Search - Georges Aperghis, Martine Viard :: Georges Aperghis: Récitations

Incredible work for solo voice

scarecrow | Chicago, Illinois United States | 01/19/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"if you are interested fascinated in what it means to me human, what human emotions can come to mean and deposit within the paradigm of drama,this work certainly points situates itself in this direction, you may not know Aperghis and his works; primarily focused on the voice, on unaccompanied displays,terrains of every conceivable timbre(s) the voice can produce,but controlled very tightly with his affinity for rhythmic architecture,but also allowing the dimensions of the psych of the performer to collectivize the final product of the work. Aperghis also has that Shakespearean dimension to what he does trying to see all sides, all perspectives of the human animal simultaneously, from humors darknesses, thorny angularities, penumbral, seductive, questioning, opaque and drawn, lumbered and tenuous,off-center, threadbare and rotund, submission to a higher powers, duplicitous,aggravated,monstrous in some way it is in the performance of these "Recitations". Martine Viard is incredible,making the work quite literally her own. Aperghis notational means leaves enoughconceptual space for the performer, not giving too much detail, although each tone in some is/are assigned a timbre, as crotales, birds, flat,dull.And the performer must further use their imaginations on what this may mean. The construction of the music sometimes utilizes the augmentation process,additive, like "Ten Days of Christmas", or "Row-Row Yer Boat"but this simplicity produces incredible power while simultaneously allowing more playful readings if desired, here we have very simple procedures,take two sounds,"desire"(de-sire) given add one to make three, then four, then five and six, perhaps three more, all in a ruch forward, barely enough time to draw a breath, in fact that is the point in Recitation #10, like a human firecracker going off. The range of emotion and depth of drama is also quite fascinating, with the last one here Recitation #14, like a whimper,a long syy, a controlled sadness on what the human animal has created for itself and continues to nourish today. Ms. Viard also revisits most of the Recitations ,(#10 four times)(#8,three times)redoing them one hard-edged, the same rhythms then another reading more pigeon-like cues exhibited, bubbling, and seductive. Aperghis then you see merely gives the skeletel rhythmic shapes to be filled, deposited with the human dimension.Sometimes he indicates tones, but repetitive, always returning to identical timbres whenever a "G" or "C#" is desired for example.



Written in 1977-1978, the period of structuralism,Lacan I guess should be iterated and cannot be overlooked,the affinity for pure shapes,and what topologies can produce and what it may come to mean, as Levi-Strauss,Baudrillard,Lyotard also the Left of ALthusser and Poulantzas contributed to the meanings of this time, it was when the avant-garde simultaneously became democratized,yet turning inward in many respects, reducing itself to the populace,anti-elitist yet escapist in many ways sobering up to the plural vigours of late capitalism.



Check-Out this composer's work,it is well worth the effort if you have any interest in the human voice and what it is capable. He also has well-focused/situated dramatic works for the human dimension, duets and quartets, and longer realizations as Mueller's "HamletMachine"."

Witty, fun, a piece that deserves to be ranked among the maj

Discophage | France | 04/28/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I usually write lengthy reviews, but here I don't need to, as the previous reviewer has given the essential info and made appropriate comments. Yes, the references to Ligeti's Aventures and Nouvelles Aventures and Berio's Sequenza for voice (he could have added the latter's A-Ronne) are apt. Yes the disc is under 40 minutes - 38:06 to be precise - which is much too short for a CD: the recording was originally published on LP in 1982, and Montaigne/Audivis should have complemented it with something else on any of its CD reissues - the 14 "Jactations", Aperghis's similar work for solo baritone from 2001, would now be a perfect match (and both would nicely fit on the CD, totalling about 78-minutes), but there are other earlier such pieces for solo soprano : "Six Tourbillons" (1989), "Cinq Calme-plats" (1992), both premiered by Martine Viard, with so far as I know only Tourbillons recorded, on the hard-to-find label La Muse en Circuit. They would have made a fine coupling



Let me just add that Aperghis is a composer born in Greece in 1945 and, like Xenakis, early on established in France, where he was one of the main inventors of "théâtre musical" - music theatre - in the early 1970s, and is still today one of its foremost exponents. But he's composed full-scale operas as well, recently Tristes Tropiques after Levy-Strauss (1995, premiered at the Strasbourg Opera) and Avis de Tempête (2004, Lille Opera, Georges Aperghis: Avis de Tempete). As for Martine Viard, though nowhere as famous as the late Cathy Berberian, she is an actress-vocalist of the same ilk, sharing the same attitude and exploratory mind in relation both to the many possibilities of the human voice and the old traditions of opera. She performed many Aperghis music-theatre compositions, as well as some by Kagel. Cage and Stockhausen wrote for her.



Where I radically differ with the previous reviewer is on the conclusion: the Recitations are marvellous inventions in contemporary vocal virtuosity, they are witty and fun, they are varied and employ the full range of vocal techniques and expression - a kind of modern Paganini Caprices for voice - and I for one do not get bored listening to 38-minutes of them. But for those who might, there is still the option of taking them in small doses. My only regret is that Martine Viard doesn't perform them all: there are fourteen of them, and for reasons unknown, she leaves out 2, 4 and 6. Frustrating. On the other hand, she repeats 10 three times (widely varying interpretation) and 8. In at least some of the Recitations the score is geometrically disposed in columns on the page, and the singer can perform them reading horizontally or vertically; I have the first CD issue whose booklet nicely reproduced the score to Recitation 8 (see Aperghis:Recitations for Solo Voice), consisting of three colums, with each subsequent line of each adding a syllable (the right column actually ends - or rather, starts - with a cough and a sigh), in a manner reminiscent of the language games of George Perec and the Oulipo movement: Viard's three versions present a vertical reading of each columns (but alas no horizontal reading of the whole). Likewise her fourth reading of 10 is actually of the right column.



In my opinion, this deserves to be ranked, with Berio's Sequenza, among the major works for contemporary vocal technique, and I think the only factor that has so far limited its being recognized as such is that Aperghis works mostly in France, and that the piece draws on French language - rather than Italian or German or English. I also recommend Aperghis' later "Sextuor", a piece of music-theatre from 1993 in which he puts these vocal techniques to use in the context of a stage-work for 5 female vocalists and a cellist (see my review of Sextuor / L'Origine Des Especes).

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Explorations of the possibilities of the human voice, which

Christopher Culver | 07/20/2008

(2 out of 5 stars)

"For the 30+ years of his career, the composer Georges Aperghis has been writing mainly an usual kind of music theatre. His major work is "Recitations" for solo voice (1978), inspired by the French actress Martine Viard who wanted to concentrate more on a singing career without losing the theatricality of her former line of work. While some actual French words are used, the text is mainly subject to permutations that render it nonsense, and all expression is found in the singer's delivery. The result is somewhat similar to other modernist works I've enjoined, such as Luciano Berio's "Sequenza III" and Gyorgy Ligeti's "Aventures". (Needless to say, if you *don't* like those weird modernist vocal efforts, you'll hate this.) Viard certainly explores the whole range of the human voice and its emotional expression, from brutal agression to childlike innocence. At one point the singer even holds oscillators over her mouth to create weird new timbres.



Unfortunately, the work is not sustainable at its 40-minute length. While this may work in a concert setting where there's a visual element for complete theatricality, a reason I give this two stars to not completely disparage the work, I can't imagine anyone getting much enjoyment from this disc listening at home. Furthermore, though 40 minutes is too much for this piece, it's too short for a CD that is now out of print and will cost you quite a bit."