Commissioned by the Ecole Nationale de Musique et de Danse de Chartres

  • hn/2perc/hp.pf/3vn.va.vc
  • children's choir
  • narrator
  • 30 min
  • by the composer after a poem by Armand Gatti

Programme Note

The texts underlying these fragments are passages from a long poem by Armand Gatti entitled L'Enclos. Through memories, this long poetic narrative recounts the course of a generation that strove to resist against the rise of fascism in the 1930s Europe. This resistance often led them to the concentration camps and, for most of them, to death.

Thanks to the great emotional intensity of his poetic writing, Armand Gatti makes us share his grief for the loss of some dear friends who were barely 20 years old.

The fragments selected for the children's choir are moments where poetry becomes more "distant", as if lost and suspended in its own beauty. The white voices embody those terrible memories by vanishing into an angelic sphere.

The work is a melodrama for narrator, children's choir and small instrumental ensemble. Thus, the poem is to be read, accompanied by the instrumental music and placed in between the choral parts.

This project is dedicated to the memory of Jean Moulin, prefect of Eure-et-Loir, leader of the Resistance movement, for his antifascist struggle.

© Gualtierro Dazzi