...Mohammed Fairouz, Symphony No. 4 "In The Shadow Of No Towers"

Yet Another Commemoration Piece?

To be honest, I hadn't very high hopes when I read the first time about Mohammed Fairouz' Symphony No. 4 "In The Shadow Of No Towers" in the review of Grego Applegate Edwards in his Gapplegate Classical-Modern Music Review and also in The Classical Reviewer. That was before I heard a single note of Fairouz' music, and even after a couple of minutes into the first movement I wasn't fully convinced if this Symphony wasn't yet another attempt to catch the latest wave of 9/11 commemoration - since this is a piece which is linked to this very disaster by virtue of its title.

My concerns with this piece where twofold: First, as a composer educated in Europe, I have a certain mistrust against tonal streams in otherwise atonal music, or rather against the intermingling of both. This might be the outcome of a Euro-centric attitude nurtured by overambitious Adorno-reading, that music is only modern if it uses the most advanced material available, which "In The Shadow Of No Towers" does apparently not.

My second concern was, since Fairouz is not the first composer writing a 9/11 commemoration piece, that he also gets trapped in a pitfall John Adams and Steve Reich couldn't avoid. Adams in his "On The Transmigration Of Souls" as well as Reich in "WTC 9/11" both availed themselves with the human voice to transport their message. In both cases this seems to me like the hapless attempt to ensure the "commemoration aptitude" of their music, but it is not more than their average output combined with 9/11-related citations.

This was my inital position for Fairouz' Symphony No. 4.

Something is terribly wrong

Fairouz scored his work for winds, supported by percussions. The movements are (the links point to his Soundcloud channel):

1. The New Normal
2. Notes Of A Heartbroken Narcissist
3. One Nation Under Two Flags
4. Anniversaries

The liner notes as well as the blog mentioned above provide ample information on the titles, and I will not repeat them here. Also the connection to the works of Art Spiegelman, from whom Fairouz borrowed the title, is discussed there at length. Nevertheless, and that be again due to my euro-centric point of view, in my opinion the music must be accessible in one way or another without further explanations. Actually, I don't now the vignettes by Spiegelman very well, and the titles of the movements mean nothing to me, but I expect the music to work for me anyway. And it does.

From the very beginning, there is a disturbing atmosphere in the music, which is refreshingly different to the usual mourning sound à la Adams. Fairouz intention is not to remember the victims of 9/11 but rather to trace the wounds and bruises in the American heart. In fact, it is questionable whether this is a commemoration piece after all. Fairouz often uses grand tonal sounds, for example at the end of the Symphony, but also on various occasions within the piece, but something is always wrong, or rather on the verge of something. Especially the end repeats a certain motive so often that it shifts to its own parody (maybe a reference to Shostakovich's Symphony No. 4). This passage is accompanied by the clicking of two claves, which resembles a ticking clock.




At this point, the question for me was no longer if I can accept tonality, which Fairouz uses plenty of times, but rather for which purpose he employs it. Fairouz is without doubt beyond the quite ideological distinction between tonality or atonality. His music is the result of a multi-stylistic world of music, since he has mastered the comparatively difficult task of combining them. Maybe Fairouz points in the direction music is heading to in the 21st century.
Other composers, like the aforementioned John Adams, miss this point. Adams is merely composing the soundtrack for a commemoration celebration. Fairouz is achieving much more: His music does not illustrate by means of words, it is having a dialogue with its subject through its very own musical symbols.


Mohammed Fairouz' 4th Symphony "In The Shadow Of No Towers" was issued on NAXOS together with Philip Glas' "Concert Fantasy for two Timpani and Orchestra."