Creation

07/30/2018 - La Grave, Festival Messiaen au Pays de la Meije, Church - Fiona McGown (mezzo), Yan Levionnois (cello), Anne Le Bozec (piano)
Sponsor

Messiaen Festival in the land of the Meije
Dedication

to Anne Le Bozec, Yan Levionnois and Fiona McGown
Notice

This is a cycle of melodies for mezzo-soprano, cello and piano - commissioned by the Association Olivier Messiaen au pays de la Meije - dedicated to Anne Le Bozec, Yan Levionnois and Fiona McGown.

This choice around dance came to me when I read this sentence by the American poet Ezra Pound (1885-1972) - leader of the imagist and modernist movement - in his ABC of Reading: "Music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance ... poetry begins to atrophy when it goes too far from music ("Music begins to atrophy when it gets too far away from the dance.. Poetry begins to wither away when it moves too far away from music "). This is the sentence that inspired me for the Dancing Poems.
The four melodies in this cycle were composed from the poems At the still-point by Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965), Slow Movement by William Carlos Williams (1883-1963), To a child dancing in the wind and Those dancing days are gone by William Butler Yeats (1865-1939).
Really thought out with a relation to the body, my way of conceiving rhythm is more spontaneous than intellectualized. I need to feel a rhythm inside - bodily - before I put it down on paper. Music and dance are thus intimately linked. For me, composing is somewhere the meeting point between music, dance and poetry; the point where each of these disciplines is inseparable from each other. Also, my choice fell on Anglo-Saxon literature, which Fiona McGown practices wonderfully and which brings out all the music of words.. I then imagined its magnificent timbre interwoven with that of the cello - an instrument that I particularly like. Throughout the cycle, the challenge was to create an intimate and bright atmosphere. Colors and timbres blend together to create a resonating and floating halo of sound around these three instruments. Thus, the halo helps to recreate this particular point of encounter between music, dance and poetry; a point out of time freed from the tensions of the world. The cycle is also steeped in repetitive and dancing rhythms, and the melodies are built on simple forms using choruses.. This gives the whole a popular color, specific to the expression of the dance.

The first melody, At the still-point, seeks to transcribe this state of trance by a repetitive accompaniment where piano and cello mix to create a soaring texture.
It is conceived as an essential engine within which movement is always present. Its repetition allows however to maintain an apparent immobility. The voice, sensual, unfolds on this misty and floating sound carpet. Fragile equilibrium point, this still point is therefore neither in suspense nor in motion: it is both at once. This is the moment when time stands still and we find ourselves immersed in our own worlds. I imagined certain lines as a refrain, regularly recalling the subtle and delicate balance of this still point.
The second melody, Slow Movement, is the slow movement of the cycle and evokes memories - those treasures that can be locked in a box.. So I chose to use the spoken voice. Only the beginning and the end are hummed (unlit, without timbre) as an echo to the cello theme. Cello and piano take turns to sing the expression of the words recited in this number.
The last two melodies successively evoke childhood and old age. To a child dancing in the wind describes a child dancing on the shore, heedless of the threatening sounds that surround him. The incessant crashing of the waves, the howling of the wind, or even the drops of salt water which bead from her hair are all images of the events of life that assail us. The roar of the wind and the crashing of the waves seem to be an allusion to the injustices and the disorder of life ("Love is lost as soon as it is won and the fool triumphs"). However, the fool can be a person who is motivated by love and not caring about the rest.. "The best worker is dead", but he was perhaps the best because he worked with love. This poem therefore speaks both of the carefree childhood, and of the experience of maturity.. I chose to transcribe into music this carelessness of the dancing child, this incarnation of life in the present moment, in a real lively and dancing moment.. More and more peaceful, the dance ends and brings us back to the reality of the adult world with the last melody of the cycle.
Here Yeats is alluding to the happy times that have ended. The dancing days are over. The wife and children are missing. A body wrapped in a dirty rag evokes both death and the lost glow of life. The rhythmic loop used translates with melancholy and sensuality the happy days gone by. The lines "I carry the sun in a golden cup, the moon in a silver bag" at the end of each stanza are used as a refrain. They carry both the idea of the radiance of the sun as a burst of life and of the shadow of the moon which delicately falls on it like a mysterious veil.. But it doesn't matter that death comes cause we can still dance and sing. Until our last breath.

Camille Pepin