Like the museum building and the natural phenomenon that has inspired it, Jandali’s symphony is built as an elaborate interlocking structure. There are nine movements, reflecting the nine-point serrated line on Qatar’s flag. This overall structure brings together three musical forms, woven throughout: in a way, it’s three pieces in one. Movements two, three, five and seven form a Qatari symphonic suite, with the melodies and rhythms based on regional folk dances. Movements one, four, six and nine together form a traditional four-movement classical symphony. These two ideas combine in the eighth movement; two become one, heralding a grand finale. It’s a symphony of dialogue: east meets west, old meets new, land meets sea, street meets concert hall, man meets nature. If architecture is frozen music, then this symphony is a unique monument of its own.

Malek Jandali Symphony No 6 ‘The Desert Rose’

ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra / Marin Alsop cond

I. Epigraph: Grandioso

Crashing drums and surging rhythms lay the foundations for our musical building. The Desert Rose theme is introduced. I’m reminded of the language of John Adams, with its regular pulses and prominent percussion. This is the first section of the traditional four-movement ‘symphony’, which will be resumed in the fourth movement.

II. Praise: Con Moto

Based on a devotional chant used to call people to worship, this movement is the first of four that draws inspiration from Qatari folk music and sounds unique to the region. The opening drums represent the Misahharati, someone who wanders the streets in the hours before dawn and plays a drum to wake people during Ramadan. This precise rhythm continues underneath whilst the strings and brass intone a free-wheeling melodic line above, suggestive of a vocal improvisation; here, the orchestra becomes the human voice. As Jandali told me: ‘usually, chants don’t have instruments, just a human voice with some percussion instruments. Trying to imitate the beauty of the human sound through the orchestra was very rewarding. That’s the magic of the symphony orchestra. When you have seventy humans united with a common goal, you think together… you come together with all your differences, all that counterpoint. You’re different but harmonious. That’s the message.’

III. The Sea: Allegretto

An impish bassoon, tremolo strings and flutter-tonguing flute suggest the gentle movement of the waves, whilst later, sudden bursts of energy and cymbal crashes suggest the swell of the sea. The melody quotes one of Qatar’s most famous sea songs, ‘Umm Al Hanaya’, meaning ‘Mother of the Curves’. It is associated with the Qatari boats that travelled around the Arabian Gulf and beyond in search of pearls; it would have been sung by women, addressing the pearl divers on board about the adventures and dangers they faced in their travels.

IV. Nocturne: Andante

This is the slow movement of the four-movement classical symphony. Here we have a picture of the Qatari sea and desert at night. At its heart is a violin solo, a lone high voice that floats above a dark underscore like a twinkling star in the night sky. For a brief moment, the nocturnal calm gives way to a rhythmic dance, punctuated by drums with an Arabic mode dancing overhead; this soon subsides back into long, slow notes and the calm of the night.

V. Ardah: Moderato

The Ardah is a dance of sword-wielding Qatari men, accompanied by drumming and poetry; it is used to represent Qatari unity. Jandali replaces the swords with the bows of stringed instruments, making this celebration of unity a call for peace. This is represented by the instruments coming together at the end to play the melody in unison, fortissimo, all the instruments chanting the same line over the throbbing of drums. In 2015, the Ardah sword dance was added to UNESCO’s list of Intangible Cultural Heritage, which charts local traditions and celebrates cultural diversity amid booming globalisation; through sound, this symphony likewise helps enshrine these regional traditions for generations to come.

VI. Scherzo: Vivace

Just as the scherzo offers a moment of light-hearted relief in the traditional four-movement symphony, here we have a dancing melody and playful rhythms. A children’s folk song is the inspiration; the tune ‘Al Karnakouh’ is sung by children one evening in the middle of Ramadan, whilst they collect gifts from neighbours.

VII. Fete: Vivace

We reach the last of the movements forming the Qatari Suite, and stay with the theme of children that is so close to Jandali’s heart; here, another traditional children’s song inspires the surging rhythms. ‘Al Aydo’ is sung to celebrate weddings and family unity. The hope and renewal represented by childhood – nature’s greatest miracle – is a strong creative stimulus to Jandali.

VIII. Paysages: Andante

A musical landscape painting of Qatar, taking us from a gusty desert sunrise over the sand dunes, to rain in the oasis, to the crystals that form the desert roses. The lower, murkier-textured segments relate specifically to a lagoon close to the National Museum of Qatar, which features sculptures in fountains inspired by Arabic writing. As the music pans around the landscape and we encounter different sights and times of day, a rhythmic pattern continues to run throughout: this ostinato suggests the continuity of time, constancy versus change. Earlier, unpredictable stabs from the xylophone suggested a dysfunctional clock: the long stretches of time as this landscape forms. These stabs become more regular, until a woodblock at the end taps regularly to suggest a ticking clock, as something recognisable comes to form: a reminder of the millennia required to create the desert rose.

IX. The Desert Rose: Con moto

539 bars make up this final movement, representing the 539 interlocking discs that make up the National Museum of Qatar. Appropriately for a symphony that is itself a variation on a natural and an architectural phenomenon, Jandali concludes the work with a set of variations in the form of a passacaglia. The theme takes us back to the opening movement, bringing us full circle: back to nature and back to the land that made us.