WITNESS Liner Notes
by Mary Kouyoumdjian
Introduction by Atom Egoyan
INTRODUCTION BY ATOM EGOYAN
“I always fantasize about Lebanon before the civil war”
These are the first words in Mary Kouyoumdjian’s Bombs of Beirut.
As I write these words in October of 2024, some thirty-five years after the end of the civil war, bombs are once again falling in Beirut. The situation has once again become unspeakable. We are at a loss for words. How can we communicate our feelings when things become unspeakable? Is music the last refuge for humanity in these traumatic times? What other means might we have of recovering some sense of feeling as we become numbered to the nightmares of the world around us? This exquisite and timely collection is a rare and deeply resonant response to horrors that are currently unfolding in the Middle East.
There are dark wonders to be discovered here. In one work, interwoven passages of witness accounts are accompanied by a sonic conversation with the four brilliant musicians of Kronos when the track is suddenly interrupted by the actual sounds of a bomb attack. After a few moments, the conversation with the musicians is resumed, as their plaintive and deeply felt bows and strings approach the explosions and gently begin to overwhelm the bombs with sustained passages of harmonic beauty.
Music can never be accused of extremism. It is always open to interpretation, and even the most radical of experiments are by their very proposition an invitation to dialogue. As the quartet continues to play, the human voices resume. They speak of what seeing the brutality of war meant, as the music transforms into a veil of tears and soft sobs.
Another piece is aptly called I Haven’t the Words and the feeling is once again unspeakable. I can only imagine what it must mean for a brilliant composer to hear her music interpreted by such extraordinary artists. The Kronos Quartet discovered Mary Kouyoumdjian’s talent early in her career, when David Harrington heard an early folk recording of the Armenian song “Groung” and was overwhelmed by the voice of Zabelle Panosian singing this plaintive call for a lost home. The words of this song in Armenian are “Groung, oosdi gookas, dzara em tsaynit”, which may be translated as “Crane, where do you come from? I am a slave to your voice”.
The way in which the composer then sets the music to express this complex feeling in Silent Cranes is nothing short of miraculous. Armenak Shah Muradian’s voice is unworldly and seems transmitted from some ancient time. While he sings of being enslaved to the crane’s voice, the instruments wonderfully lift us from this pain and sense of forlorn longing. There are few moments in recent memory that are as transcendent as the closing bars of the first movement of this piece.
Then another voice is heard from a survivor of the Armenian Genocide. Once again, a tale of unspeakable horror. “I lost in one night fifteen to twenty members of my immediate family” we understand, before another story tells us another story in Armenian. More words in English. Death marches and murders in the desert. Barbaric scenes of torture. The music illustrates, emulates, and nourishes, once again offering some consolation before we hear another ancient voice singing as a woman describes the most horrifying act of desecration against a pregnant woman’s womb. What can the quartet offer in response to this nightmare?
Harmony. Dissonance. Movement. Rhythmic structure. As we listen to this work, Kouyoumdjian invites us to rise from the horrors that the witnesses are recalling – crying to us at one point as a woman describes her anguish in tortured Armenian – and meditate on the spoken words that demand that we liberate ourselves from “the twisted and toxic nationalist narratives”. When do these feelings become twisted and toxic? Is it when we stop listening to music?
“Our grandparents are singing. Let’s finish their songs”. This collection is an open letter to the tragic hymn of transmitted trauma and the possibility of art and magnificently gifted artists to help create new life. As the crane lifts into the air and flies somewhere home, we have become enthralled to these beautiful voices.
NOTES BY COMPOSER MARY KOUYOUMDJIAN
Groung [Crane] (c. 1917, arr. 2014)
Traditional, arranged by Mary Kouyoumdjian
I still remember meeting with David Harrington for the first time, when he excitedly handed me his Discman and headphones, which had been carrying a recording of the Armenian folk song“Groung [Crane].” I was deeply familiar with composer Komitas Vardapet’s version of “Groung,” which had become an anthem for the Armenian diaspora, but this version that David had shared was entirely new to me. It was a recording from 1917 performed by Zabelle Panosian (1891-1986), a relatively unknown singer who had moved to Harlem, NY from her village of Bardizag, now a part of Western Turkey. In this song, the singer calls out to a crane, pleading for news from their homeland. Panosian’s voice seems to carry the burden of her entire homeland with a heartachingly beautiful interpretation of the melody, and in my own arrangement, the ensemble is asked to emulate her unique interpretation of the song. At the time Panosian recorded this piece in the United States, her family and the Armenians were going through genocide in Ottoman Turkey, and I find the timing of her recording to bring even more meaning to the music.
This arrangement was written for the Kronos Quartet. Very special thanks to music researcher and record producer Ian Nagoski, for his thoughtful research and commitment to restoring Panosian’s recordings and legacy.
Bombs of Beirut (2014)
Mary Kouyoumdjian
Lebanon, once the refuge where my grandparents and great-grandparents sought safety from the Armenian Genocide, became the dangerous home my parents and brother were forced to abandon during the Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990). We often read stories and see images in the news about violent events in the Middle East, but we very rarely get to hear the perspective of an individual who lived through them. Inspired by loved ones who grew up during the Lebanese Civil War, it is my hope that Bombs of Beirut provides a sonic picture of what day-to-day life is like in a turbulent Middle East—not filtered through the news and media, but through the real words of real people.
The audio playback includes recorded interviews with family and friends who shared their various experiences living in a time of war; it also presents sound documentation of bombings and attacks on civilians, tape-recorded on an apartment balcony between 1976–1978.
Bombs of Beirut is dedicated to my family.
Bombs of Beirut was commissioned for the Kronos Quartet as part of Kronos: Under 30 Project / #5 by Hancher at the University of Iowa, Syracuse University, the Board of Directors of the Kronos Performing Arts Association, and individual backers of the Kronos: Under 30 Project / #5 Kickstarter campaign. Additional support was provided by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Sally and Don Lucas Artists Residency Program at Montalvo Arts Center. Testimonies: Rebecca Kouyoumdjian, Paul Bazerkanian, Tamar Demerjian, Raffi Bedrossian, and Michel Khalil. Field recordings of Lebanese Civil War: courtesy of Hagop T. Bazerkanian
LINK TO TRANSCRIPT OF SPOKEN WORD IN BOMBS OF BEIRUT
I Haven’t the Words (2020)
Mary Kouyoumdjian
I Haven’t the Words is a sonic journal entry from May 31, 2020, made while isolated in the early months of the pandemic, shortly after the horrific murder of George Floyd, and during a time in which the world seemed to spin towards its darkest corners. This is an arrangement made for the Kronos Quartet, transcribed from that particular morning’s improvisation at the piano and my own mental processing of the unspeakable.
Silent Cranes (2015)
Mary Kouyoumdjian
April 24, 2015 marked the centennial of the Armenian Genocide, a tragic event that led to the mass extermination of 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Turks. While over 20 countries, have formally recognized the Armenian Genocide, the United States only recognized it as recently as 2021, and modern-day Turkey continues to deny the Armenian Genocide, threatening consequences to those who push the topic within its borders. Even now, this historic event continues to be just as unresolved as it was before. As an Armenian-American composer who values freedom of speech and whose family fled the genocide, I feel this is an essential time to remember those who were lost, while continuing a dialogue about what happened and how we can prevent further genocides from happening in the future.
Silent Cranes is inspired by the Armenian folk song “Groung (Crane)” in which the singer calls out to the migratory bird, begging for word from their homeland, only to have the crane respond with silence and fly away. The first, second, and fourth movement titles quote directly from the folk song lyrics. Those who were lost during the genocide are cranes in their own way, unable to speak of the horrors that happened, and it is the responsibility of the living to give them a voice.
The prerecorded backing track includes testimonies by genocide survivors, recordings from the genocide era of Armenian folk songs, and a poem from investigative journalist David Barsamian in response to the question ‘Why is it important to talk about the Armenian Genocide 100 years later?’
Silent Cranes is dedicated to those lost and to those living who can promote change.
Silent Cranes was commissioned for the Kronos Quartet with support from the David Harrington Research and Development Fund, the Angel Stoyanof Commission Fund, Zvart and Rouben Potoukian, Andrea A. Lunsford, Gates McFadden and Robert Straus, Dayna Sumiyoshi and Greg Smedsrud, many funders in the Indiegogo community, and other generous individuals. Silent Cranes was premiered by the Kronos Quartet at the Yerevan Perspectives 16th International Music Festival in the Armenian National Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet in Yerevan, Armenia, on April 29, 2015.
Audio excerpts of recordings: Komitas Vardapet/Armenak Shah Muradian and “Andouni (Homeless)” Paris, France, 1912 (courtesy of Traditional Crossroads, CD 4275 The Voice of Komitas, www.traditionalcrossroads.com); “Groung (Crane)” performed by Zabelle Panosian, Harlem, New York, 1917 (courtesy of Tompkins Square and Ian Nagoski, www.tompkinssquare.com) Survivor
Testimonies: Araxie Barsamian, Bishop Hagop, Victoria Mellian, (courtesy of David Barsamian); Haig Baronian, Aghavnie Der Sarkissian, Elise Hagopian Taft, Nium Sukkar, (courtesy of the Armenian Film Foundation); Azniv Guiragossian (interviewed by Taleen Babayan and the composer.