The concert De la modernité à la contemporanéité pays tribute to composers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Discovering musical evolution throughout the twentieth century, following composers’ artistic journeys and leaving the beaten track: all this will be possible at the concert on Thursday 17 December at Le Palot in Montbéliard, under the imposing title De la modernité à la contemporanéité. Conservatoire teachers will perform three pieces.
The first, Dérive pour 6 musiciens, was written by Pierre Boulez. The choice is significant: “This piece symbolises the bridge between formalist music, based on strict rules, and more hedonistic compositions. It marks a turning point in Boulez’s work, which became less austere, more focused on sound, harmony and rhythm,” explains Jacopo Baboni-Schilingi, who leads the interactive music ensemble at the École nationale de musique.
He wrote the second piece, Les Couleurs, a cycle honouring great twentieth-century masters such as Ligeti, Luciano Berio and Brian Ferneyhough. “Each musician is associated with a colour. It is a metaphor through which I felt free to imagine possible and varied worlds of timbre, rhythm and playing techniques. It honours those who invented new writing techniques and the history of written music,” he continues.
Piano, violin and double bass provide opportunities to experiment: “We reproduce sounds by fusing percussion, strings and brass. But these sonorities are not instrumental.” It is more a matter of exploring sound and searching for new musical worlds. “These are very particular playing techniques invented by the masters.”
The third composition is Pierre Jodlowski’s De Front pour 7 musiciens et électronique, considered by specialists one of the finest interactive pieces of the twenty-first century. “There will be eight musicians and two computers on stage.” The artist incorporates numerous artistic processes and new technologies into his compositions: staging, images, gestures, cinematic dimensions and electronics.
The concert has also inspired educational encounters, as ENM cultural outreach officer Gilles Faget notes: “The musicians introduced pupils from Lycée Cuvier’s music class and multimedia students in Montbéliard to these musical practices.”
A. L.
Caption: Laurent Zemp and Jacopo Baboni-Schilingi will conduct the concert with Daniel Rassinier. Photo: Francis Reinoso.
The conservatoire’s interactive music ensemble performs De la modernité à la contemporanéité on Thursday 17 December at 8.30 p.m. at Le Palot, Montbéliard. Conductors: Laurent Zemp, Daniel Rassinier and Jacopo Baboni-Schilingi. Free admission.