What remains when a city is silenced? When the voices that gave it color for centuries, singers, poets and musicians, are muted or driven away? For composer Fawaz Baker, the answer is: nothing but nothingness. Yet even that nothingness can sing.
Que le néant (Only the Nothing) is a choral work of rare origin. Baker composed it in 2023–2024 especially for Cappella Amsterdam’s Aleppo concert series, as a musical remembrance of his birthplace. A city he, like so many others, was forced to leave because of the war, but that continued to sing within him. In this composition, echoes resound of a place, a community, and a spiritual tradition deeply rooted in his musical being.
Fawaz Baker as a Cultural Bridge-Builder
Fawaz Baker is a composer, musicologist, and former architect. That background can be heard in his work: music as the design of space and time, with silence as an essential building material. He led the conservatory of Aleppo for many years and stayed in Syria as long as he could, in solidarity with its people. Only when it became impossible did he move to France. Since then, he has traveled regularly to refugee camps in Lebanon, where he shares music with children living in uncertainty and silence.
That silence resonates in Que le néant. Not emptiness, but a charged space. A space filled with memory, with loss, but also with hope. Baker found inspiration for the piece in the zikr gatherings of his youth in Aleppo—Sufi rituals centered on singing, repetition, and breath. For the text he used both his own poetry and that of friends, as well as classical Sufi writings that focus on the soul.
“This composition is a bridge between people,” Baker said during rehearsals with Cappella Amsterdam in the Oranjekerk in Amsterdam.
“I believe music can connect people. That is why I am a musician.”
Music as Shared Possession
Striking in Baker’s approach is his view of ownership. Although he composed the work, he does not see the result as exclusively “his.” On the contrary: only in performance, when taken up and interpreted by others, does the piece truly come into being.
“I have no idea what the final result will be, and it doesn’t matter to me,” he says with a smile.
“The piece is written. Now it is up to others to finish it, to make it their own. The result belongs to them—belongs to all of us.”
For Cappella Amsterdam, this open, shared perspective aligns seamlessly with its artistic practice. The choir worked closely with an Arabic-language coach to convey the text with care and meaning.
Aleppo Continues to Sing
Aleppo, which for centuries was a center of culture, mysticism, and music, lives on in this work. Not as a reconstruction, but as an echo, as spirit. Que le néant is not a rebuilding of a city but a remembrance of a way of life in which music was an integral part of existence.
In a time when music is often consumed as a product, Que le néant reminds us of an older understanding of music: as a shared ritual, as a space for encounter. The voices of Cappella Amsterdam give sound to what cannot be said—loss, longing, connectedness—while also creating something new: a shared story, born out of different worlds.
Fawaz Baker gives that spirit a new voice. And by sharing that voice with Cappella Amsterdam, and with the audience, he builds something that endures despite everything: connectedness.
Que le néant premiered in 2024, performed by Cappella Amsterdam under the direction of Daniel Reuss.
Innovation in the Choral World
With Que le néant, Cappella Amsterdam opens space for a different sound within choral practice: a musical remembrance that does not look back in nostalgia but enters into a new relationship with tradition, language, and repertoire. The collaboration with Fawaz Baker fits within our broader direction: seeking relevance without compromising on quality. At a time when cultural exchange is too often under pressure, Cappella Amsterdam consciously chooses projects that open perspectives and push artistic boundaries.
