Sarajevo Haggadah: The Music of the Book

video performance

Conceived by Merima Ključo, the Sarajevo Haggadah: The Music of the Book is a 50-minute (approximate) composition for piano, accordion, and video. The piece uses music and visual art to tell the turbulent story of the Sarajevo Haggadah – an illuminated manuscript from the fourteenth century. This sacred book was intended to be used during the Jewish Passover Seder.The motivation for the video was to create a visual backdrop to the music that would subtly interweave the imagery of the Sarajevo Haggadah with elements of the book’s history. The textures found in the illustrations, as well as the stains and signs of aging found in the book served as inspiration for creating similar “illumination” and deterioration effects seen in the video. The animations are almost entirely composed of imagery from the book, yet arranged in an abstract way that blend with the musical composition to make a unified aural-visual experience.