Lebanese’s Plea for Peace to Premiere at Center

It’s been a long journey for composer Jamal A. Hosn--from the village of Btekhney, Lebanon, to the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa.

The 32-year-old composer’s “Symphonic Poem: 1983” will receive its premiere at the Center on Saturday as part of a “Celebration of Lebanese Cultural Life” sponsored by the 500 Club for Lebanon.

Hosn said in a recent interview that in the village where he was born, “cultural-wise or music-wise, there was nothing there. No one in my family is a musician, or even in the area I grew up in. . . .

“The first time I heard classical music, I was 13 years old. I still remember. It was Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony. It was a very important point, maybe changed my life.”

Hosn painted a picture of a youth increasingly devoting himself to music--listening to records brought over by a Brazilian friend, tuning into European radio stations over the shortwave, and “without knowing anything in music, without knowing how to play or read or write,” buying a guitar and improvising on it.

He began taking private music lessons, without his parents’ knowledge, in Beirut at the age of 13, and continued for five years.

But it was not enough.

So when he was 18, Hosn left to study music at the Cairo Conservatory. After four years there, “I found it was still not enough,” and moved to Vienna in 1979 to study at the Academy of Music and the Dramatic Arts.

“The study was very, very intensive, and I was living like in the 18th or 19th Century,” he said. “I was every day in the opera or the concert hall, always taking the score to study it. It was really wonderful.”

Hosn began his “Symphonic Poem” in Vienna as a requirement for his diploma.

“I started this composition in 1982 and finished it in late 1983,” he said. The year was incorporated in the title because of “seven really dramatic events in Lebanon that year. . . .

“It was in my mind a long time ago just to write a large symphonic work, just to express my feelings about the war in Lebanon.”

The work, which lasts about 17 minutes, is in three sections, entitled “Yesterday,” “Today” and “Tomorrow.” Hosn employs neither traditional harmony nor the 12-tone idiom common to many 20th-Century compositions. He said he utilizes Middle Eastern scales but does not quote authentic folk themes.

Subtitles of sections include graphic titles such as “Death Is Marching On,” “The Knolls Submerged by Tears and Blood,” “Resurrection” and, last, “Contrast and Contradiction.”

“You don’t hear some kind of nice melody or dance melody or songful folk music,” the composer said. “It’s very dramatic.”

Although originally scored for a large orchestra--including triple woodwinds, eight percussionists, two harps and celesta, plus sufficient strings to balance these forces--the piece in its premiere will be given by only 42 members of the Pacific Symphony, led by assistant conductor Lucas Richman.

The reason? Budget.

“The organization (the 500 Club for Lebanon) does not have enough money,” Hosn said. So he has made adjustments and cuts in the scoring to accommodate the smaller forces.

He is also apprehensive about limited rehearsal.

“I’m scared,” he said. “We have only one rehearsal and on the same day (of the concert). There will be someone from the organization (at the rehearsal). He will talk about money, if there is a need for more rehearsal. It will cost $2,000 for each additional hour. I may pay for it myself. . . . I wish maybe in the future we will have a performance of the original score.”

Hosn said that he faced a changed country when he moved back to Lebanon in 1986 after graduating from the Vienna conservatory.

“I thought I would stay there because they needed me to teach at the Beirut Conservatory,” he said. “But I couldn’t stand it. It was very hard to live not only because of the war, but culture-wise. . . . There is nothing more left in the arts and music. It was very hard (to find a) place to do a concert, very hard to find musicians.”

An invitation to attend a performance in Florida of his “Al Shahrour” (“The Robin”), which is a setting for mezzo-soprano and orchestra of a poem by Kahlil Gibran, brought him to this country in 1987.

He moved to Los Angeles that year to attend a program on film scoring at USC. He’s stayed on, savoring the opportunities.

“Because I don’t have any place to go. In Lebanon, it’s very hard.”

Hosn is one of about 100,000 people of Lebanese descent believed to live in Southern California, according to Sarkis Khoury, one of the founders of the 500 Club and organizers of the concert.

Khoury said the event is intended to “be a vehicle of positive news about Lebanon” and to show that “American Lebanese are willing to come together regardless of religious beliefs, social class or political ideology, to work for the common good of the community.”

Another purpose is to raise money for the creation of a “House of Lebanon,” a “permanent symbol for the unity among the Lebanese,” at a site to be determined. Khoury estimates that about $100,000 is needed to begin construction. The house will serve as a community center, providing a variety of services.

Khoury is not optimistic about events in Lebanon.

“There is more perception that Lebanon is in grave danger, that it is at the crossroad politically and as a nation,” he said. “Whether Lebanon will in fact exist five years from now as a country is in doubt in some people’s minds.”

Composer Hosn also expresses doubts about the future of his country.

“I think it will not work out,” he said. “These days I’m negative. I used to be positive, saying, ‘There will be peace.’ But not these days. It’s getting too complicated, and I hate the situation and I hate the politics now, how they are destroying the country and innocent people are suffering too much.”

His music, Hosn says, “will be dedicated to the innocent people who died in Lebanon in the war in 1983, and not only in Lebanon. It’s very angry music because I was angry about war itself. It didn’t matter whether it was there or here. It’s just against war.”

Jamal A. Hosn’s “Symphonic Poem: 1983” will receive its premiere on a program celebrating Lebanese artists at 8 p.m. Saturday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Other artists will include pianist Walid Howrani and guitarist Jad Azkoul. Lucas Richman will lead the Pacific Symphony. Tickets: $50 to $250; students, $30. Information: (714) 832-6847.