On a poem by S. Beckett
Written within the context of Voix Nouvelles, Royaumont
First performance: 09/09/2006, Abbaye de Royaumont (M. Louledjian sopr., M. Caroli fl., F. Rivalland cym., P. Contet acc.)
The lyric alba (“dawn” in Italian) is probably the most sweet and delicate poem in “Echo’s Bones”, one of the early works by Samuel Beckett. The musical composition partly reverberates the tender tones with the suffused atmospheres of the flute, cymbalom and accordion, and partly influences the text by means of theatrical interchangeable relationships between the instruments and the voice.
The vocal writing merges four different techniques (the reciting, the lyric singing, the whispering and the mechanical scanning of words), treating them as four “islands” and winding continuously among this “archipelago” as on a path, which gradually gets to the mechanical scanning of the last lines, going along with a process of progressive simplification that exalts all the pessimistic undertones – not far from the Weltanschauung of the later Beckett.