La voix, poem by Robert Desnos music by Dominique Plenat for SATB choir – sheet music a cappella mixed voices
After Surgis (Edition A Cśur Joie ref. 10060), his composition to a text by Paul Eluard, Dominique Plenat shares his vision of La voix (The voice) by Robert Desnos, another great poet and resistance fighter during WW2, friend of Eluard by the way, and, like him, of André Breton and Picasso.
This poem is from the collection Contrée published first time in 1944 just after the author's arrest for acts of the French Resistance and his deportation. He died of typhus in 1945, a month after his liberation by the Russians.
Deliberately far from a scholarly or complex approach, this music for four-part mixed choir aims to bring out simply, just to underline it, this very beautiful text from the time of the Resistance.
Like most of the works Dominique Plénat writes for the choirs he conducts, this is a short, warm and easily accessible piece. With a few descriptive surprises, the whole is, in the end, very classical. The composer's interest in sixteenth-century choral music is evident, particularly in his treatment of cadenzas.
To ensure that the music really serves the text, which is what we're aiming for, we suggest working on phrasing and accentuation from the very first approach to the score.
The voice in question is mysterious, distant and yet very audible and so convincing right up to the end of this luminous poem:
Elle dit : « La peine sera de courte durée »
Elle dit : « la belle saison est proche ».
Ne l'entendez-vous pas ?
- She says: "The sentence will be short".
- She says: "The fine season is just ahead".
- Can't you hear it ?
To make this voice heard? Such a nice project for a choir!
Sheet music score for 4 mixed voices A cappella Choir (SATB).
Performance circa 2 minutes.
