Hafez

Instrumentation: choir (SATB)
Features soloist parts for: soprano, alto, tenor
Duration: 5:00min
Original composition date: 2018
Re-arrangment date for choir: 2022
World premiere: November 21, 2022

Program Notes

This is a song from the bigger project originally composed in 2018 called The Journey, Notes of Hope that was put together by Iranian-Canadian Composers of Toronto (ICOT).

Hafez is one of the most beloved poets in Iran and almost everyone there can recite a line by him by heart. The singer in this song is in a beautiful garden during spring and is opening a random page from the book of poetry by Hafez to see what the poem will tell them about what is about to come. The song is about remembering where you come from and the new exciting but uncertain possibilities of the future. 

The rearranged was done for Amadeus Choir of Greater Toronto. The music is set to poems by Bänoo Zan.

I stood at the gates
The Roknabad Stream murmured through
Mosalla Gardens
Roses scattered the morning breeze
The sea kissed the boat
and waved at the palace
The king smiled at sycophant ghazals

I was the bard
the blood of the city
the breath of God

Centuries later they would say
that I loved Shiraz
But I feared tempests
and remained true to the past

Open my book
and read your future