Musique des êtres imaginaires
Music of imaginary beings
Music of imaginary beings
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ENSEMBLE LUCILIN
ARTURO FUENTES |
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concert-fiction for musicians, automaton and electronics 2015-2016
Idea and composition: Arturo Fuentes
Directed by: Arturo Fuentes
Music: United Instruments of Lucilin
Duration: 1 hr.
Music of imaginary beings
for flute, saxophone, percussion, piano, violin, viola, cello, automaton and electronics *without conductor.
Music inspired by the poems "Arte poética" and "Manual de zoología fantástica" written by Jorge Luis Borges.
On the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of the poet’s death (June 14, 1986).
World premier: April 13, 2016, Philharmonie Luxembourg
Austrian premier: Juin 13 2016, Wiener Konzerthaus
Production and co-production
United Instruments of Lucilin, Philharmonie Luxembourg
Music commissioned by
United Instruments of Lucilin, Philharmonie Luxembourg, Siemens Foundation
With the support of
Ministry of Culture of Luxembourg
Edited by
LondonHall Editions
Florence Martin, head manager
Virginia Flórez, production and diffusion
florence.martin@lucilin.lu / virginia.florez@lucilin.lu / www.lucilin.lu
Ensemble Lucilin, CARRÉ
1 rue de l'Aciérie L-1112 Luxembourg
TEL/FAX : +352 26 37 43 32
United Instruments of Lucilin, Sophie Deshayes (flute), Olivier Sliepen (saxophone), Guy Frisch (percussion),
Pascal Meyer (piano), André Pons-Valdés (violin), Danielle Hennicot (viola), Jean-Philippe Martignoni (cello).
Idea and composition: Arturo Fuentes
Directed by: Arturo Fuentes
Music: United Instruments of Lucilin
Duration: 1 hr.
Music of imaginary beings
for flute, saxophone, percussion, piano, violin, viola, cello, automaton and electronics *without conductor.
Music inspired by the poems "Arte poética" and "Manual de zoología fantástica" written by Jorge Luis Borges.
On the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of the poet’s death (June 14, 1986).
World premier: April 13, 2016, Philharmonie Luxembourg
Austrian premier: Juin 13 2016, Wiener Konzerthaus
Production and co-production
United Instruments of Lucilin, Philharmonie Luxembourg
Music commissioned by
United Instruments of Lucilin, Philharmonie Luxembourg, Siemens Foundation
With the support of
Ministry of Culture of Luxembourg
Edited by
LondonHall Editions
Florence Martin, head manager
Virginia Flórez, production and diffusion
florence.martin@lucilin.lu / virginia.florez@lucilin.lu / www.lucilin.lu
Ensemble Lucilin, CARRÉ
1 rue de l'Aciérie L-1112 Luxembourg
TEL/FAX : +352 26 37 43 32
United Instruments of Lucilin, Sophie Deshayes (flute), Olivier Sliepen (saxophone), Guy Frisch (percussion),
Pascal Meyer (piano), André Pons-Valdés (violin), Danielle Hennicot (viola), Jean-Philippe Martignoni (cello).
Introduction
Musique des êtres imaginaires is a performance created by the musicians. In a concert-like situation, they interact with all the machinery that is on stage: light, sound, instruments and scenography. The public attends a musical theater whose main character is not on stage: Borges, blind; but one can imagine Borges, seating on a chair at the centre of his chaotic universe and can hear his voice, distorted while reading his poems. Musique des êtres imaginaires is inspired by this great Argentinian author on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of his death (14 juin 1986, Genève). The music itself creates a dramaturgy as it fills up the stage and comes to the public through the loudspeakers set in the audience. The musicians are placed into several “isles” that seem to have fallen apart, and look like some dark abandoned house with broken mirrors, each of them occupied by noisy mechanisms and animals. Solos, duos, trios or pieces with all musicians are performed in these microcosmos, exchanging sound messages together. This performance is a non-literal recreation of Borges' text which is used as the starting point of Arturo Fuentes' composition. During the spectacle, the public can hear the music of the instruments mixed up with phonemes interspersed by Borges' voice, sometimes just a sigh, sometimes a complete sentence. They cannot understand everything of what he is saying, still they can get an approximation from the literary source: they have a feeling, a sound, a metaphor. This deconstructed maze, also inhabited by fantastic animals from Borges' zoology, is getting reconstructed by Arturo Fuentes' music which, along with Fuentes' staging inspired by a literary fiction, puts back the pieces together. To quote Borges, one can say “our memory is like a pile of broken mirrors”, and Musique des êtres imaginaires epitomizes this view. During the performance, the public discovers the Argentinian author through his poetry which is, just like the glass and the broken mirrors on stage, shown broken into pieces. The musicality of Borges' language can be figured out from its finest inflections. Music, scenography and poetry form together a unity which shatters like a starry sky, pictured by the reflections on the roof of the mirrors lit on the stage and by the crystalline sounds, boiling with the electronic elements. |
Mexican composer Arturo Fuentes has been influenced by Borges' books since his childhood. He defines his music, which shares common characteristics with Borges' poetry, as a “kaleidoscopic chaos meticulously organized, exploring the boundaries of dynamics, color, texture and virtuosity”. Textures, colors, mazes and lightness are all the abstract concepts needed to apprehend the musical idea of this concert, concepts that are very close to a Borgian universe. The recorded sounds (electroacoustic music) interact with the seven musicians of Lucilin ensemble. Sound fills up the concert room; the audience is situated in the middle of a confused and dreamlike world, just as the one of Borges' dreams. Other imaginary beings are added to the recorded sounds, this time as mechanical automata which play musical instruments without the musicians. As Borges' Golem, those mechanisms seem to live on their own. They produce cut, repetitive and continuous noisy sounds. When the audience arrives in the concert hall, they can see immediately the chaotic condition of this landscape smashed by intimately lit mirrors. From this moment, a sound can be heard, it sounds as if someone is walking on broken mirrors (Borges' steps that are coming closer while looking for the exit of his own maze). The steps are becoming louder and louder; the audience can hear the sounds of doors and windows that are pushed back and forth, some of them broken down. Without even noticing it, the performance has already begun: the chair at the centre of the stage is lit up, the noises stop; no doubt, it was Borges' steps that can be heard before. The audience is then ready to get lost in this world of sound and vision that Fuentes defines himself as a “fiction-concert”. |
Arte poética
Jorge Luis Borges
Mirar el río hecho de tiempo y agua
y recordar que el tiempo es otro río,
saber que nos perdemos como el río
y que los rostros pasan como el agua.
Sentir que la vigilia es otro sueño
que sueña no soñar y que la muerte
que teme nuestra carne es esa muerte
de cada noche, que se llama sueño.
Ver en el día o en el año un símbolo
de los días del hombre y de sus años,
convertir el ultraje de los años
en una música, un rumor y un símbolo,
ver en la muerte el sueño, en el ocaso
un triste oro, tal es la poesía
que es inmortal y pobre. La poesía
vuelve como la aurora y el ocaso.
A veces en las tardes una cara
nos mira desde el fondo de un espejo;
el arte debe ser como ese espejo
que nos revela nuestra propia cara.
Cuentan que Ulises, harto de prodigios,
lloró de amor al divisar su Itaca
verde y humilde. El arte es esa Itaca
de verde eternidad, no de prodigios.
También es como el río interminable
que pasa y queda y es cristal de un mismo
Heráclito inconstante, que es el mismo
y es otro, como el río interminable.
Jorge Luis Borges
Mirar el río hecho de tiempo y agua
y recordar que el tiempo es otro río,
saber que nos perdemos como el río
y que los rostros pasan como el agua.
Sentir que la vigilia es otro sueño
que sueña no soñar y que la muerte
que teme nuestra carne es esa muerte
de cada noche, que se llama sueño.
Ver en el día o en el año un símbolo
de los días del hombre y de sus años,
convertir el ultraje de los años
en una música, un rumor y un símbolo,
ver en la muerte el sueño, en el ocaso
un triste oro, tal es la poesía
que es inmortal y pobre. La poesía
vuelve como la aurora y el ocaso.
A veces en las tardes una cara
nos mira desde el fondo de un espejo;
el arte debe ser como ese espejo
que nos revela nuestra propia cara.
Cuentan que Ulises, harto de prodigios,
lloró de amor al divisar su Itaca
verde y humilde. El arte es esa Itaca
de verde eternidad, no de prodigios.
También es como el río interminable
que pasa y queda y es cristal de un mismo
Heráclito inconstante, que es el mismo
y es otro, como el río interminable.
Gallery
première at the Philharmonie Luxembourg, 13 April 2016
Photos: Sebastien Grebille
première at the Philharmonie Luxembourg, 13 April 2016
Photos: Sebastien Grebille
