Notice
Maponos is the third and last of the Three Sacred Songs. It includes the two Gallic texts revealed by excavations in Chamalières and Larzac, and published in the journal Études Celtiques. For several years of my childhood, I drank from the Roches spring, located a few dozen meters from my home, twenty years before several thousand ex-Gaulic wooden votos were discovered there, and the inscription dedicated to the Arverne god Maponos, which is sung at the end of the work. This return to our roots, in every sense of the word, is at the same time imaginary archaeology. Imaginary, too, is the magical operation by which the other lead tablet, found in the tomb of a certain Gemma, seems to cast a spell on a brotherhood of rival witches. Whatever the content of these forgotten imprecations, the words can ring out again for a second life in which we reinvest them with our imagination. This would only be a gratuitous act if there were nothing left in common between us and our distant ancestors. But hasn’t music always been a tool for denying death?
Instrumentation
solo voice, with a low tambourine without bellsFirst performance
09/22/90 Strasbourg, Festival Musica (F.Kubler)