Sagit Friedman-Hallel

Curator: Reut Ferster

 

Sagit Friedman-Hallel chooses to stage a “double image” of identical twin girls, whom she dresses and combs in a style that is reminiscent of the early days of Jewish settlement in the country and the establishment of the State of Israel. She positions them in historic buildings, most of which served as children’s homes, just before they vanish forever.

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"Double images" also appear in classical music. For example, the retrograde of a theme, meaning a melody that appears upside down - what originally went up, in retrograde goes down and vice versa. Palindrome, meaning a melody that appears the same way backward as forward, canons, meaning a melody that repeats itself exactly in another voice, and of course fugues.

 

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Adagio and Fugue in D minor

Mozart wrote the Adagio and Fugue in D minor apparently as part of his exercises for the great fugue that ends his last symphony, no. 41. A few years later, Mozart added an opening Adagio to the piece and arranged it for string orchestra. In the Fugue, a theme and its retrograde appear in the "retrograde" technique. The retrograde inversion receives equal importance to the original theme. Both themes are played one after the other or in parallel.

 

Johann Sebastian Bach - "The Musical Offering"

"The Musical Offering" was written following a meeting between Bach and King Frederick II in the mid-18th century. The king, who was a flutist enthusiast, asked Bach to immediately compose several different fugues on a given subject called "The King's Theme". Bach asked the king for more time to compose the fugues and also added works from different genres based on "The King's Theme". Among them, Bach wrote ten canons with complex compositional techniques.

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Photos: Sagit Friedman-Hallel