The young Swiss
composer Xavier Dayer has hitherto made only the most fleeting
appearance on Music Web (see review)
and this is the first full CD to be devoted to his work,
so some background is perhaps in order. He was born in Geneva.
His early studies in composition were with Eric Gaudibert
and he later worked with Tristan Murail and Brian Ferneyhough
in Paris. Also trained as a classical guitarist, he has
won a variety of composition prizes. He was awarded a prize
for young artists by his native city of Geneva in 1999-2000.
September 1999 saw the premiere of his chamber opera ‘Le
marin’ (to a text by the great Portuguese poet Fernando
Pessoa). Poetic texts seem often to inspire Dayer’s music
– as on this present CD; another early work, premiered in
1998 by Ensemble Contrechamps, was his 'Hommage à François
Villon', a work for choir and instrumental ensemble. Dayer
teaches counterpoint and orchestration at the conservatories
in Geneva and Neuenberg.
Pessoa is an
important presence here, too. Three of the pieces – Sonnets
VIII, X and XVIII – are responses to his work. Only one
of them, Sonnet X, is an actual setting of words by Pessoa.
One of the most remarkable things about Pessoa’s work as
a poet was that he wrote poems under a range of other names,
heteronyms, effectively creating a number of ‘sub-poets’,
as it were – such as Alberto Caeiro, Álvaro de Campos,
Ricardo Reis and Bernardo Soares – each with a an individual
personality and style. To read Pessoa is inevitably to find
oneself speculating about the nature of human identity.
That seems to be what is going on – or part of what is going
on – in Dayer’s musical responses to Pessoa. ‘Sonnet VIII’,
for example, is scored for solo flute and cello, with instrumental
ensemble. It is heard here in a concert recording. Each
of the solo instruments seek to affirm some kind of identity
of its own, to present some kind of acceptable mask to the
world, perhaps even to establish a relationship between
the two of them. The larger instrumental ensemble evokes
some sort of ground, some kind of enduring presence, from
which the soloists have emerged and which constantly reminds
them of what they have left behind, or sought to forget,
in their desire to shape a face for the world. I am not
sure that my reading of this piece is ‘correct’; what I
am sure of is that it is an intriguing, intricate work which
rewards careful listening. The same goes for ‘Sonnet XVIII’,
of which Dayer himself writes “I experience this piece like
a shoot whose roots would be the labyrinth of thought described
by Fernando Pessoa in his Sonnet XVIII. To exit from this
labyrinth seems impossible, for the plans used to build
it have been forgotten, the thread that once traced the
pathway is lost: Theseus is condemned to wander. Thus the
series of musical events has the semblance of being logical,
but, like the ‘exquisite corpses’ of the Surrealists, we
always remain on this side of a resolution, of meaning”.
While Dayer’s music doesn’t have a programme as such, it
does operate around a series of literary/mythological symbols,
by allusion and echo. This is, indeed, ‘poetic’ music. ‘Sonnet
X’ is a setting for two choirs, a capella, of one of Pessoa’s
sonnets – a translated text is provided.
Of the other
works here, ‘To the Sea’ responds to the paintings and drawings
of the American artist Cy Twombly, whose work often incorporates
calligraphic or pseudo-calligraphic marks, so that once
again Dayer is concerned with the ‘translation’ of text
into music. ‘To the sea’ is written for solo flute, exploiting
both orthodox and unorthodox resources on the instrument.
It is played here with considerable virtuosity by Felix
Renggli and is full of Twombly-like squiggles and gestures,
interwoven traces, moments of clarity and completion, moments
of the half-thought and the incomplete statement. The first
work on the CD, ‘Bientôt, dispersés par le vent’ is for
a large a capella choir and sets texts, and fragments of
texts, by Shakespeare, Marlowe, Brant, Kleist, Calderon
and (again) Pessoa, all in their original languages. Texts,
but no translations, are provided. What we hear is a live
recording from a concert. The whole – in terms of both text
and music – is a kind of meditation on light and darkness,
at times solemn and portentous, at others rather more ironic.
The argument of the music runs from beginning to end, without
reprise or repetition, a single journey made through a changingly
lit landscape. It is a haunting piece, which stays in the
memory.
Dayer is obviously
a substantial and individual composer, and this is an attractive
introduction to some aspects of his work.
Glyn Pursglove
AVAILABILITY
MGB Records (Migros-Genossenschafts-Bund)
http://www.musikszene-schweiz.ch
http://www.musiques-suisses.ch/
1 SWR-Vokalensemble
Stuttgart / Rupert Huber; 2 Ensemble Contrechamps / Jurjen
Hempel; 3 Felix Renggli (alto flute); 4 Finnish
Radio Chamber Choir / Timo Nuoranne; 5 Orchestre de la Suisse
Romande / Arturo Tamayo
