v.l.n.r. the composer, a blessing hand and Kristina Sandulova

 

A background note from the composer:

"The story behind this composition begins some 1000 years ago in the north of India.
A dubble reed is blown by a musician thus joining time and life to the moment; a melody developes. Stepping stones. Adventurous pacing, whilst seeking for right distances of the intervals.
It is the process of the story-teller weighing the words in order to give each word a seperate meaning away form the meaning the story may have, and a certain influence on other words – and at the same time, having its very own meaning modulated, each word is co-operating with the other words in the sentence, building a fictional world in a special balance with reality.
Again some 1000 years before that, his people had not yet been expelled from the middle of India, and were giving breath to stories about voyages between Ganges and Euphrates in a play with the reeds on the river shores.
The sounds, pictures in their stories, have been modelled by collective memory and molded by individual experience in the creative mind of the artists. Thus this is a dear, both precious and sumptuous display of modulation.
Over the years adiences and players, each in their special roles, had great influences on the actual piece: the audiences own the piece, the artists choose the pitch, determine the intervals and create the mass between the tones, and with that the reality of the story.
Travellers always have a story, as they have their jongleurs and saltimbanques; a flamenco guitarists, or for that a ‘primas’.
Such primas can make their flageolets sing the song of the lark over all the Balkans. And at the same time, but far away, the interpreter of the same story is a slender danser in long dress, and he may jump on his hands in a dusty field whilst his compagnions blow the Surnaj as if it were the outer part of their throats.
And from between the audiences would come that brawl from some papuschka, having heard the story over and over again during his livetime, to tell ‘the lies’, in order to keep the story in its neatly defined relation to the daily realities, and to the reality of history. And added are the new stories that grow on the tradition, and give a view for a younger generation to thrive on.

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Gezeten op zijn machtige paard ‘Babieca’ (doldwaze / overmoedige) rijdt hij tegen de ‘Almoradiven’.

Deze invloedrijke minderheidspartij van ‘Onverzoenlijken’ kwam voort uit de Islamitische Berberkultuur en richtte zich tegen de, in die tijd, soepele vermenging van kunst en kultuur van ruimdenkende Moslims en dito Christenen.

Gedurende zijn leven stelt El Sid zich teweer tegen zowel Christelijke als Islamitische heersers die oneervol handelen; ook sluit hij met gelijk gestemde Christelijken en Islamitische leiders pacten, en gaat gelijkelijk met hen om.

Opmerkelijk is de beschaafde en medemenselijke verteltrant van de ‘juglar’, de dichter / chroniqueur in ‘El Poema del Cid’ die vermoedelijk in Medinaceli woonde, gezien de gedetailleerde beschriving van die streek. In tegenstelling tot de gebruikelijke wreedheden en buitensporigheden die de literatuur en geschiedschrijving van Illias tot Chanson de Roland kenmerken, vinden we hier beschaafde vervoering, beheerste ontsteltenis en waarachtige compassie.

We mogen aannemen dat dit voortkomt uit de redelijkheid en de culturele uitwisseling zoals El Cid en zijn directe omgeving die voorstonden. Kronieken uit die tijd schrijven ook met een zekere waardering daarvoor.