In SiegfriedRichard Wagner loses his hero, whose strength is matched only by ignorance, in a mysterious forest whose murmurs he does not understand. It is the song of a bird which will guide the young man towards his destiny and the beautiful sleeping Valkyrie awaiting his kiss. This poetic and wise bird is not the only one, far from it, to populate the musical aviary which, for centuries, has made the repertoire resonate with its trills and cooing.
→ READ. A couple of musicians engaged for reverie and beauty
«We have been thinking about deepening the links between music and nature for a long time, and more particularly with birds., confides Florence Bolton, gambist and artistic director, with lutenist Benjamin Perrot, of the ensemble La Rêveuse. I believe the confinement that made us look at the sky from our home and listen more intently to the surrounding noises allowed this desire to come to life. “
The two artists were more particularly attached to the XVIIIe century when the aesthetics of imitation flourished. “Sounds can paint anything that is capable of making noise: thunder, winds, the roaring of the sea, the sound of donkeys, the melodious song of birds, the cries of animals”, wrote d’Alembert in 1753 (1). So from Hello by Daquin, from Nightingale in love at Rameau or, of the eagle, the lark and the wood pigeon called by Joseph Haydn in his Creation.
Teaching tunes to birds
Less well known, no doubt, the “reverse” practice which, in the XVIIIe century always, wanted to teach to the winged people the music composed by the men. “We invented specific instruments such as the bird flageolet with a very high range., explains Florence Bolton. During our research, for example, we “met” Jean-Claude Hervieux de Chanteloup who wrote treatises on “the canaries of Canaria” of which he was the governor to the Princess of Condé. “
Picturesque undoubtedly, this fashion also makes us aware of the instrumentalisation of birds to entertain good society but also of the financial speculation attached to the most virtuosos of these learned birds who bought themselves very dear. “However, it is reported that the most gifted could hardly learn more than three to four different arias and that, as the composer Grétry teaches us in his Briefs, the modulations put them in difficulty… ”, nuance Florence Bolton.
The divine nightingale
The artistic director of La Rêveuse underlines the privileged place occupied by the nightingale. It fascinates by the contrast between its very modest plumage, “Not particularly pretty”, and the spells of its nocturnal rambling. In the tale The Nightingale and the Emperor, Andersen compares the limited merits of a mechanical bird, however sophisticated it may be, to those of the flesh-and-blood animal which itself remains unpredictable and surprising. Igor Stravinsky was inspired by it in 1909 in his haunting opera The Nightingale.
Today, Florence Bolton and Benjamin Perrot have invited singer and composer Vincent Bouchot to write a piece intended for young audiences. She calls on the Japanese flautist Kôske Nozaki «who plays the bird flageolet with incredible dexterity while this tiny instrument is difficultdevilish “. To visually crown the enchantment, the puppeteer Cécile Hurbault draws on her practice of oriental shadow theater.
Listen to nature
A more traditional concert bringing together pieces by Purcell, Couperin, Rameau, but also Saint-Saëns and Ravel, and a cycle of meetings, music conferences and cultural actions, complete this vast journey around birds. “I am delighted with the success we have with programmers who usually hardly open their rooms to classical music., assure Florence Bolton. Current concerns around living things, our lost links with nature, are undoubtedly not unrelated to it.»
→ PORTRAIT. Cosmo Sheldrake, a rare bird
Claude Debussy was already expressing the wish for more careful attention to the world around us: “We do not listen to the thousand sounds of nature around us, we do not pay enough attention to this music so varied that it offers us so abundantly. It envelops us, and we have lived in the midst of it until now without noticing it. “ (2)
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