About this story
This story about ‘Contemporary Classical Music in Syria’ was researched and written by Hannibal Saad as part of the work of the Syrian Heritage Archive. Hannibal Saad is a Syrian cultural activist, music producer and founder of the music festival ‘Jazz Lives in Syria’. For decades, he has been committed to intercultural dialogue through music and the promotion of Syrian musicians at home and abroad.
With his deep understanding of the Syrian music scene - both in its traditional and contemporary forms - in this story he portrays a new generation of composers who are developing Syrian music in the diaspora and on international stages. As the founder of numerous cultural initiatives in the Middle East and Europe, including the Global Week for Syria Festival, Hannibal Saad has created a network that makes Syrian music visible as a living cultural heritage.
Solhi al-Wadi & Nouri Iskander - visionaries of a Syrian sound culture
Contemporary classical music in Syria would not exist in its variety and professionalism without its founding fathers, Solhi al-Wadi and Nouri Iskander. Solhi al-Wadi’s ambition to build a professional classical music scene in Syria was exceptional and laid the foundations for the country’s most important music institutes, while Nouri Iskander’s ability to study music in Syria in depth and to assimilate the Arabic maqām, merging ancient melodies with contemporary settings, created extraordinary pieces that are enjoyed worldwide.
Solhi al-Wadi: Trio for piano, violin and cello in 2008
Born in Baghdad in 1934, Solhi al-Wadi spent his childhood in Damascus and later left Syria to study violin and composition at a conservatory in Alexandria, Egypt, followed by higher music studies at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Upon returning to Damascus in the 1960s, Solhi was determined to establish a professional contemporary classical music and arts scene in Syria.
Starting with the younger generation, he dedicated his early years to teaching children and youth while establishing important relations with foreign countries, such as the former Soviet Union, from where he brought qualified musicians to teach at the newly founded Arab Institute of Music. From 1967 onwards, he was able to build a chamber orchestra out of students and teachers. With ambitious, relentless efforts, he opened the High Institute of Music and Theatre in 1990, where he worked as a professor of music history and music theory.
For Solhi, the Institute became his home. His talent for micromanagement pervaded the entire atmosphere of the place — from choosing the right trees to be planted across the Institute to caring for the many cats that roamed the garden. For Solhi, these were integral parts of “his” Institute, and he took care of feeding each one of them while making sure all musicians and teachers were on time for their duties.
Solhi’s own compositions were highly influenced by the Hungarian composer Béla Bartók and, later, by the Soviet composer and pianist Dmitri Shostakovich, yet also drew deeply on Arabic melodies and themes.
In the 1990s, Solhi fulfilled another of his dreams by founding the Syrian National Symphony Orchestra, which made him a well-known conductor and composer on international stages. To this day, Solhi’s life continues to influence musicians from all over the world. Developing and implementing the idea of the Institute of Higher Music, building an orchestra from scratch, and then adding art and modern dance to Syria’s unique artistic landscape are achievements that cannot be emphasised enough. The generations that had the privilege to study under his direction consolidated his movement in subsequent generations and carried it to other regions of the world, where the legacy of Solhi al-Wadi is still present and appreciated today.
Nouri Iskandar Trio at the Global Week for Syria in 2016
With Nouri Iskander, the Syrian musical landscape produced another important musicologist and composer. Specialised in Syriac sacred and folk music, Nouri Iskander is known for his unique mix of traditional folksongs in contemporary musical settings.
Born in Deir Ezzor to an Assyrian family from Urfa (Turkey), Nouri began his musical career at a very young age when he joined a Syriac Orthodox band. Early in his career, he dedicated himself to researching and composing Syriac folk music. He can be considered the main force in safeguarding Syriac music for future generations, not only by establishing several successful choirs but also by composing a wide range of Syriac folk songs, such as the operetta Parqāna (meaning “salvation”) and O Habibo.
In 1973, Nouri Iskander organised his first professional festival dedicated to Syriac music at the UNESCO Palace in Beirut. This concert set the stage for many performances to come, not only on Syrian stages but also before growing international audiences.
What made his compositions stand out compared with those of other composers of his time was his passion for merging maqām-based music with contemporary classical techniques and ideas.
Compositions by Nouri Iskander
In 2005, I had the incredible chance to meet Nouri Iskander personally. I had always been stunned by the audacity of his compositions, mixing the old with the new without feeling the need for an excuse. For me, his contemporary works avoid excessive conceptualisation while remaining true to the melodies he explored with absolute intuition. In a way, Nouri managed to dig deeper into the maqām, picking up ancient melodies and placing them in a contemporary setting. He was never afraid to use microtones in harmonic contexts, while other composers mostly bypassed this approach to avoid dissonance. Boldly enough, Nouri incorporated these microtones into chords, sometimes in clusters, thus inventing new sounds while crossing musical borders like a Middle Eastern Alfred Schnittke.
Sound, spirit and research: Nouri Iskander's contribution to the Syrian music world
Alongside his musical career, Nouri Iskander is also known for his in-depth research in musicology, which was recognised by UNESCO as a serious effort to understand and preserve Syriac music. For over four decades, he analysed Syriac melodies, culminating in a scholarly book commissioned by UNESCO in the 1990s, which covers both religious and traditional Syriac music. Iskander also closely studied the works of the brilliant Syrian musicologist Mikhael Allah-Weirdi. Allah-Weirdi (Damascus, 1904–1978) wrote a comprehensive, scholarly book titled Philosophy of Oriental Music, in which he discussed the use of natural scales rather than well-tempered scales. Basing his approach on the traditional philosophy of Oriental music and mathematics, he attempted to determine perfect ratios in note intervals to create a harmony that could bring peace to people’s minds — developing conceptual methods that are still being taken up by contemporary composers interested in microtonal music.
His work and the discussions with Nouri Iskander and many others have deeply inspired me. Therefore, I created the Oriental Landscapes festival to establish a platform for musicians to study and discuss various oriental music genres and to present them in performance. Nouri inspired me to delve deeply into the history of music in Syria, encountering the spiritual aspect of Arabic music and its connection to the philosophy and metaphysics of music, revealing to me a completely new side of Syrian music that I would never have discovered without him. It was thanks to his influence that I invited archaeomusicologists to our festival.
Other composers of Solhi al-Wadi's generation
Solhi al-Wadi laid the foundation for a solid classical music education, but he wasn’t alone. There had already been several musicians and composers active in the scene who deserve to be mentioned. In 1957, Solhi himself conducted a symphony orchestra made up of musicians from the Friends of the Art Institute and the Syrian Police Band. They attempted to perform Beethoven’s Egmont Overture as well as works by Schubert and Strauss. Some of the lesser-known composers and musicians who participated in these performances never had the chance to be recognised — such as the late Ali al-Kafri (Lobiya, 1953-2022), to name just one — who studied filmmaking in Cairo and composed many musical works.
But there were also well-known Syrian musicians and composers in Solhi’s generation who contributed to the classical music scene in Syria and beyond its borders.
Diaa al-Sukkari
Another composer of Solhi’s generation is the Aleppian Diaa al-Sukkari (1938–2010), who studied in Paris and taught at the Arabic Institute with Solhi from 1960 to 1967, after which he moved permanently to France to teach. He was a very skilled violinist but focused more on composition. Influenced by contemporary composers like Messiaen, he composed over 60 pieces, incorporating Arabic themes.
Walid al-Hajjar
Born in Damascus in 1932, Walid al-Hajjar is a multitalented aristocrat. He began studying at a very early age under Russian Baron Belling, former conductor at the Tsar Nicholas Court. Later, in the 1950s, he studied counterpoint with Madame Honegger in Paris and composition with Edmond Marc at the Conservatoire de Paris. At the same time, he studied painting at the École des Beaux-Arts under the sculptor Zadkin. He then moved to the US to complete his academic studies and graduated in political science. Today, he has four novels to his name and continues writing articles and essays on a variety of cultural topics, five hundred of which are published on his Facebook page.
Nuri Ruheibany
Nuri Ruheibani (born in Hassakeh in 1939) moved to Leipzig in 1959 and studied with the German composer Siegfried Thiele. From the very beginning, he incorporated Arabic music and themes, composing pieces based on Arabic songs, traditional motifs, as well as Christian and Islamic religious music. While working and teaching at several German universities, he also composed for film and theatre in Damascus and developed a social curriculum for percussion, using Carl Orff’s percussion techniques at the Arabic Institute of Music in 1978.
François Rabbat
Another remarkable composer and double-bass player is François Rabbat. Born in Aleppo in 1931, Rabbat moved to Paris in 1955. Since then, he has performed all over the world and composed numerous pieces of contemporary music. He also authored his three-volume opus Nouvelle technique de la contrebasse.
The generation after Solhi-al-Wadi
Laying the foundation for classical music education in Syria, the following generations of musicians were able to benefit from the pioneering work of Solhi al-Wadi, Nouri Iskander, and many others who had joined their endeavours. It is no surprise that these new music institutions produced a whole generation of outstanding musicians who have contributed their own pieces of contemporary music to the musical landscape in Syria and beyond. Although it is not possible to mention all Syrian musicians, this article aims to shed some light on the scope of musical talent in Syria.
Following Solhi al-Wadi, conductor Missak Baghbodarian has taken charge of the Orchestra, and cellist Athil Hamdan assumed the directorship of the Higher Institute of Music.
Zaid Jabri
Born in Damascus, where he studied, Zaid Jabri later moved to Poland, where he earned his PhD under Krzysztof Penderecki. Zaid has been living in Krakow, Poland, for three decades and has composed dozens of works while lecturing at many renowned universities in Europe and the United States.
Hassan Taha
Born in 1968 in Homs, Syria, Hassan currently lives in Bern, Switzerland. After teaching himself traditional Arabic music, he completed his musical studies in 1998 in both horn and oud at the Higher Institute of Music in Damascus. In 2003, he studied contemporary composition at the Conservatory of Maastricht in the Netherlands. In 2012, he obtained a Master’s degree in composition at the Hochschule der Künste in Bern. His works have been performed in Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Germany, and Switzerland. In 2010, he was invited as an “artist in residence” by the Council of Pro Helvetia Arts in Switzerland. He has conducted workshops with composers Vinko Globokar and Helmut Oehring.
Kareem Rustom
Syrian-American Kareem Rustom is from Squeilbieh, Syria, and now lives in Boston, USA. Steeped in the musical traditions of the Near East and trained in Western concert music and jazz, Kareem is a musically bilingual composer who has collaborated with a wide spectrum of musicians, ranging from the Kronos Quartet to Shakira.
Shafi Badreddine
Born in Sweida, Syria, Shafi Badreddine graduated from the Higher Institute of Music in 1998 as a clarinetist, oud player, and specialist in composition theory. Shafi studied composition in Lyon and conducting in Dijon. He then returned to Damascus to create and conduct an orchestra. He composed many serious contemporary works and was featured in numerous Oriental Landscapes festivals. Since 2010, Shafi has lived in Luxembourg, where he established the Ornina Syrian Orchestra. His works focus on Oriental music with a contemporary classical approach, and he has toured most European cities as both performer and conductor.
Raad Khalaf
Iraqi-Syrian violinist, composer, and conductor Raad Khalaf graduated from Moscow in 1990 and moved permanently to Damascus, where he joined the teaching staff of the Higher Institute of Music and became the first violinist of the Syrian Symphony Orchestra at its inception in 1992. He created the Damascus String Quartet, the Zeryab Orchestra, as well as the female Mari Orchestra. He composed for cinema, theatre, and TV series, as well as many operas, including Avicenna, billed as the first Arab-produced opera, which premiered in Doha, Qatar. His compositions were inspired by Arabic themes and ideas, incorporating ancient motifs and using instruments — including ancient Mesopotamian musical instruments — that he had specially built for his works.
Kinan Azmeh
Born in Damascus, Syria, and now living in New York, Kinan Azmeh is, in my view, by far the most active Syrian musician. He brings his music to all corners of the world as a soloist, composer, and improviser. Notable international appearances include the Opéra Bastille in Paris; Tchaikovsky Grand Hall in Moscow; Carnegie Hall and the UN General Assembly in New York; Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie; and many others.
Kinan’s compositions include works for solo instruments, chamber ensembles, and orchestras, as well as music for film, live illustration, and electronics. His recent works were commissioned by many renowned ensembles and orchestras, such as the New York Philharmonic, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Apple Hill String Quartet, Cello Octet Amsterdam, Aizuri Quartet, Bob Wilson, and many others.
Rami Chahin
Rami Chahin obtained his B.A. at the Damascus Higher Institute of Music in 1999. He earned his PhD in Music Composition, Theory, and Musicology at Oldenburg University, Germany, supervised by Prof. Violeta Dinescu and Prof. Dr. Joachim Dorfmüller. His thesis, Towards a Spectral Microtonal Composing: A Bridge between Arabic and Western Music, as well as his microtonal and spectral composition opera Qadmus, were completed under their supervision. He also obtained a Master’s degree in composition at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music.
Basilius Alawad
Basilius Alawad is a Syrian cellist and composer living in Berlin. He studied at the Higher Institute of Music in Damascus between 2011 and 2013, where he performed with the Syrian National Symphony Orchestra as a guest cellist and soloist. Basilius has shared his own compositions at venues such as the Berlin Philharmonie, Pierre Boulez Saal, Rudolstadt Festival, and Muziekgebouw, and recently won the Ettijahat for Independent Culture sponsorship to produce his own album, Black Cotton. He has also composed soundtracks for Arab YouTube series and short films, and recently released his first electronic music single, titled Tal Elleil.
In the meantime, Basilius is studying cello in the class of Sennu Laine at the Barenboim-Said Academy in Berlin, where he participates in workshops, lectures, and chamber music guidance with Daniel Barenboim, Michael Barenboim, and Michael Wendeberg.
The emerging younger generation
Syria now has several young composers. Among them are many talented individuals, such as Suhaib al-Samman (born in Damascus), Wassim Ibrahim (born in Sweida and now living in Krakow, Poland), and Mehdi al-Mahdi, who was born and still lives in Damascus. All three composers incorporate Arabic and Oriental themes in their compositions.
Suhaib and Mehdi are yet to be widely recognized, but I believe they are working hard on their careers while living in Syria. Two other young composers are Nadim Husni, who lives and composes in Poland, and Shalan Al Hamwi, who lives and composes in Belgium.
All these musicians and composers have contributed to shaping the landscape of classical music on Syrian and international stages. They have both helped to carry forward traditions and introduced new innovations. And we can be certain that many more will follow…
The musical journey continues here
The Diversity of Music in Syria
The Hurrian Hymn No. 6 is the earliest musical notation in history that has been found so far. Find out all about the location and significance of the hymn in the interview with Prof Richard Dumbrill.
