Love Music
SKU: HL.50603910
ISBN 9781705155394. UPC: 196288023098. 9.0x12.0 inches.
Lovemusic was completed in September 2005 and premiered April 18, 2006 at Syracuse University by Mario Caroli flute and Armand Angster bass clarinet to whom the work is dedicated. This is a beautiful love story told in music; one among many... yours perhaps! BJ.
SKU: HL.48186445
UPC: 888680829384. 9x12 inches.
“'What's important in music that's based on a poem ' on the emotion inspired by a poem ' is the music and power of emotion it harbours within itself'. These words, written in 1949 by poet Pierre Reverdy, would make a deep impression on composer Betsy Jolas. She'd just sent the writer her Six mélodies for mezzo-soprano and piano composed on poems from his masterwork Plupart du temps. The songs were accompanied by a letter that betrayed her fear of distorting his ideas. In creative terms, there was no need to worry ' Betsy Jolas must have placed this conviction at the heart of her reflection on the relation between text and music. Nearly sixty years later, the musician decided to take several fragments of these beloved poems of Reverdy and place them, in the form of quotations, into new musical and theatrical perspectives. The exalted memory of the words led to D'Un Journal D'Amour, a mini-cantata for Voice and Alto offered as a wedding gift to soprano Eliette Prévôt and violist Antoine Tamestit, who premiered it together in Montreuil in 2010.&rdquo.
SKU: HL.456477
ISBN 9781705164723. UPC: 196288068365.
Autres chants (Other songs) is a cycle of five lieder for 3-part women's choir and obligato piano, by which I mean that the piano takes part in the musical development following the tradition of the German lied. As for the text, having worked quite a while on 'real' poems (Reverdy, Victor Hugo, du Bouchet, Dupin), I returned here to my own texts, written specifically for music in the 60s and which I had then set in a work called 'Mots' (1963). It was already about love, pain and play... but sixty years later, the world had changed a lot and the words didn't quite have the same meaning. So there is nothing here that recalls the initial work. Hence also the need today to give evocative titles to the five pieces of this cycle: - Neigees (Snowy traces) - Meme pas peur (Hardly scared) - Oh ne plus... (Oh no longer...) - N'es mien (Aren't mine) - D'elle? (Of her?).
SKU: HL.50603909
ISBN 9781705155387. UPC: 196288023081. 9.0x12.0 inches.
Frauenliebe was completed in Paris in June 2010 and premiered in Venice at the La Fenice theatre by both recipients on March 14, 2011. Nearly 20 years after Frauenleben, subtitled '9 lieder for viola and orchestra', here is Frauenliebe, 10 lieder for viola and piano. And once again, the question comes up of why this title for a piece that never quotes from the celebrated song cycle. To me, this title has two distinct meanings. It first refers to myself as a woman (Frau), seen through my life (Leben) and now, more specifically, through my love life (Liebe). But it should also be taken simply as a tribute to the great lied tradition so masterfully illustrated by Schumann, and which represents an important part of my musical background. I must finally point out that the viola, (which I like to call 'this great singer') happens to be, ever since my adolescent years, one of my favorite instruments. BJ.
SKU: HL.49046382
UPC: 841886031753. 0.126 inches.
Magnificat is a tribute to the unaccompanied motets of favourite composers from several eras - in particular those of Dufay, the Eton Choirbook, Robert Carver, Lassus and Bach. The work is therefore full of contrast in texture, harmony, mood and pacing, and exploits the resources of unaccompanied chorus in a manner not only analogous to those already mentioned but also to ensemble or orchestral writing. Naturally - given the sentiments of the text - the mood is predominantly joyful and exuberant; but the darker implications of certain phrases in the text are not ignored. Towards the end there is a big choral explosion on one of the traditional plainsong chants for the Magnificat, before the work subsides into a coda of calm serenity. Magnificat was commissioned by the ORA choir. It is dedicated to the French composer Betsy Jolas, in celebration of her 90th birthday, and in equal celebration of our mutual love of many choral composers mentioned above.
