w18181
| Title | Coucou! : Chamber Opera |
| Contributors |
Derek Ball (composer) Derek Ball (author) |
| Composition date | 2009 |
| Duration (mins) | 14 |
| Category | chamber |
| Instrumentation | S Bar / Picc P-A Vn Db |
| Commissioned by | |
| Key signature | |
| First line | |
| First performed | |
| Notes | Written in French by the composer, who gratefully acknowledges the language support of Danielle Piovano. |
| Programme Note | A middle-aged Provençal married couple are out and about, busily engaged in the traditional autumn pursuit of picking cèpes and, calling across a Languedoc mountain valley,they enjoy amusing and scurrilous gossip about their friends and family. They don't avoid the "poisonous mushrooms" of utter slander and character assassination! Even their womanising son and his many mistresses don't escape attention. Every so often the action is interrupted by a traditional Provençal melody. The whole thing is idyllic, until it accidentally emerges that one of them has been unfaithful...and everything changes. The folk tunes are some I learned from traditional musicians in the countryside around Digne-les-bains. They are rendered here by the piccolo, which is used exclusively for that purpose, imitating the traditional <i>galoubet</i>. I use them for the simple purpose of local colour, of course, but in places they also have a serious dramatic purpose, suddenly giving us a cooler perspective on an increasingly tangled human conflict. The melodic lines of both the singers and instruments are consciously influenced by the classic French <i>chanson</i>, but of course I can only aspire to such sublimity, never attain it! |
This work is associated with the following collection items:
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