A Night of Art at the American Girls' College

Ustad Ma'alouf's address:

Ladies, young ladies, gentlemen,

Once I have finished this brief address and stepped away from this platform, you will hear and see nothing but beauty and art!

For we wanted it, as you have heard, to be a pure night of art, far removed even from theories of art and aesthetics, gathering of the varieties of the expression of beauty whatever can be gathered on a single stage in a single hour.

Before you is a varied picture by two Lebanese artists, each possessing his own distinguished personality and his own particular stamp, yet the two meet in joining the soundness of Eastern taste to the culture of Western taste, in a human endeavor to create beauty by way of lights and colors.

And you will hear a short story whose author, the great man of letters, would have it be nothing less than a world of feeling and thought, its beauties standing forth in a complete artistic unity, in a sweet, elegant, profound flow.

Then you will hear a light musical song which, however feeble in the words I set down for it, the world-famous musician who created its melodies has endowed with the quality of immortality; and a voice not of this world has added radiance to it, singing it and carrying it from the song of earth to the song of heaven.

Then you will hear part of an epic poem by a poet of surpassing inspiration, of whom the least that can be said is that his creation is universal — he knows how to feel even with his mind, and how to think even with his feeling.

Then you will listen to a melody from the folk songs we love, reworked for the better by a man of taste who knows the seats of the beauty latent in our melodies, and sung by an angelic voice that has never been accustomed to sing except for the sake of beauty.

Then you will hear verses of poetry in the language of life, whose author has known how to join the simplicity of its expression to the richness of its feeling; and it came out as poetry such that, were its author not my brother, I would say a great deal about him.

Then, in conclusion, you will hear a piece of classical music played by two cultivated and gifted amateurs, who look toward the treasures of the West with humility, love, respect, and understanding.

This is our night, ladies and gentlemen; it is, as you see, brief yet comprehensive. And it is among the causes of my delight to offer thanks to the inspired young ladies and Ustads who were kind enough to take part in preparing it, as I welcome you, a select company gathered around us tonight in the name of art.

Rushdi Ma'alouf

If art in its embodiment has many manifestations, confined to song, music, poetry, the story, and painting, then the Girls' College has been ahead of all in gathering these elements into a single night. On the evening of March 26 a refined evening was held which we could not but call "a night of art."

Miss Marie Sabri opened the program with a glance at the lectures held this year at the school, then delivered a special address on this night, with which the school closes its series of lectures and studies.

Then Ustad Rushdi Ma'alouf spoke of the artistic values of the items to be presented that night, with some explanation of each part of them and of the places where its beauty lies.

The curtain rose on a collection of fine paintings shown by the artists Cesar Gemayel and Moustafa Farroukh.

The program began with the song "Mother Earth," verses by Ustad Rushdi Ma'alouf, sung by the artist Badia Ashqar and set to music by the world-famous artist Wadih Sabra, who accompanied the singer on the piano.

When poetry's turn came, Ustad Salah Labaki recited a passage from his epic "Sa'am," and Mr. Hilmi Ma'alouf recited splendid passages, of the utmost taste and beauty, from his zajal compositions; these passages met with general approval among those present.

In the field of music, Messrs. Raymond Karam and Salim Batlouni played a splendid piece by the father of Western music, Bach. And Ustad Khalil Takieddine read two stories: "Eve" and "Mother Earth."

The audience was a refined elite of the capital's residents, preserving thereby the atmosphere to which the Girls' College is accustomed — a college that contributes to a far-reaching degree to the general cultural edifice of our modern renaissance, which our country feels, in its very heart, that it needs...

"Al-Nahda"