The Cinq Chansons were commissioned by the Théâtre du Châtelet, where Joëlle Astier, who is responsible for the chamber music programming, had asked composers not only to write a work but also to design a program that responds to or provokes it. The instrumentation of these songs results from the combination of the ensemble of Ravel's Chansons Madécasses and Stravinsky's Shakespeare's songs, presented during this concert around the theme of an imaginary, timeless folklore, of a dreamed or reinvented tradition. I had made, for the same instrumentation minus the piano, a transcription of Ravel's Mélodies hébraïques, to which was added Stravinsky's playful last page, The Owl and the Pussycat.
The song is, par excellence, linked to a supposed common tradition that makes remembrance or immemorial celebration a convention so emphasized that it can easily mimic its own theater and become a distanced distillation of its own memory. This is what is at stake in these children's songs. Through different geographical atmospheres and some feminine "roles," the collection explores several forms of the genre. The first song is a street lament. In the second, rhapsodic, which evokes sub-Saharan Africa, the piano, with closed keyboard, the viola, and the cello are used like wooden drums, the flutist playing only with the headjoint of the instrument. The third song (with piccolo) is a kind of epigram where striptease is the metaphor for stripping down. The fourth is an epic song where music and melody are dissociated. The last, a cold pole, is a strophic song crossed by the draft mentioned in the poem.
These Cinq Chansons were premiered at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris on January 2, 2000, by the Swedish mezzo-soprano Katarina Karnéus and the ensemble Fa. The collection is dedicated to Malik Prince, the son of Marie Redonnet, born in Bethlehem on April 17, 1998.
Recording: 1 CD aeon, AE0106, Mes béatitudesMes béatitudes - Nebenstück - Fureur contre informe - Récréations françaises - Cinq Chansons - Bruissant divisé - Rebus Ensemble Recherche
Author: PESSON Gérard Discipline/Instrument: mezzo-soprano and 5 instruments
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