Shabah

For orchestra. This listing is for the full score only. Performance parts are available for rental at saadnhaddad.com/contact.

Instrumentation: 3[1.2.pic] 3[1.2.Eh] 3[1.2.bcl] 3[1.2.cbn] – 4 3 3 1 – tmp+2 – pf, hp (scordatura) – str

Shabah (شبح), or “likeness” in Arabic, is a musical reflection on the sixth day of creation from the Book of Genesis. This is the moment when life comes into being in its intended form. Human beings are created in God’s “likeness,” alongside animals, conceived as good and whole.

The music lives in this fragile moment before anything has gone wrong. Before the Fall. Before suffering, doubt, or loss. There is no need to imagine a better world, because nothing has yet been broken. There is only existence itself.

This idea feels especially distant today. Humanity is now creating new forms of life through artificial intelligence, trying to design systems in our own image. But unlike the Genesis story, we do this with full awareness of failure. We know what dystopia looks like. The sixth day represents a vision of life before that knowledge existed.

A central musical idea comes from the name Adam. Its letters are translated directly into pitch: A–D–A–M, with M realized as mi, or E. This produces a collection built around perfect fourths and fifths, intervals among the most fundamental in musical practice, used since antiquity and resonant across cultures. These sonorities permeate the work as a sonic metaphor for origin, likeness, and a world ordered before the need for division or measure.