LES ARCADIENNES

I chose the great Passacaille from the 8th Ordre not only because it is a true masterpiece, but also because its organization presented three features I wanted to explore further: the couplet-chorus form (already explored in 1984 with Muwatalli), the ornamentation, and certain stylizations of natural models.
So, alternating with as many verses, I used seven refrains. But unlike Couperin, I never doubled or repeated them as they were, and they are subject to considerable variation. In turn, I wrote complex ornaments; I adopted the ascending character he gave to the refrains as opposed to the couplets, perhaps to evoke the comings and goings of a stroller in the street (if this is indeed the etymology of the Passacaille); I introduced into the couplets a diversity of moods comparable to that of the model. Couperin evoked stylized birdsong in the 4th verse of his Passacaille. In my first couplet, I treated an African bird song, the blue-winged cossyphe, as a canon in diminution. In the second verse, I translated another bird, the raven-whistling-owl (from Australia).
Finally, like Couperin’s Calotines, Tricoteuses and other masked titles, the title of Les Arcadiennes is a glimpse into a transhistorical rather than imaginary Regency, like the one Verlaine so aptly recreated. Indeed, unlike the model’s lively final couplet, the piece ends as if Couperin were being commented on by the narrator of Colloque sentimental, but speaking in music, and in a language inherited from the twentieth century alone.

Comment
How did Arcadia, the wildest region of Greece, where in antiquity human sacrifice went on longer than anywhere else, become in the Renaissance the amiable homeland of shepherds more concerned with their loves than their sheep? I won’t retrace the path of this singular metamorphosis. The Arcadia of Virgil, Sannazar or Poussin was a conventional ideal, and it’s with an extra nod to this convention that I’ve imagined these mythical Arcadians, the better to rid myself of their historical garb.