This serie of unaccompanied vocal music short
pieces is intended for middle school students. It’s based on 9 paintings
exhibited in the Musée d’arts de Nantes’s renovated galleries.
The aim is to draw closer to famous painters
but also to develop a choir melody from those prestigious paintings, based on
some well-known movements such as popular music, minimalist music, passacaglia,
vocal play, musical design and even a little bit of improvisation.
Those opuses have exclusively been written for
unaccompanied vocal music, so young singers can experiment the pleasure of
shaping and precising their own choir music at the same time as discovering
harmony’s benefits. This would not go without some cheekiness.
However, if the choir isn’t sure, if desks are
inclined, if voices aren’t so in tune, then some instruments should be included
but be careful to their range and various stylistic accounts you get.
So, it can be suggested that: bowed stringed
instruments better suit to "Le Vielleur”, some sonorous brass better suit for "Charlotte
Corday”, low octaves (as D-A in stubborn cadenza) slowly played on a piano
better suit for "Naufrage du trois-mâts ‘L’Emily’”, three contrary collection
instruments can be played for each line of "Les cribleuses de blé”, then
playing bass can represent the punctuate rhythm and alto’s bourdon in "Diane”,
why not, and finally a little bit of fairground organ may be played on "Les
grandes plages de Biarritz” just like a wink.
Some percussionist can come and improvise on
repetitive cells in "Soto”, and then all instrumentalists of each category can
mix to amplify graphics, a tribute to Kandinsky.
The choirmaster is free to choose the order of
pictures. However, stylistic changes have to be taken into consideration.
