(2018) electroacoustic music [13’ 43”]
Commissione: Flaubert Revue critique et génétique
Enfoncer une porte ouverte represents the beginning (Part I, chapters 1 to 4) of a longer work commissioned by Bruna Donatelli, editor of “Flaubert en musique”, issue 21 of Flaubert Revue critique et génétique.
We know that for Flaubert text and sound (writing and reading) were not two separate entities, as he was reading aloud his drafts, Στέντορι εἰσαμένη μεγαλήτορι χαλκεοφώνῳ, ὃς τόσον αὐδήσασχ᾽ ὅσον ἄλλοι πεντήκοντα[1]. Thanks to this practice, he called gueuloir[2], he evaluated the quality of his sentences according their sonority: “Plus une idée est belle, plus la phrase est sonore; soyez-en sûre. La precisión de la pensée fait (et est elle-même) celle du mot”[3]. So I asked to the voice in my composition – Marie Gaboriaud- not to read the published version of Madame Bovary, but the final manuscript. I animate the text with sound-objects whose source is not necessarily heard, as I often replace the vocal spectrum with that of the sounds mentioned in the book, while the voice amplitude envelope will still determine the rhythm. The idea is to give rise to what I call an Imaginary Soundscape, where the sounds assume the role of characters, as in a stage work.
I am deeply indebted to Bruna Donatelli for guiding me into Flaubert’s world, hoping she will find the ideas aroused from her many advices now developed into a musical, even though unfinished, collana.
[1] “in the likeness of great-hearted Stentor of the brazen voice, whose voice is as the voice of fifty other men”, Homer, Iliad, V, 785.
[2] Michael Fried, Flaubert’s ‘Gueuloir.’ On ‘Madame Bovary’ and ‘Salammbô’, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2012.
[3] Letter to Mlle. Leroyer de Chantepie, December 12th 1857.