Cadavre exquis

Rule of a game established by the vocal ensemble, the texts are fragments of poems composed in writing workshops elaborated by the public. The composer choose what he will retain to animate his work. The relationship of a composer to the text is always a very complex affair, and most of the time comes from the feeling of inner necessity. For a native bilingual person, the distance from the language is raw, immediate, passionate. All the culture that language carries is crystallized in each sentence, in its “natural” prosody, its intonations, its accentuation and its phonemes. On the contrary, sometimes in the absence of certain phonemes, until its inscribed in the musical repertoire (especially in the great tradition of “French melodies”).
 Zad Moultaka had already written music of French poems (Georges Schehadé, Nadia Tuéni) but these productions were rare in his catalog compared to the use of many other languages (Latin, Russian, Italian, Greek, Arabic …) . In Cadavre Exquis, the composer almost systematically deconstructed the structure of words, their morphology, their rhythm, privileging the dynamics of speech in relation to meaning. Compacted syllables, spoken simultaneously, often make the text unintelligible. Some words and sometimes snippets of words emerge, appearing in great clarity like words adrift, like an island. because exquisite corpse is an ocean …This work is of a very particular concept because it is built on the sound overlay of each part over the concert. The first movement, a cappella, is sung and then serves as a “sound layer” in the second. The first two serve as “sound layer” on the third song, the fourth movement pushes the same process further. This “mise en abîme” is vertiginous and creates a strange harmonic texture. Some held notes (approaching the visible lines that allow to continue the drawing of the exquisite corpse) become hinges, operating the passage from one musical space to another. There, we find notions dear to the composer: memory, reflection, shadows, echoes …

The auditioning sensation is astonishing, the constant memory of the past haunts listening, creating a striking effect of the inner labyrinth. We identify ourselves in the living choir, assaulted by its shadow, we try to chase this “other” that pops up and prevents us from hearing clearly our own voice. But this other is ourselves.