Accordéon, Esprit de suite & Missa pro pueris
Denis Dufour
Sunday 15 May
2.30pm
Rymer Auditorium, University of York
Accordéon [2012] 03'24
for voice and fixed electronics
Accordéon is the seventh work in the series Plis de Perversion. All these pieces are conceived as variations of the first, Velours des dunes for bowed string instrument ad libitum and synthesizer, written in 1978 for TM+. Here, while using the sometimes sliding, sometimes pointillistic sound morphologies of the original score, the composer stages a tense, exacerbated and plunged into despair voice on the verge of a nervous breakdown. The electroacoustic part underlines the contrasting accents and the dramatic intensity.
Esprit de suite [2016] 24'
Missa pro pueris [2019] 47'47
for fixed electronics
This piece reuses all the motifs from the Messe à l’usage des enfants with its texts read by children. The composer has re-recorded the poems, now read by two adult voices that take on the role of ministers before a group of children who respond to them as a chorus. A few elements are salvaged from the ceremony of Mass, such as its formal structure, a few words and assonances of the Greek, Latin and French texts of the Ordinary, as well as the ritualistic character between cleric and worshiper. With their repetitive character, the “loops” that run throughout the piece aren’t without some resemblance to litany, just as the slowed-down or chanting voices are reminiscent of psalmody. Thomas Brando wasn’t so much looking to reference the contents of the Mass as write a hymn to creation and love. Humankind, for whom these songs are destined, is glorified and surrounded by Nature in all her forms. It is indeed in all of this, and in the hope for the freedom simply to be, that the sacredness of this Mass for children resides. We hope with it that they forever retain the lightness, detachment and absoluteness that are given us at birth.
(Jérôme Nylon)