THE MORNING LIST
This week, here is a selection of recently published books where music has a prominent place: classical music influenced by Greek Antiquity; the jazz pianist and composer Martial Solal celebrated in drawings; Paul McCartney narrating his songs; the autobiography of a pioneer of hip-hop in France, Solo; a monograph dedicated to Brigitte Fontaine; a dive into Serge Gainsbourg’s nightclub; portraits of women artists by tattoo artist and illustrator La Rata; a musical, historical, social, intimate journey into Brazil, or rather the Brazils.
The imprint of ancient Greece in music, from Monteverdi to Britten
Du XVIIe century to the present day, Greek Antiquity has nourished the imagination of composers who have drawn from it the material for works destined to enter history through the mark of individual genius. The modus operandi of these creators « philhellenes” inspired Hélène Pierrakos to write an essay whose title is explained by a postulate formulated in metaphorical terms. “As if the knowledge of the ancient, engraved more and more deeply in marble by centuries of learned studies, had, despite everything, produced only a succession of bases of solid appearance but of friable essence on which poets and musicians could inscribe their flaw. » Associate “poets and musicians”suggests that opera will constitute the privileged genre of reflection.
In fact, the “journey” proposed by Hélène Pierrakos opens with Monteverdi (L'Orfeo, The Return of Ulysses to His Homeland), master of dance and trance, continues with Gluck (Orpheus and Eurydice, Iphigenia in Tauride) and Mozart (Idomeneus) before taking a long step in a XIXe century where the words (Schiller, Goethe) and the notes (Schubert, Wolf) have the Germanic accents of the Lied. Based on prospective listening, the text does not neglect didactic details (opera “by numbers”, classicism, the Second School of Vienna). By Richard Strauss (Elektra) to Benjamin Britten (Death in Venice), the “Moderns” are the subject of a multipolar treatment. Seduced by the originality of the subject and by the luminescence of the writing, the reader becomes, over the pages, a sort of “Philhélène Pierrakos”. P. Gi.
A superb comic strip to tell the story of a jazz great
And “personal and subjective portrait”: in the first pages of Martial Solal, a life unexpectedly, this is how Vincent Sorel presented his project to the pianist, composer and conductor. Which is a superb comic strip in black, white and blue – that of the “blue note” of jazz –, sometimes in black, white and orange. We follow the journey of Martial Solal, his childhood in Algiers, where he was born in 1927, his apprenticeship as a pianist, his first engagements with the saxophonist Lucky Starway, his arrival in Paris at the beginning of 1950, the nights playing at Club Saint -Germain with passing American soloists, his first compositions, including the Suite in D flat for jazz quartet, music for cinema – that ofOut of breath, by Jean-Luc Godard –, the call from the United States, his return to France… And decades of artistic encounters, from a duo to a large orchestra, until his decision to no longer perform in concert after that, solo , triumphant, Salle Gaveau, in Paris on January 23, 2019.
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