Quand l'amant sortit
for small ensemble (2011)score in preparation
program note |
›Quand L’Amant sortit‹ is a poem from the collection ›Douze Chansons‹ [Twelve Songs] by Maurice Maeterlinck (1896). ›Douze Chansons‹ is also the title of a project set up by the SPECTRA Ensemble in 2011 to celebrate the 100-year anniversary of Maeterlinck's being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Twelve composers were asked each to compose music to a poem from the collection, without the text. The text is spoken by an actress.The music I composed is in three sections, reflecting the three stanzas of the poem: the opening in major triads, a bridge to the middle section in which major, minor, diminished and dominant seventh chords alternate in a fixed sequence, followed by another bridge to the final series of minor triads.
This series of chords is played mainly by the strings. In another layer, rhythmically shifted relative to the strings, the other instruments play the same chords, like a stimulating caress.
The chords and texture are based on another composition, ›Genieting V‹ for accordion, which I wrote around the same time.
The bridges described earlier consist of three chords of the tonal cadence with which Robert Schumann opens his song cycle ›Frauenliebe und Leben‹. This quote brings us to the theme of both ›Genieting V‹ and ›Quand l'amant sortit‹, which is love.
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