Association Française pour le Rayonnement du Théâtre du Château de Drottningholm

Apendix 3
A text by the cellist Vincent Casanova
about Terre Promise by Rémy-Michel Trotier

Ultimes Chœurs pour la Terre promise

Giuseppe Ungaretti (Traduction de Francis Ponge)

"  Serrés dans les bras d’aujourd’hui les jours passés, ceux qui viendront.

O, durant ces années longues comme des siècles,

A tout instant, ce coup au cœur : vivre encore,

Interminablement, je le sais, dans le courant torrentiel qui s’écoule,

Choyant meurtrissant tour à tour,

Parmi les remous, les vains changements.

Tel est mon sort,

Le voyage que je poursuis,

Chaque battement de mes paupières exhumant,             
réinventant de fond en comble le temps ;

Eternel fugitif, comme ceux

Qui furent, qui sont, qui seront ".

" Un cri déchira l’aube.

A l’homme qui venait de reprendre son miroir,             
il parut qu’une nouvelle nuit l’envahissait.

Il suppliait que cette évidence insoutenable lui fût épargnée ".

"I would like to share with you what I can say about Terre Promise. Rémy-Michel Trotier has given me a score, has offered me the album Lyres by Francis Ponge, his poet of predilection. This was not the first partition that it gave me. But, in this present case, he awaited something more concrete: that I played it! At the beginning, I did not know where I was going to, except that the work began and finishes on a F sharp. An encounter with the composer was required. Together, with what he explained to me, we tried many things, the doigtés, knocks of bow, as to make me appropriate myself the work. he rewrote the score for me. I made a small analysis and practiced it. I played it ahead for a chosen public an evening of February 1999. More than a year after, I deal again with it, I talked again with Rémy-Michel. Words that follow come from all that precedes.

Rémy-Michel Trotier has put in music the Ultimes Chœurs pour la Terre promise. Terre promise (the vocal reference has disappeared the title) could be considered as the outcome of the cycle. As if finally, his aim was to find an equivalent instrumental to the voice (the timber of the cello is often presented as being the closest to the human voice) where words from the text would have disappeared. In order that only the sound remains, arid as the desert and the Terre promise. It seems furthermore that he sought a musical illustration to the poem so as to retranscribe somehow its movement. From an F sharp to another, the music follows its course, increasingly calm and silent. For that the composer follows the deep senses of the poem: terms as eloquent as "swirl", "trip", "night", "shout" find an evident translation. The work opens thus by a shout: an F sharp, played on the easel, without vibrating (two conjugated effects that tear dryly the silence) figures in the first degree the word. Then the music functions by short clear sentences that - in fainting rhythm in the beginning - gradually are no longer than long values. The music leads us then from a place to another, as the reading of a poem does: the instability to the immobility.

One of the difficulties to interpret this piece comes from the rhythm and the tempo to hold. It is indicated Lento while the metronomic reference (half note = 72) suggests a rapid tempo. The debut corresponds therefore to an intense moment, bubbling, where all goes very rapidly, while the fine leaves the time to the its. Another remarkable thing is the decomposition of measures in 7 eighths (7/4) equivalent to 2 half notes and a half. Let’s say that the measure bar has no longer represented anything to me, that I have more sought to restore to the music its general movement, as if a poem had not points and that it was mine to punctuate the text. I have made this step with the composer and it is him who indicated me ruptures, musical respirations. The former are made increasingly rare to end fully to the resonance of a sound, the echo of a F sharp.

I wish to give my interpretation on this F sharp in a technical viewpoint. It is not certainly innocent that the musical speech articulates around this note. Rémy-Michel Trotier does not believe to the symbolism of notes. However, it is impossible not to notice the continuous presence of this note, as if it was the point of balance of this music, the even origin of the former. It is found that on either side of the F sharp the range is made of 6 half-tons. More, the handwriting privileges some intervals: the triton, the third minor, the half-tone. Thus, by its central position in the range the F sharp is the pitch that allows the greatest number of harmonic combinations. It seems to me although this note constitutes the even essence of the music. If the sought Terre promise was that of the music, it would concern a unique sound, this would be therefore the F sharp.

A last remark concerns the perception of the work and its interpretation. The composer is not familiar with the techniques of the cello; that strengthens this impression of pain that provokes Terre promise. Because all seems feverish. I will not speak certainly of an easy music. I think nevertheless that the listening of this work provokes strong sensations: the listener is seized, taken to the throat until the end and even after the execution. Dry and violent music, it releases a sensation of immaculate white and black. I will end these reflections on words of Ungaretti translated by Ponge as to end the circle, to make the bridge a last time between words and music."

" Cette anxiété de toi, cachée dedans mes yeux             
et qui me fait voir que mouvements inquiets             
dans ton repos nocturne toute seule,

Le songe aussi de tes membres, remués par la mémoire

Versent de l’ombre dans mon obscurité naturelle,

Me font n’être plus que nuit, dans le hurlement de la nuit : nuit. "

Vincent Casanova
March 2000

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