Académie Desprez

The link between the glassharmonica and Drottningholm Slottsteater became rapidly obvious during the making of this project. Like the instrument, the theatre is born of the XVIII^th century; and like the theatre, it has also been "forgotten" for all of the XIX^th century. Its rediscovery during the XX^th century stems from a growing interest within our period for the ancient repertory. One of the main composers who was interested in the glassharmonica was J.-G. Naumann, composer of Gustave III's court, who wrote twelve sonatas for it; Marie-Antoinette played the Harmonica and most of the composers whose operas are performed at Drottningholm have played or have written for the glass harmonica.

The project Des Orages comes from the desire to recreate this link by associating, in a contemporary piece, the glassharmonica and two musical instruments that have been found among machinery at Drottningholms Slottsteater and put back into service:

the thunder machinery or "thunderbox" is a wood chest of three meters long, suspended to a horizontal axis that crosses its centre, containing round stones. By the action of cords, the box seesaws, and stones roll to one side or the other. The resonance of the box, amplified by the structure of the auditorium, quite perfectly imitates the noise of the thunder;
the wind machine is made of a wood cylinder, entailed by a crank, that rubs against transverse cloth bands, producing a variable hiss well conjuring the sound zephyrs and aquilons.

This machinery, which cannot be removed from the stage, will provide the material for the recorded electronics. The glassharmonica, as the featured instrument, will therefore be played "directly" and slightly amplified. As such, the aim of this project is not to play any contemporary music at Drottningholm, but on the contrary to "have Drottningholm heard" in a contemporary piece. In this way, the work will make sound, everywhere it will be played, these two instruments that have remained confined during a hundred and twenty years in the silent theatre.

In Des Orages (which tells "the story" of a storm), the combination of the glassharmonica and recordings of wind and thunder machines creates a historical viewpoint. It concerns instruments dating from the XVIII^th century, rejoined for a work that directly makes reference to musical forms of XXI^st century. The tempest, as a musical form, appears frequently as a dramatic episode in the opera of the XVIII^th century - often enough to have these two resonant machines attached to the visual stage machinery. But this gender has equally existed, independently, in an instrumental form - as for example in Vivaldi's Seasons (The Summer). This second tradition, with a long history, is to be resumed and reinterpreted here.

Des Orages adopts a figuralistic viewpoint rather than realistic that bears relation to the musical process that will be included in the electronic part. The sounds do not fill a decorative function but rather a dramatic function, and will be incorporated into the written score. Therefore comes the wish to employ not wind and thunder recordings, but recordings of instruments imitating the thunder and the wind: instrumental sounds that are much more evocative than random sounds taken from nature.

To record what the audience can hear at Drottningholm