Aperçu partitionNotice
Like Danaé and Andromède, this work is part of a cycle built around vocal polyphony and mythical female figures. The texts are adapted from the Chaldaic Oracles, and the sung Greek original coexists with the spoken translation. These are the last echoes of a great, obscure, esoteric tradition, to which Byzantine authors alluded for over a thousand years, apparently to combat it, but also, perhaps, because they continued to feel its fascinating grandeur.
Comment
The sound image of a ceremony combining choirs and percussion is one that keeps me coming back. Long before Danaé and Rituel pour les mangeurs d’ombre, I had an archaeological reverie akin to that aroused in Chateaubriand’s Martyrs by the texts on the bardit of the Franks. If the work was dedicated to the memory of Giacinto Scelsi, it’s also because, like him, I occasionally gave in to the naïve temptation of esoteric imagery. It has to be said that the archetypal visions of the Greek fragments I translated for this pagan cantata are disturbingly powerful.
I wanted, no doubt mistakenly, to ignore the dangers of using spoken choruses. Instead of appearing more “natural” than singing, they almost always generate a sense of unease by being more artificial than ritualistic. It was not until ten years later that I revisited the work in a second, very different version, and learned the lesson of this unease.
Instrumentation
4-voice mixed choir, 2 perc. (6 timpani, 1 gong, 2 cymbals)First performance
03/20/89 Paris, Radio-France, studio 104 (dir. M.Tranchant)
