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EL SIMURGH is an unfinished musical trilogy based on the "Mantiq ut-Tayr," a mystic poem written by the twelfth century Persian Sufi Farid Attar. Most of what is known about him is legendary. Reportedly, he was a hundred and ten when, during Nishapur's plundering, he met his death at the hands of Tule, the son of Jenghis Khan. Garcin de Tassy relates the discovery, in 1862, of a stone erected around 1500 (some two hundred and fifty years after Attar's death), on which was engraved an inscription that he rendered as follows:

God is Eternal ... Here in this garden of a lower Eden, Attar perfumed the soul of the humblest of men. This is the tomb of a man so eminent that the dust stirred by his feet would have served as collyrium to the eye of the firmament ... and of whom the saints were disciples ... In the year of the Hijra 586 he was pursued by the sword of the army which devoured everything, being martyred in the massacre which then took place ... Increase, O Lord, his merit ... May the glory be with Him who dies not and holds in his hands the keys to unlimited forgiveness and infinite punishment.

The Mantiq ut-Tayr tells the story of how the remote king of the birds, the Simurgh, first manifests itself by dropping a magnificent feather in the center of China. The birds, tired of their ancestral anarchy, decide to look for him. They know that their king's name means thirty birds; they know that his castle is beyond the Kaf, the circular mountain range that surrounds the world. After long deliberation, they decide to undertake an almost infinite adventure. To reach Him, they must overcome seven valleys: the name of the penultimate is Vertigo, the last one's Annihilation. Many pilgrims desert, others perish. Thirty, purified by their labors, set foot on the King's castle. At last, in a state of contemplation, they realize that the Simurgh is each and every one of them.

SIMURGH I: "THE CONFERENCE OF THE BIRDS"
for piano and electronics (1991)

"The Conference of the Birds" or Book of the Search (1991) was premiered by Phillip Mead in London on 2 March, 1993.
The first book concentrates on the exuberant imagery of the "Conference" or "Parliament" section of the poem up to the point when, "drawing cries of fear and apprehension" the birds decide to "face the road without end, where strong winds split the vault of heaven."

The form of the first movement ("Invocation") is that of a classical Indian "Alapa," which is marked by the absence of rhythm. The emphasis, then, is on the temporal proportions (duration) of tones. Each note of the harmonic-melodic mode is introduced sequentially, elaborated upon and embellished.

listen to an AUDIO excerpt

Praise to Him, who has placed his throne upon the waters ... To the heavens He has given movement, and to the earth uniform repose ... In the beginning He gilded the stars ... then He dried up the bed of the sea and from its stones brought forth rubies ... sometimes He made clusters of roses spring from the face of the fire.

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