Dutch composer Sylvia Maessen composed a piece called ‘Omar Khayyam. Rubaiyat’ for soprano and six tuned wine glasses (2005). The work is now recorded on CD together with eight other works by Maessen. The songs are performed by Irene Maessen.
A presentation will be held in Amsterdam, February 23, 2014, in Arti & Amicitiae, starting at 17.00 pm.

Inspired by Poetry, as the CD is called, contains a number of songs, based on texts by a number of Dutch poets, and by Rutebeuf, Khlebnikov and Tullia d’Aragona, in a variety of musical settings.
‘Omar Khayyam. Rubaiyat’ is made up of nine quatrains from FitzGerald’s translation. The singer also ‘plays’ the wine glasses by passing a moist finger along the rim of the glasses.
With the CD comes a booklet, with additional information and the text of the poems.

A fragment from the work is available at Maessen’s website. Recently Professor Rokus de Groot, (University of Amsterdam), held a lecture ‘Khayyam in de Nederlandse muziek‘ (available from YouTube), in which he explored some of the musical aspects of the composition.