ANGE DE FLAMME, Voice, Tp, Ensemble After Rimbaud
Harold Blumenfeld
About this work:
ANGE DE FLAMME ET DE GLACE [Angel of Flame and Ice] - Rimbaud's wildly proto-surrealist "Barbare", surrounded with several brief "Phrases", all from poet's "Les Illuminations". Sung in French.
Baritone or mezzo, flute, clarinet, guitar, 2 perc, viola, cello and tapist.
Recorded Centaur Records CRC 2277: Randall Gremillion, bt, CCM Contemporary Music Ensemble, Gerhard Samuel, conductor.
****REVIEW:...
"A prose poem ('BARBARE') is at the core of the lyrical, compelling, fascinating 'Ange de flamme'. Blumenfeld deftly captures the stragenews, violence, and dislocatring aspects of Rimbaud's writing, as well as its febrile atmosphere." - B. Pernick, Fanfare Magazine.
>>>former publisher MMB MUSIC, now closed. COMPOSER is now publisher. ..
Score: $35.
SOUND BITE: from "BARBARE"- the work's centerpiece. Sample SCORE PAGES on site.
Composer's Notes; text -
"BARBARE" : "..the flag of bleeding meat...arctic flowers...forms, sweats, hair, eyes floating and white tears boiling..." - this around 1870!. This "pavillon de viande saignante.. fleurs arctiques.. les formes, les sueurs, les chevelures et les yeux, flottant" is Surrealism full blown from the pen of our adolescent genius. This half a century before eruption of Official Surrealism in 1920's with its wilted watches, kings Ubu, its nudes on stairs, its self-important manifestos, strains of absurdism, dada, nihilism, its calculated dementia.
Compare Rimbaud's shocking "Je est un autre" with Surrealist Max Ernst's just-plain-silly "Je est Loplop". It is the wildflower gone to seed.
Baudelaire, Verlaine, Mallarme were set by Debussy, Ravel. Boulez has done Mallarme but steered clear of Rimbaud. The youthful Britten's lovely, lyrical "Illluminations" do not penetrate the violent Rimbaldian surface, for they venture not beyond their lyrical tone.
n a century until resources of music could cope with him - with likes of his galactic "fires in the rain of wind of diamonds hurled forth by the heart of earth!".......
Along with the Surreal, Rimbaud anticipates all other "isms" which assault international literature and art decades later after his death......
Rimbaud breaks all limitation in his poetic subjects. He went down wildflower and weed-strewn paths where none had dared tread... and all the way to the ulcerated anus of his "Venus Anodyne"-- to the Georg Grosz gristle of a far later Expressionism.......
Here, my ANGE DE FLAMME - along with FACE CENDREE, CARNET DE DAMNE, and especially their culmination in our opera SEASONS IN HELL, attempts to mobilize sound, now at last, in service of Rimbaud's magical, violent, perplexing lines.
"BARBARE" SOUND BITE, partial text---
BIEN APRES LES JOURS ET LES SAISONS,
Long after the days and seasons...
ET LES ETRES ET LES PAYS
And the creatures and the countries...
OH! LE PAVILLON EN VIANDE SAIGNANTE
SUR LA SOIE DES MERS
ET DES FLEURS ARCTIQUES;
[ELLES N'EXISTENT PAS.]
Oh! The flag of bleeding meat upon the silk of seas and arctic flowers; [they don't exist.]...
REMIS DES VIEILLES FANFARES D'HEROISME -
Delivered from ancient fanfares of heroism -- QUI NOUS ATTAQUENT ENCORE
LE COEUR ET LA TETE - LOIN DES ANCIENTS ASSASSINS - Which still assail us, heart and head - far from the assassins of old ---OH! LE PAVILLON EN VIANDE SAIGNANTE..etc..(Echoes, reverb from tapist)........
Translations copyright 2002 by Harold Blumenfeld.
Year composed: 1990
Duration: 00:13:00
Ensemble type: Voice, Solo or With Chamber or Jazz Ensemble:Voice with Chamber/Jazz Ensemble, 6-9 Players
Instrumentation: 1 Flute, 1 Clarinet, 2 Percussion (General), 1 Viola, 1 Cello, 1 Guitar (Classical/Acoustic), ,1 Medium Voice soloist(s)
Instrumentation notes: To be sung by Mezzo or High Baritone, wide range of pitch, expression; flawless French diction required.
Calls for Tapist to record limited passages for overlapping playback, and to capture echo effects - all only in central setting of cycle - "Barbare".