Delusions of War
Current tragic events of the continuing unresolved conflict between Israel and the
Palestinians and of the ongoing brutal battles in Syria have influenced my composition
Delusions of War. Delusions of War is a commentary on political/religious problems that continue to find no resolution. The music aims to make the listeners "feel" the human
suffering that the war causes, and, without assuming to have answers, to encourage them to pause for a moment and to envisage better ways than force to resolve crises. The music captures emotions of anger and fear, and feelings of sorrow, tragedy and righteousness.
I believe that a false conception of life leads to bloody conflicts. Acommon tendency is to think of one side as the victim and the other as the aggressor, and under this perception, each side justifies its position and the use of violence. This justification lies in delusions and a false conception that war ends the conflict and solves the problems. Each side tries
to "break" the other side by using greater force, but as recent events can testify, wars and victories do not resolve the problems, they deepen the animosity, intensify the hostility and hatred and increase the tragedy.
Delusions of War, orchestrated for 22 string instruments, consists of seventeen major sections (musical images) in Part One and ten major sections in Part Two. These sections
synthese and superimpose various approaches and compositional techniques that contrast with each other and often convey extreme chances. Approaches and compositional techniques include a perpetuum mobile toccata, heterophonic textures, canonic textures, as wel as the use of Magamat to semblance classical Arabic melodic lines, imitation of the human voice and improvisation out of ordered pitch collections.
Yitzhak Yedid August 2014