewish expulsion. The melody from the Maghen Abraham Synagogue in Montreal is based on that from the now-abandoned Maghen Abraham Synagogue in Beirut, which in turn originates from the time of the Portuguese expulsion. The composition was created during the current pandemic, where both spiritual and secular frameworks are being tested. It explores historical possibilities within this fragmentation for a greater sense of human connection to nature and the divine, in terms of the movements of the spirit across territories, cultures, and traditions.

I am very grateful to Benjamin Hadid and Esther Kontarsky for their assistance in my exploration of Lebanese Torah recitation traditions. Asher Hotseti Etkhem (Who Led You Out of the Land) is dedicated to the memory of Hans Zender (1936–2019).

(Dániel Péter Biró)