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RITUEL D’OUBLI(Opus 17)
September 196833'Mixed music
Notice
A few words about the work (in 1968):
• The musical function is to man what their cries are to animals, not so much language as exorcism, and appeal.
• Between a monkey’s cry and an orchestra’s cry there is no boundary other than prejudice.
• The power of Orpheus does not mean that beasts like religious music, but that music is man’s natural voice, older than any language, and which connects him to the world. Reason, plus spells.
• Rituel d’oubli is an anabasis. Its amnesia is regained.
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• Discourse, reason, lives through memory, and it is through memory that the Ego is constructed, but the desire to live feeds on oblivion.
• Elements : Water (sea, swimming pool…)
Fire (blaze of dry grass…)
Wind (rhombus, Brittany…)
War (street fights, hunting in Sologne…)
• Living creatures : Insects (bees, cicadas, locusts…)
Various amphibians
Birds (hornbill, red-legged partridge, chicks, etc.)
Mammals (lion, pony…)
People: Pikygi, Guayaki Indian reciting a myth
Kiepja, last survivor of the Selk’nam people, whose language died with her (Tierra del Fuego).
• Rituel d’oubli is the first of my works to attempt to integrate raw recorded sounds with orchestral writing.
• Elements : Water (sea, swimming pool…)
Fire (blaze of dry grass…)
Wind (rhombus, Brittany…)
War (street fights, hunting in Sologne…)
• Living creatures : Insects (bees, cicadas, locusts…)
Various amphibians
Birds (hornbill, red-legged partridge, chicks, etc.)
Mammals (lion, pony…)
People: Pikygi, Guayaki Indian reciting a myth
Kiepja, last survivor of the Selk’nam people, whose language died with her (Tierra del Fuego).
• Rituel d’oubli is the first of my works to attempt to integrate raw recorded sounds with orchestral writing.
Instrumentation
2 fl., 2 A♭ clar., 2 clar., 1 b-clar., 2 bsn., 1 c-bsn., 3 tpt., 3 tbn., 1 b. tbn., 3 perc., fixed soundsFirst performance
06/11/70 Strasbourg, Palais des Fêtes, (Ars Nova dir. M.Constant)