| Composition Year | 2012-14 |
|---|
Contents |
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| Work Title | Pourquoi des poètes? |
|---|---|
| Alternative. Title | |
| Composer | Pape, Gerard |
| I-Catalogue NumberI-Cat. No. | IGP 63 |
| Year/Date of CompositionY/D of Comp. | 2012-14 |
| First Performance. | 2014/05/28 |
| Librettist | Composer |
| Language | French |
| Average DurationAvg. Duration | 50 minutes |
| Composer Time PeriodComp. Period | Modern |
| Piece Style | Modern |
| Instrumentation | soprano voice/viola, bass voice, bass clarinet/bass-baritone voice, trombone/bass-baritone voice, 4 cellos, 4 contrabasses, 8-track tape |
Pourquoi des poètes? is the first opera in my ongoing opera cycle Sunset Time.
The theme of Sunset Time is the decline of contemporary Western society and the possible conditions for its resurrection after its imminent spiritual and cultural death.
Each of the operas is centered around a different philosophical/poetic theme, each set to music for a different group of singers, instrumentalists, and live electronics, each accompanied by specially designed video and light projections.
The theme of Pourquoi des poètes? is nihilism, that is to say the problem of the loss of meaning and reference in the world, the loss of the sacred due to the flight from the gods. In this scene, the poet and the philosopher speak of our time as the time of the “night of the world”. Things have reached such a state in our world that we do not even realize what we have lost. Everything seems normal to us, even rather excellent, since it is a time of great technological progress. We are facing a spiritual and cultural abyss and we don’t even know it. It is therefore the task of the poet to explore the abyss, to tell others what it is and how it could be overcome. The poet brings back from the abyss of his madness the hope that “Where danger is, there also grows that which saves”.
Musically speaking, the opera is scored for bass voice (the poet), soprano voice/viola (the philosopher), trombone/bass-baritone voice, bass clarinet/bass-baritone voice, 16-channel live electronics and live video.
In this music a new type of “sound-based” harmony is explored, a spectral harmony based not only on the relationships between frequency, timbre and sound spectrum, as in French spectral music, but also on the relationships between frequency, duration, rhythm, tempo, timbre, space and musical form.
