Christopher Goddard: Les tringles des sistres tintaient • Esprit Orchestra

Christopher Goddard (Canada)
Les tringles des sistres tintaient (2018)**
The Esprit Orchestra
Alex Pauk CM, Conductor
**Previously commissioned and premiered by Esprit with generous support from the Michael and Sonja Koerner Charitable Foundation
Composer’s Note:
My infatuation with Carmen began with a viewing of Francesco Rosi’s 1984 film adaptation of the opera, which I encountered as part of an opera on film seminar during graduate school. The opening scene of Act II, depicting a group of gypsies gathered in an uproarious bacchanal, stands out among several enchanting moments offered by the film and its lead actress Julia Migenes.
In its original context, Les tringles des sistres tintaient describes the ‘dazzling din’ and ‘metallic lustre’ of a ‘strange music’; Bizet musically captures its exotic allusions to ‘Basque tambourines’, ‘exaggerated guitars’ and ‘tinkling sistrums’ through an abundant use of string pizzicati, harp, and percussion instruments (the tambourine most prominently among them).
The most imaginative aspect of this score is, however, its disorienting evocation of the 'tourbillon' [whirlwind], which Bizet achieves by pitting a consistently intensifying tempo against a steadily downshifting harmonic pattern. The spinning, circular nature of this music - always perpetuating forward yet constantly returning to the same material - is something I have sought to express in my own recent work, therefore I saw Bizet's setting as source material ripe with potential to be reimagined in some way.
Tempo (and tempo fluctuation, more specifically) came to be the central project in my work: instead of undergoing a straightforward increase the tempi are cast in a complex matrix of accelerandi and ritardandi, the effect of which is amplified by keeping many of the harmonic, instrumental and metric elements of the original music fixed.
In addition to the rich perceptual experience of these tempo shifts and gradations, the approach also arose from a desire to investigate how certain orchestral effects and gestures could respond to new (at times even unwieldy) rates of execution, and to explore the new colours that emerge. The quasi-extemporaneous result amounts, in a sense, to one among several other Carmen 'Fantasies' to have appeared since the original. Here, however, the rendering of the source material takes place along the horizontal plane: it is not just the pitches themselves, but also their realization in time that receives elaboration.
Live Recording from October 27th, 2022.
Koerner Hall, The Royal Conservatory of Music, Toronto
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