Mysterious sympathy of the arts
How can we express the inexpressible? Could we use words to bring out the feelings contained in a musical work? To put it plainly, to signify through the written word the signifier of the sound work.
Rather than a theoretical essay, the book Sound papers plunges us straight into the practice of reading Jean-Noël von der Weid's diverse texts, sometimes visionary, sometimes quieter, sometimes breathless, by turns phantasmagorical, facetious, narrative or epic, but always concise, in parallel with the pieces they counterpoint. The experience can be enjoyed aloud or quietly, even in silent reading, and everyone will experience, if not synesthesia, at least a different, particular listening experience, thanks to the very fact that words also have their own rhythms and timbre, sentences their own tempo, climax and breathing. In themselves, these texts possess an intrinsic value, shimmering in a luxuriant vocabulary, capable even of suggesting new sound spaces or inspiring new music. From free description to atmospheric painting, from illustration to pure poetry, sometimes close to gongorism or Lautréamont, the author diversifies approaches, sometimes following the writing process of the chosen composers, playing with styles and their figures, alliterating or assonating, contracting or stretching sentences to the extreme, skilfully slipping in a few authorial quotations (from Rabelais to Artaud). Exceptionally, writings by the composers themselves are used, such as fragments by Janáček or extracts from letters by Lassus. We also discover, for Couperin, the post-mortem inventory of his possessions.
Each of the 49 composers selected is also the subject of a presentation, less biographical than based on the compositional act itself, revealing an intimate understanding of their contribution and specificities. The eclectic selection includes an organum by Pérotin, harpsichord pieces by Couperin or Pancrace Royer, as well as The Waltz by Ravel or Wiener Blut by Johann Strauss Jr., excerpts from Gesänge der Frühe by Schumann or Children's Corner by Debussy, Arcana by Varèse or Black Angels or Gombert, Gesualdo, Beethoven, Liszt, Scriabin, Bartók, Revueltas, Ellington, Scelsi, Ligeti, Kagel, Donatoni or Neuwirth.
Jean-Noël von der Weid: Papiers sonores, 180 p., € 25.00, Éditions Aedam Musicae, Château-Gontier 2016, ISBN 978-2-919046-38-6
Links to recordings of the selected works can be found on the publisher's website:
www.musicae.fr/livre-Papiers-sonores-de-Jean-Noel-von-der-Weid-166-165
