And in the End Was Solitude is the translation of a line from J’écris blessure (I Write Wound), a poem by Garous Abdolmalekian. This deeply intense poetry, imbued with a vital and tragic urgency, though often veiled and intimate, made a profound impression on me. My discovery of Iranian poetry became intertwined with my creative process, alongside my encounter with Amir Amiri, the santur player for whom this work was written. This collaboration and intercultural exchange led me into new territory, at the crossroads of Persian traditional music and Western contemporary music.

As a composer, I wanted to understand this musical culture and draw inspiration from it while continuing to develop my own artistic approach. I was immediately captivated by the musical form of the dastgāh, by the richness of its modal sonorities, and by the expressive intensity of the musicians who perform it through a distinctive improvisational practice based on melodic models known as gushehs.

For And in the End Was Solitude, I chose to work from the dastgāh Rāst-Panjgāh (following the analysis of ethnomusicologist Hormoz Farhat, since this is above all an oral tradition), tracing its structure through its 21 gushehs, which together outline a large-scale modal journey with a clearly defined dramatic arc. In traditional performance, each gusheh is characterized by a specific modal segment and expressive quality, shaped by particular motivic morphologies and a selection of intervals emphasized through improvisation.

My compositional project followed two main directions. First, I appropriated the idea of improvising from the repertoire of gushehs associated with Rāst-Panjgāh, but without limiting myself to their melodic and rhythmic dimensions. Instead, I allowed my sonic imagination to respond freely to them, guided as well by the instrumental possibilities of the ensemble. Second, I sought to explore the harmonic potential of this essentially monodic tradition by extending the intervallic structures of its established modes and creating more complex vertical sonorities.

Ultimately, the traditions of the dastgāh, composition, and poetry converge. Rāst-Panjgāh is often the final stage in the complete cycle of dastgāhs and, for Amir Amiri, symbolizes the end of the day, even death itself, before everything is reborn and the cycle begins anew. As Abdolmalekian writes:

“In the beginning was solitude / In the middle was solitude / And in the end was solitude.”