Betsy Jolas

Autres Chants

Autres chants' (Other songs) is a cycle of five lieder for 3-part women's choir and obligato piano, by which I mean that the piano takes part in the musical development following the tradition of the German lied. As for the text, having worked quite a while on 'real' poems (Reverdy, Victor Hugo, du Bouchet, Dupin), I returned here to my own texts, written specifically for music in the 60s and which I had then set in a work called 'Mots' (1963). It was already about love, pain and play… but sixty years later, the world had changed a lot and the words didn't quite have the same meaning. So there is nothing here that recalls the initial work. Hence also the need today to give evocative titles to the five pieces of this cycle: - Neigées (Snowi traces) - Même pas peur (Hardly scared) - Oh ne plus… (Oh no longer…) - N'es mien (Aren't mine) - D'elle? (Of her?)