Harmony Lesson in The Middle East
Sixteen variations on a theme of Rotem for piano

In the summer of 2002 a young student from a kibbutz near the dead sea came to study with me. He played nicely on the guitar but had a very limited notions in Western Harmony. In order to test his natural gifts, I asked him to write soma unaccompanied melodies for our first lesson. One of the short tunes he wrote struck me by its originality, and I conceived the melody. I prepared for him five or six different versions, but he was so surprised by all the new possibilities suddenly opened before him, that I realized it was better to teach him in a more traditional way. But the tune remained in my mind and I went on working on it alone, for my own sake. From this came out, after some weeks of work, this set of variations. When I played them to him, he was flattered but a bit embarrassed too, for he could hardly grasp how from his simple tune one could arrive at such a complex composition. In fact, his tune was not simple at all, on the contrary: it contained rich potential for modal and tonal interpretations of which he was not aware when he wrote the tune. He studied with rather seriously during half a year, and stopped coming when he was called up for the army, and I didn't see him since. Before his conscription, I had the occasion to invite him to a concert in Sayon, where Liat Yaniv played, for the first time, these variations. He arrived with his father, and they seemed happy to hear my piece. As for myself, I smiled at the thought that Mr. Diabelli might borne the same look of puzzlement as did my Rotem, when he heard what Beethoven made out of his little waltz… Andre Hajdu