Daïmôn

A whole kind of percussion instruments is gathered,  that the mischievous shocks and sounds embody the devil. In an imaginary but very sonorous space, this diabolus (in Musica) himself invites the famous Queen of Sabbat, accompanied by a crowd hopping with monsters, witches, puppets and skeletons.

At this specific time, the sticks perform several dances of death and testify to Man’s eternal fascination for death. For the pleasure of a live public, the composer Zad Moultaka ready to create a new contemporary vision of the hell.

We would like to imagine the diabolus in musica as a hideous and evil being which composers have fought against since the Middle Ages. But isn’t it a simple tritone interval, used to suggest evil or ugliness because of its extreme musical tension?

Is this monster one of those transmitted by the marquee of the Romanesque art or, later, painted by Francisco de Goya? Serpents, goats or dragons form a host of demons associated with witches and other succubus, from which stand out Lucifer, the Queen of Sheba, Satan or the Devil himself! With force, they express horror, temptation, fear… and other unmentionable feelings .

We find these extravagant creatures in the musical repertoire, boasting in the Danse macabre by Camille Saint-Saëns, exulting in the Nuit du sabbat by Hector Berlioz! They will inspire as well Serge Prokofiev with Suggestion Diabolique, while Igor Stravinsky stages the ghost of his murdered puppet Petrushka.

Instrumental innovations then contribute to these terrible interpretations: a xylophone leads the dance of the skeletons, the bells of the funeral toll create a void around them, the tambourine is thrown to the ground like a shattered skull… By enhancing the orchestra of incredible sounds, the percussions translate the trouble, the power and the mystic magic.

Today, the writing of these four composers seems to call for contemporary percussion and its contrasting dynamics, its obsessive rhythms, its sharp textures. And what would be the sensations if these essential works were played by a percussion orchestra… ? This experience is performed today ed by the Percussions Claviers de Lyon with Daïmôn.

Collaborating in this adventure, the composer Zad Moultaka adapted four short pieces of Serge Prokofiev: Réminiscence – Élan – Désespoir – Suggestion Diabolique, and composed a part of the program. Within the form of the musical miniatures, he writes three interludes staging them as spaces of resonance and  meditation. A new work ends the whole progression, in which the percussionists voices extend their instruments play as an “ultimate movement of the body”.

Gilles Dumoulin & Zad Moultaka