Harry Christophers, the conductor of The Sixteen, sang professionally for nearly ten years after university, including three years with the BBC Singers, where he first encountered the works on this album.
Composition History
Marcel Couraud, a conductor, commissioned the works by La Jeune France on this album, specifying they be in 12 parts, on the subject of love, and about 20 minutes long.
Compositional Technique
Jolivet, influenced by Varèse's incantatory music, developed an idiom combining French exoticism with the percussion-dominated sounds and ritual structures of ethnic music from Africa and Asia.
Historical Context
La Jeune France emerged in 1935 as a counterpoint to the prominent 'Les Six' group of composers, whose anti-Romantic stance and hedonistic spirit had dominated French musical life after WWI.
Composer's Artistic Vision
La Jeune France, founded in 1935, sought to promote 'youthful and free' music that stood apart from academic or revolutionary clichés, encouraging sincerity, generosity, and artistic awareness.
Composition History
The composers Jolivet, Messiaen, and Daniel-Lesur (along with Yves Baudrier) formed 'La Jeune France', a group aiming to restore spiritual values to music.
Compositional Technique
Messiaen's Cinq rechants uses a surrealist text blending French, Sanskrit, and the Quechua language of Peruvian Indians, with allusions to the Tristan legend and other myths.
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