Manuscript of Las Huelgas (14th century)
Sufi Chant
Creation

This programme bears the echo of thebaids in different places, religions, languages and eras.
As a tribute to feminine spirituality, it is a fruit gathered from our own deserts, where the taste for questioning, doubt, and wonder is shared. Whether symbolic of a chosen, intimate solitude or a real and physical desert, these two spaces resonate in their vastness. Medieval music, poetry, and contemporary music invite us to explore them.
The desert of Thebes was the refuge of the first Christians; since then, the term Thebaid has come to designate any place, even a symbolic one, where one isolates oneself to lead a life of asceticism and prayer, to “empty” oneself of the world and attain a second birth. Evoking retreat and trial, but also a place of revelation, the desert is a common thread linking the three monotheistic religions.
In the Middle Ages, in the West, it referred to the hermitage, the forest, the islands, the monasteries. As a metaphor for a solitary life devoted to contemplating “invisible realities,” it is a place of prayer and song.
For the Sufis, Khalwa refers both to the act of isolation and the place where one isolates oneself—nature, the desert, the cave, the cell. It is a path to knowledge through “illumination and spiritual opening.”
The use of chant, the breath embodied in sound, has always been associated with worship as a means of meditation, prayer, and ecstasy.
From the Christian Middle Ages, we draw from the Manuscript of Las Huelgas, a female monastery founded in the 12th century in Spain, a land where East and West converged for centuries.
The deserts of the East are evoked by the voice of Alia Sellami, singing Sufi pieces orally transmitted from generation to generation.
The Thebaids of today are represented by a contemporary piece, Khalwa by Alia Sellami, as well as improvisations.

With:

• Ensemble De Caelis, a cappella female voices
• Laurence Brisset, direction and organetto
• Alia Sellami, Arabic chant and improvisations