Claude Vivier (1948-83) - Glaubst du an die Unsterblichkeit der Seele?
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 7 фев 2025
- Recorded live on 28th February 2008. Duration: 8 minutes 47 seconds
Glaubst du an die Unsterblichkeit der Seele?
In June 1982, wearied by the provincialism he felt around him in Montréal, Vivier moved to Paris. For any Québecois, the French capital was the centre of cultural life; for Vivier the city was more specifically the home of new music - the home, particularly, of the spectralists who were his contemporaries, composers such as Gérard Grisey and Hugues Dufourt. At a distance he had shared their exploration of overtone spectra as models of orchestral sound; now he was at the source, though it is unclear how much time he was willing to spare from other kinds of experience: Mahler in the concert hall, sex in bars. His life became a fling into the abyss. Meanwhile, he tried to find an operatic outlet for the new musical style he had discovered the year before, planning at one point a kind of opera-requiem on the last days of Tchaikovsky. Eventually, in January 1983, he set that project aside - or diverted it into answering a commission from the Groupe Vocal de France to write Glaubst du an die Unsterblichkeit der Seele? ('Do you believe in the immortality of the soul?').
'Listen to me, listen to me!' says a tenor near the start of this piece. 'You know I always wanted to die for love but...how strange it is, this music that doesn't move.' 'Speak', says a contralto, and the tenor goes on: 'I never knew -.' 'Knew what?' 'Knew how to love.' The contralto then asks him to sing a love song, and one follows - in the 'invented language' Vivier had often used before. But the song fades away, and the voices turn to what sounds even more alarmingly like autobiography. One of the synthesizer players, speaking into a vocoder, recounts an episode that Vivier told as a dream in a letter he wrote to one of his Montréal friends. The narrator is attracted to a young man on a Métro train, who sits down next to him, introduces himself, pulls out from his black jacket a dagger, 'and thrusts it right into my heart'. There the score ends. On 12 March 1983, Vivier was found in his apartment, where he had lain dead for five days. There were 45 knife wounds in his body.
© Paul Griffiths 2008
Nicholas Kok Conductor
PSAPPHA ENSEMBLE
Richard Casey Keyboard / Speaker
Paul Janes Keyboard
Jeremy Young Keyboard
Tim Williams Percussion
BBC SINGERS
Sopranos
Margaret Feaviour
Micaela Haslam
Olivia Robinson
Altos
Lynette Alcántara
Jacqueline Fox
Penny Vickers
Tenors
Edward Goater
Neil MacKenzie
Andrew Murgatroyd
Basses
Simon Birchall
Michael Bundy
Adrian Peacock
Omg ce chanteur est un best casting pour du Vivier! Bon morceau!
Each of Vivier's works is precious; a fragment of his might-have-been, and so powerful and beautiful in themselves.
I think what he did while he was alive more than speaks for itself.
His last composition. Very expressive performance.
Musique hautement originale et fascinante
It's very interesting how the piece just finishes abruptly at the end; it sort of compares to how Claude Vivier was murdered so suddenly.
Yeah… it was unfinished… :(
This is an incredibly sharp performance!
You can tell when this was recorded roughly because the lead vocalist looks like hes for fucking IN-SYNC lol. He does a great job though. Really sells the presentation of this piece i think as does bald dude. Probably my favorite version of this that ive seen on RUclips at least.
Based
MY NAME IS HARRY!