Les Spirituelles (The Spirituals)
4 female voices
11 pieces on women’s poems of various countries, from ancient Greece to nowadays
(Erinna, Von Bingen, D’Avila, Labé, Du Guillet, Matraini, Brun, Brontë, Grouard, Dickinson, Boulanger)
(2015)
Duration : env. 40’
Commissioned by the quartett Méliades
First performance on february 28th 2017 in the church St Jacques of Muret by the quartett Méliades
Recording : CD Ad Vitam records (AV 180315) – May 2018
CHOC Classica – 4 Diapason (juillet 2018)
The 11 poems :
To get the scores, send an email to the association Alcmène : Contact
Listen the complete CD : cliquez ici
Extr CD Ad Vitam records (Choc Classica, 4 Diapason juillet 2018)
After a magnificent artistic understanding during the working sessions on my Song of Songs (commissioned by the Méliades quartet and created in october 2014), the four singers and myself have decided to continue the musical adventure on the same theme: love and spirituality.
Then it seemed convenient to me to offer to this female voices quartet a historic and linguistic retrospective of the feminine poetic literature.
All the 11 poems, chosen above all as their suggestive strength and their literary quality, have the merit to be very different from each other, and therefore to allow a well differentiated musical processing (best guarantee of the real formal relevance of the cycle).
We shall thus find poems by Erinna (IVth century B.C), Hildegard von Bingen (XIIIth century), Thérèse d’Avila, Chiara Matraini, Louise Labé, Pernette du Guillet (XVIth century), Sophie Brun (XVIIIth century), Marie-Laure Grouard, Emily Brontë, Emily Dickinson (XIXth century) and Christine Boulanger (XXth century)
Patrick Burgan