Eros & Thanatos - chansons d'amour de la renaissance et plain-chant pour la mort

Description

In the expressive aesthetics of the 19th century, death is a personal drama. From Mozart's Requiem to Wagner's Death of Love, music is an urgent and intimate interpretation of the text, making individual fate a central theme. The perspective of the Renaissance is radically different: death is a law of nature. The music of masses and funeral services is therefore not "sad" emotionally; rather, it asserts itself in its unadorned clarity, a meditation on death that does not ignore that all life inherently carries death — a mantra of contemplation in texts behind which the artifices of musical construction are deliberately concealed. A question then arises: what can poor humanity oppose to death, embodied in the Greek god Thanatos? In the Middle Ages, church music found the following answer: a work of art that can be repeated in writing as an attempt to abolish disappearance. A rigorous rite that clearly comments on the passing of the human being, illuminating the "commonplace of death" and not referring solely to individual fate. The Eros & Thanatos program celebrates this rite in its own way: the historical foundation of the music is a manuscript of Gregorian chant, copied around 1545 in the cathedral of Toledo (Spain) and titled "In crastino omnium defunctorum ad matutinum." The title refers to a prayer "in the morning in memory of all the deceased." The texts of these matins, the nocturnal office between midnight and dawn, are drawn from the Psalms and the Book of Job. They address the existential distress of humanity in the face of death, but also faith in resurrection and the salvation of the soul.