THE MORNING LIST
This week we present a selection of recently published books where music has a prominent place: classical music influenced by Greek Antiquity; jazz pianist and composer Martial Solal celebrated in drawings; Paul McCartney narrating his songs; the autobiography of a hip-hop pioneer in France, Solo; a monograph dedicated to Brigitte Fontaine; a dive into Serge Gainsbourg’s discotheque; portraits of women artists by the tattoo artist and illustrator La Rata; a musical, historical, social, intimate journey to Brazil, or rather to the brazils.
The imprint of ancient Greece on music, from Monteverdi to Britten
Since the 17thmy From century to the present day, Greek Antiquity has nourished the imagination of composers who have extracted from it the material for works destined to go down in history thanks to 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 ever more deeply in the marble by centuries of scholarly study, had nevertheless produced only a succession of bases of solid appearance but of friable essence upon which poets and musicians could register your defect. » Associated “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 into a XIXmy 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, Second Vienna School). By Richard Strauss (electra) to Benjamin Britten (Death in Venice), the “Moderns” are the subject of a multipolar treatment. Seduced by the originality of the theme and the luminescence of the writing, the reader becomes, throughout the pages, a kind of “Philhélène Pierrakos”. P.Gi.
A magnificent comic strip to tell the story of a jazz great.
TO “personal and subjective portrait”: in the first pages of Martial Solal, an unexpected life, This is how Vincent Sorel presented his project to the pianist, composer and conductor. It is a magnificent cartoon 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 in the early 1950s, the nights playing at the Club Saint-Germain with American soloists in passing, his first compositions, including the Suite in D flat for jazz quartet, film music – that ofBreathless, by Jean-Luc Godard –, the call of 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 one, soloist, triumphant, Salle Gaveau, in Paris on January 23, 2019.
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