The eternal stranger (Der ewige Fremde) (2020)

DER EWIGE FREMDE
A Mono-Drama by Ella Milch-Sheriff
For actor and orchestra
Text: Joshua Sobol

​

It all started with this surprising almost unknown dream that Beethoven dreamt and wrote about to his friend and publisher Tobias Haslinger in 1821 in Vienna. 
Beethoven hated journeys.  He always agreed to go to foreign countries where he was invited but cancelled in the last minute. And this dream tells about a very long journey that he took, as far even as Syria, as far even as India, as far even as Arabia and finally he came to Jerusalem. He has there some kind of religious experience and his friend Tobias appeared there as well. Beethoven describes a musical canon he heard in the dream and wrote its notes in the letter to his friend and even connected words to it with his friend’s name, Tobias.  
Very strange… Who would have believed? Beethoven in Syria and Arabia? And Jerusalem?
But this strange and rare dream inspired the playwright and poet Joshua Sobol to write the text of the “Eternal Foreigner” and inspired me to compose this work.
Mr. Sobol wrote a long poem and called it originally: 
Die Wanderschaft des ewigen Flüchtlings und der Kampf gegen
die Verzweiflung.                       
I chose those parts of the text that enabled me to present a situation where a person, not necessarily a refugee, although he could be one, finds himself in an unknown hostile environment. 
Who is this “Fremde” in this work?
Is this Beethoven, who was considered by the society of his time in Vienna to be a genius but lunatic, half crazy, dirty and disgusting? He was rejected by most people except his faithful close friends. Being deaf strengthened Beethoven’s “Fremdheit” and loneliness. 
Is this a refugee, any refugee, who had a full life somewhere else but had to run away and finds himself in a totally different culture, not being able to communicate with people?
I left this question open. It is anybody who finds himself in a hostile environment with no real reason to be rejected but the fact that he is different, looks different, moves different, speaks different.
But he is a man who has the same desires as every human being. 
This is a work about loneliness and strangeness זרות but also the desire for life.
This amazing dream enabled me to use enormous vast of musical connotations from my native country, Israel and Jerusalem as well as the sounds of my childhood, a mixture of Arabic music, Jewish music of all kinds (eastern and western) as well as Vienna, the old European world and even Mahler and Schoenberg occurred to my mind here and there while composing. (Mahler, being respected but always remembered to be the small Jew, and Schoenberg who had to run away from his country being a Jew).
Beethoven’s canon appears in the work, especially in its first part, modified and in various ways. It is mixed by the middle-eastern sounds into two completely different worlds that meet but maybe does not connect at all.
In his text Mr. Sobol uses first party, second party and third party.
His “Fremde” has a shadow and this shadow is the third person he is talking about. His identity became unclear as his world went apart and his “Ich” fades away. The “third person” is part of him that he cannot define his identity. He experiences times with no ability to communicate with anybody, a terrible loneliness. Life became still. He cannot define words and everything sounds to him like a mixture of noises. This could also associate with Beethoven’s deafness. 
The language, the number one method of communication between people is lacking. But the language of the body is stronger and it makes him live and gives him hope.
My deepest gratitude goes to my late husband, composer Noam Sheriff who, two weeks before his sudden death, introduced me to Beethoven’s extraordinary dream which became the infra-structure and inspiration of this work.

Ella Milch-Sheriff
September 2019