HIÉROGAMIE

Music thus has an active as well as a commemorative role. In the mythical imagination, it is the food that enables the divine couple to ensure the fecundity of time. The festivities contribute to the obscure designs of the gods, who have just as vital a need for them as men do. Popular music, in Provence and elsewhere, has preserved a fading echo of this archaic imagination. Archaic, not ancient, because whatever its ritual realizations, it is undoubtedly inscribed in the natural structures of our thinking, and as such, ready to reappear in any age under new disguises. It is always part of the present, nearby and hidden, waiting only for music to resurface.
So Hierogamy makes no attempt to revive folk practices that have fallen into disuse. What is perhaps most interesting about the phenomenon of folklore is its ability to reinvent and reincarnate itself in new forms. Folk Traditions are little without the Arts, which I would like to interpret as the necessary complement to the spirit of invention. The latter manifests both the historical preoccupations of a given society, and the permanent hauntings of humanity. I like to think that this new piece, dedicated to Paul Méfano and his musicians, is part of an inexhaustible set of echoes of all past and future musical celebrations, and thus in turn attempts to understand and celebrate the mysterious play of time.