{{About, the Yedid suite, Plato's allegorical story, Allegory of the cave ''Myth of the Cave'' is a suite in five movements for clarinet/bass clarinet, double bass and piano, composed by

Yitzhak Yedid Yitzhak Yedid ( he, יצחק ידיד) is an Israeli-Australian contemporary classical music composer and improvising pianist, the recipient of numerous awards. Biography Yitzhak Yedid was born in Jerusalem, Israel to a sephardic Jewish famil ...

Jerusalem Jerusalem (; he, יְרוּשָׁלַיִם ; ar, القُدس ) (combining the Biblical and common usage Arabic names); grc, Ἱερουσαλήμ/Ἰεροσόλυμα, Hierousalḗm/Hierosóluma; hy, Երուսաղեմ, Erusałēm. i ...

Israel Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...

, 2002, and premiered in

Frankfurt, Germany Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , "Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on its na ...

, October 2002. The fundamental idea of the composition was inspired by

Plato Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...

's philosophic metaphor The

Allegory of the Cave The Allegory of the Cave, or Plato's Cave, is an allegory presented by the Ancient Greece, Greek philosopher Plato in his work ''Republic (Plato), Republic'' (514a–520a) to compare "the effect of education (Wiktionary:παιδεία, παιδ ...

: Human beings sit in a cave, in chains, their backs to the entrance. The shadows of things moving outside are projected by the light onto an inner wall of the cave. As the prisoners have never been outside the cave since birth, they believe these shadows are reality. One of them succeeds in freeing himself and walks outside into the light. He realizes that he has lived his whole life in the shadow of an illusion. Delighted by his discovery, he returns to the cave to communicate it to the others. Violence erupts between the one who ventured outside and those who do not want to understand. The story ends with the death of the person that had gained insight into reality. Yedid found the

allegory As a literary device or artistic form, an allegory is a narrative or visual representation in which a character, place, or event can be interpreted to represent a hidden meaning with moral or political significance. Authors have used allegory th ...

as an appropriate

metaphor A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another. It may provide (or obscure) clarity or identify hidden similarities between two different ideas. Metaphors are often compared wit ...

for the difficult reality of our time- a delusional reality, ignorance of the truth and of suffering in the world. The music expresses feelings of criticism, pity, prayer, mercy and a keen desire to recognize the truth. The composition contains five movements. The first movement named "The Crystal Hope", presents ironic hope, fragile and misleading. It opens in a declaration which will reappear in the fifth movement but reversed, symbolizing there, the delusion of the declaration. The second movement is named "Non Believer's Prayer". As if the non-believer, who chooses to pray after all, his outcry is stronger than that of the believer. But, in spite of it, his prayer will not be fulfilled. The third movement, "Imaginary Ritual", describes a hypothetical, imaginary sick situation, stating, that this ritual is real. The music passes through themes in an unexpected way, seeming illogical. In the improvisational parts the players were asked to describe the "walking on the edge" through borderlines breaking improvisations, neither always logical nor considerable. The fourth movement, melody, accompanied by the piano. The second part consists of two sub-parts. The first, played in unison, leads to the second, concluding part, where the clarinet improvises contrasting the piano and the double bass, which continue the unison. The fifth movement, "Delusion Reality", is a summary and a sober overlooking of the illusionary situation.

References

* http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=11867 * https://web.archive.org/web/20071007125237/http://jazzweekly.com/reviews/yyedid_myth.htm Classical music in Israel