«
Deux Poèmes de Rimbaud »
« Two Poems by Rimbaud »
1999
Duration : 10 minutes
Circumstances
:
The piece was commissioned by Jean-Pierre Caens for a concert of chamber
music organized as part of his action on musical creation inside the Conservatory,
the Town and the Land of Aix-en-Provence.
The concert, which took place on tuesday 1st february 2000, concerned
only the teachers wishing to participate in this adventure.
In the centre, very enthusiastic about the project, was the Soprano Laure
Florentin.
So the commissioned pieces were composed for a Soprano voice and some
instruments, the list of which depended on how much the teachers were
motivated.
Within the offered possibilities, the nomenclature in this piece was limited
to four instruments which, in pairs, can imitate each other.
Nomenclature
:
1 Soprano
1 Clarinet in Bb
1 tenor Saxophone
1 Marimba (covering four octaves)
1 Harp
Poems
:
Two poems of Arthur Rimbaud were chosen to be set to music : « Larme
» and « La rivière de Cassis ». Both of them
date back to may 1992, and are listed in the complete poetic works of
their author as « the last verses ».
Style
:
In this music the melodies and harmonies are supported by artificial modal
scales : they distinguish themselves from gregorian diatonic scales by
their proper division into tones and semi-tones. Moreover they are made
of small units with symmetrical connexions.
The prosody and vocal lines were a matter for great care.
The voice part is rather difficult : the voice has to be be flexible and
at ease in rather high pitch levels.
Unpublished
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