Leipsano

Sappho of Mytilene was born in the 7th century BC.
Of the “immortal” poetess, nicknamed “the tenth muse” by Plato, described as “surprising thing” (θαυμαστόν τι χρῆμα) by Strabo, adulated by Ovid and Catullus, only tattered poems remain. Leipsano means in ancient Greek the remains, by extension the remains of the dead, the relics, with their thaumaturgical dimension, their prodigious force, acting through the centuries.

Originally the composer wanted to embrace the entirety of the found fragments of Sappho of Mytilene, keeping the manuscripts in the state of snatches, with the holes of the text, the gaps. To inscribe the song in the silence of forgetfulness, accidents and omissions of the memory, the deterioration, the decay, the fire of the autodafés …
Finally tightening the text, dividing it into several “spatial” choruses, it causes the perfumes of words, – whole or truncated -, the sensual and “holy” remains of the poem. The splinters drift, are superimposed, gradually and completely, whirling until stunning. An ison that is transformed, long glissandi that blurs the boundaries between heights, to infinity and the loss of any reference. Reverberations, echoes, flashes, twinkles, siren songs, surf … Everything mixes, intertwines in an abyss up to dizziness, until the seizure of the sacred.
ZM lets go of his unconscious, on the ravaged body of the poem – to give .. beautiful and good … sorrow … blame – …, proceeding to the invention of an erotic liturgy. It is Eros, breaker of limb, power of desire and love that Sappho’s poetry embodies in all its phenomenology, one could say its physiology. A fire runs under my skin / by my eyes I do not see anything, my ears are buzzing … Sweat floods me, a tremor seizes me all, and I am greener than the grass, and almost missing I’m dead I myself … The soul noursihed by Syriac, Arab and Western cultures, the composer finds the way to an archaic Greece, mythical for a timeless musical imaginary and contemporary.

set

3S / 3A / 3T / 3B, 4 choirs, 5 chefs
1 instrumental ensemble: 1 clarinet, 1 saxophone, 1 trumpet in C, 1 trombone, 1 percussion, 1 piano, 2 violins, 1 viola, 1 cello, 1 double bass
1 orchestra: flute, trombones, tubas, 1 percussion, 1 piano, violins, violas, cellos, contrabasses

partition extract