related works
Les Trottoirs de Paris : for soprano, tenor and piano / Olivier Greif
Genre:
Vocal music
Subgenre:
Voice and piano
Scoring:
sopr ten pf
Oud lied : voor lage stem en piano / [tekst] (Annie Salomons), Herman Mulder
Genre:
Vocal music
Subgenre:
Voice and piano
Scoring:
alt/bar pf
Genre:
Vocal music
Subgenre:
Voice and piano
Scoring:
sopr-m pf
Una candida cerva : voor sopraan en piano, 1995, Petrarca, Sonnet 190 / Jurriaan Andriessen
Genre:
Vocal music
Subgenre:
Voice and piano
Scoring:
sopr pf
composition
Les Trottoirs de Paris : for soprano, tenor and piano / Olivier Greif
Other authors:
Greif, Olivier
(Composer)
Description:
The work, Les Trottoirs de Paris was written in October 1996 on a text by Yves Petit de Voize. This poem, originally conceived to serve as a literary counterpoint to an exhibition of photographs devoted to Paris at night, describes the nocturnal wandering of a walker through different parts of the capital, with their respective activities. At dawn - "at the hour when no train arrives or leaves" - the walker returns home to sleep. That is when the bugle of the military school suddenly sounds...
This melody uses a double musical sign, seemingly antithetical. On one hand, a waltz rhythm flirting with the Musette and Java, and on the other a reminder of one of Haendel’s harmonic marches. The work seems to rise gradually from the depths of the night. At the end of an inexorable crescendo, it will return there, vanishing into a silence filled with unsanswered questions and desolation.
Haridas Greif, November 13, 1996
(Translation: Anne-Elise Thouvenin and Lavanya Ghose Muller)