[picture: Lucien Clergue, 1955]
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###   Bel enfant de la lumière dors, dors, dors, toujours dors

Beautiful child of light, sleep, sleep, sleep, always sleep

         (Claude Vivier)

Sound and light – two incorporeal elements that fascinate us and that come together in this concert to create a new type of contemporary impressionism, a quest for the sound of light, for purity and love.

Lighting designer Caspar Langhoff has created his own score with a solar eclipse as its guiding theme: fireflies that emit light though vibrations, musicians who play in the dark and brilliant bundles of light that affect the listener experience.

As far back as the Romantic era, composers have been trying to capture light in music. Sunrise and sunset, flames and shadows, a veil that is lifted to reveal a glimpse of a supernatural glow – anyone who loves music will recognize the intimate link between sound and light, the two pre-eminently intangible elements.

In Bioluminescence, the work that recently earned the composer Kristine Tjøgersen the prestigious ‘Norwegian work of the year’ prize, the musicians pierce the dark with little LED lights. Vortex Temporum by Gérard Grisey plays on the concept of ‘rippling’ with subtle and minimalist nuances. Rarely has a composition translated the vibrations of music in such a physical manner, one that evokes all manner of light sensations and images.

One of the best masterpieces of the 20th century was created by the Canadian composer Claude Vivier, which served as inspiration for the title of this concert: Lonely Child. Vivier was obsessed with melody, but in this work he took a daring leap into a radical austerity and simplicity, a ‘purity of heart’. The soprano Lore Binon takes us along long, drawn out and imploring melodies, each note harmonized with lovely chords and distant echoes of the sound of bells. The entire score is bathed in love and clear white light, and portrays a mother as she puts her son to bed: “Bel enfant de la lumière dors, dors, dors, toujours dors. Les rêves viendront, les douces fées viendront danser avec toi” [Beautiful child of light, sleep, sleep, sleep always. Dreams will come, and sweet fairies will dance with you].