Complainte de l'époux outragé (orchestre, orgue, orgue de barbarie et voix)

Hi all of you,

I come back with this little steal to submit to you.

The text is a dialogue, in this form of popular speech of the beginning of the century (last)...

I wanted to make this alternation between the woman's love exaltation (With the complicity of the church organ) and the squeaky violence going crescendo of the man, while evoking the turn of a street song.In the end, we will hear the organ of barbarism to which the last word belongs...

I sing the vocal line, which is not simple...

Thanks !

I was criticized on another forum for the lack of context of my presentation :

It is therefore a piece completed a week ago, for solo voice (mine, baritone) orchestra, church organ, orgue de barbarie at the end (I'm not sure about the translation of the name of this instrument, if you can help me by the way... Barrel organ Seems strange).

I use sample libraries. The voice is recorded with a Schoeps MK4 couple in XY.

The poem is a rise in tension of a dialogue that goes wrong, between the husband's murderous jealousy and the wife's falsely mystical answers (who has the last word by finally proclaiming her freedom).

Have a good day,

Hi @Krisp!

Sorry for my late reply. I have been real busy these few months and the energy remaining I used it for composing, so I didn’t review at all until last week when I finally finish a part of my work!

Your tone colour is so contrasting here. Almost for every sentence you change the timbre, harmonic colour, texture and mood! And the music doesn’t sound disorganised at all! That’s amazing. Your ability to shape colour is always something to be learned from.

The build up near 1:53 is so wonderful, but the contrast in 1:55 is even more so! 3:29 contrabassoon is so evil!And I like the organ ending! But I love the whole piece’s colour and I am just too lazy to point them all out LoL!

On 5/2/2024 at 9:32 PM, Krisp said:

I sing the vocal line, which is not simple...

You sing too well here! It’s hard to sing with your expressiveness and with your understanding of the music (off you are the composer!) your vocal is so speech like and lively. Those high jumps and rhythm are for sure difficult, but you handle them really well! Congrats on this.

Thx so much for sharing Jean!

Henry

A huge thank you dear Henry for this very nice return.

I will quickly listen to your recent composition.

Hi @Krisp!

What a bombastic and full of dissonance orchestration which portrays well the conflict between the husband and the wife!  I am glad that the wife won out in the end.  I wonder - would this song be better served/performed if the two characters in the song were performed by a man and a woman, respectively?  It is confusing to hear the wife's lyrics sung by you, being a man.  I think it would add a lot to my comprehension of the dialogue between the husband and the wife if they were sung by different voices.  But I think I still got the gist of it and I really enjoyed this song!  Thanks for sharing.

2 hours ago, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

Hi @Krisp!

What a bombastic and full of dissonance orchestration which portrays well the conflict between the husband and the wife!  I am glad that the wife won out in the end.  I wonder - would this song be better served/performed if the two characters in the song were performed by a man and a woman, respectively?  It is confusing to hear the wife's lyrics sung by you, being a man.  I think it would add a lot to my comprehension of the dialogue between the husband and the wife if they were sung by different voices.  But I think I still got the gist of it and I really enjoyed this song!  Thanks for sharing.

 

Hello Peter,

Thank you for listening and this comment.

The orchestration is indeed a little oversized compared to the very simple purpose of this dialogue. However, I wanted to try to stick as best as possible to the words of each protagonist, namely, the woman's love/mystical exaltation, her alibi, supported by stable tones, a certain clarity of instrumentation, the organ (to emphasize pseudo piety)... in response to the rise in tension of the husband's increasingly pressing and inquisitorial questions, with an instrumentation evoking military instruments (since he thinks he has seen an officer...). The harmonic context then becomes very unstable, dissonant, with an increasingly chaotic singing line.<

In my mind, if the woman had the last word, I have the impression in any case that it went really wrong... ("bruler la cervelle", In the end, means "pull in the head" Which suggests that something irremediable may happen after the wife's ultimate answer)... (In any case, that's what I wanted to make you feel in this dialogue, which in my opinion is not trivial).

It is not uncommon, in the German Lied or the French Melodie  (or even the American or English "Song") to have male or female characters indifferently sung by the same "narrator" (and even sometimes animals (or even objects!)... This must be seen a bit like a declamation of poetry, more so than as an opera scene.

That said, I would have loved to summon a colleague to register the wife"s Answers, and I know that it would have been a much more readable approach for the listener, which is a quite right observation on your part!

In any case, a big thank you for these relevant observations.

I am blown away by the rich orchestration and lovely dramatic vocal line.  It is a beautifully crafted work.  I am truly in awe of your talent.

Mark

On 7/7/2024 at 11:31 PM, MJFOBOE said:

I am blown away by the rich orchestration and lovely dramatic vocal line.  It is a beautifully crafted work.  I am truly in awe of your talent.

Mark

 

Thank you for this comment that touches me a lot!