Ensemble Ars Nova | Gregory Vajda | Clémence Le Gac Between Dusk And Dawn
The Ars Nova ensemble, specializing in contemporary music, recorded the album Between Dusk and Dawn to mark its 60th anniversary. The title refers to the transitional moment when yesterday's past and tomorrow's future meet – with their activities spanning more than half a century, Ars Nova carries the memory of an era coming to an end, and draws on it to create new discourses relevant today.
The album features one piece each by five composers representing different generations and styles of expression: Jongsung Oh further develops the musical devices and the protagonist’s story from Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, Édith Chanat de Chizy's piece enriches the rather narrow repertoire for two harps, Justė Janulytė shows the workings of an hourglass with the help of two simultaneously unfolding opposite musical processes, Gergely Vajda depicts a human world that no longer functions but has not yet fallen into ruin, and the new beginning that lies within it, while Lisa Heute commemorates the founder of Ars Nova, composer and conductor Marius Constant, with a composition that includes improvisation, sometimes blending the sounds of the individual instruments and sometimes highlighting them.
Founded in 1963, Ars Nova is the first instrumental ensemble in France to promote the creation, performance, and distribution of new music, now worldwide. Their goal is to build the live history of today’s music in the spirit of aesthetic pluralism.
They have maintained a close working relationship with the Péter Eötvös Contemporary Music Foundation for many years, appearing in Hungary in numerous masterclasses and concerts, including events at the BMC. The album's principal conductor, Gergely Vajda, is one of the most renowned Hungarian representatives of contemporary music on the international scene. Following 3 years as artist in residence, he was named principal associated conductor of Ars Nova in 2024. He is currently the music director of the Huntsville Symphony Orchestra, principal conductor of the Savaria Symphony Orchestra, artistic director of the UMZE Ensemble, and program director of the Péter Eötvös Contemporary Music Foundation.
Artists
ensemble Ars Nova:
Pierre-Simon Chevry – flute / flûte
Baptiste Gibier – oboe / hautbois
Éric Lamberger – clarinet / clarinette
Philippe Récard – bassoon / basson
Carl-Emmanuel Fisbach – saxophone
Cédric Bonnet – horn / cor
Matthias Champon – trumpet / trompette
Florian Varmenot – trumpet / trompette
Mathilde Comoy – trombone
Igor Martinez – tuba
Pascal Contet – accordion / accordéon
Isabelle Cornélis – percussion / percussions
Elisa Humanes – percussion / percussions
Michel Maurer – piano
Aïda Aragoneses Aguado – harp / harpe
Henri Gillig – harp / harpe
Catherine Jacquet – violin / violon
Marie Charvet – violin / violon
Benoît Morel – viola / alto
Isabelle Veyrier – cello / violoncelle
Lilas Réglat – double bass / contrebasse
Conducted by Gregory Vajda (1-4) and Clémence Le Gac (5)
Soloists: Aïda Aragoneses Aguado and Henri Gillig – harp (2)
About the album
Recorded at TAP – Scène nationale de Grand Poitiers in September 2024
Artistic director: Benoît Sitzia
Stage manager / Régie générale : Erwan Le Métayer
Recorded and mixed by Christophe Hauser
Artwork: Anna Natter / Cinniature
Produced by László Gőz
Label manager: Tamás Bognár
Co-produced by ensemble Ars Nova and TAP – Scène nationale de Grand Poitiers
Supported by the Maison de la Musique Contemporaine
Ensemble Ars Nova | Gregory Vajda | Clémence Le Gac: Between Dusk and Dawn
The album is available in digital form at our retail partners
BETWEEN DUSK AND DAWN
This CD, which celebrates the 60th anniversary of the Ensemble Ars Nova, is envisaged as a photograph, a snapshot hanging between two spaces, two eras, two worlds.
Between dusk and dawn we are allowed to dream. Yesterday is not yet over, and tomorrow is still grazing on an infinite field of possibilities. It is within this precise moment, where anything can exist (and as yet anything can be imagined) that we wanted this recording to bring to life.
Through its history, and the countless encounters and creations that have constituted it, our instrumental training bears the memory of a world that contemporary upheavals make us leave. It is in this same unique and singular memory that it now finds the resources to imagine and create new stories that inspire and engage the creators of our time.
How can we cause a world whose shiverings, resistances, and aspirations are still felt to ring and resonate? How can we re-enchant listening and the sensitive links that bring us together?
So many questions that we pondered by bringing together five composers from generations and modes of expression as different as they were surprising.
From fury to contemplation, from springtime to the apocalypse, including the irremediable march of time: Between Dusk and Dawn draws a poetic, sonorous landscape of bustling and slowness, joy and introspection, of the dark and the luminous.
A musical postcard, sent from a place uncertain, from where we sing with resolve.
Benoît Sitzia
A Horny Faun’s Rampage – Jongsung Oh
Claude Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun) was composed in the nineteenth century. The work displays a great deal of originality and many unique characteristics not found in other works of the time. Signature traits of Debussy’s style include completely new compositional approaches such as whole-tone scales or modes, unconventional phrasing, new rhythms and use of pulse, chords relatively free from any tonal function, and innovative orchestration. This was almost revolutionary at a time when Romantic works were leading the musical world, with their focus on function and structure. Some might even say that Debussy’s work triggered the beginning of the era of contemporary music.
As a composer, I wanted to reinterpret the functions of rhythm, chords, and form in Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune and apply them to his work. Originally a god with a half-human and half-goat appearance, the faun in Roman mythology is depicted as having a very cheerful nature.
Stories also portray the faun as a comic but strongly erotic figure who often makes unwanted advances towards other nymphs. When forming ideas about this piece, I was very interested in the character of the faun, and I tried to recreate the spirit of this forest god in music, thus the overall mood of the piece can be attributed to impressions of the naughty god of the wild. The title A Horny Faun’s Rampage outlines the concept of the work and the tales behind it.
Jongsung Oh
Spring – Édith Canat de Chizy
To write for two harps was mainly a concern of composers for the grand symphonic forces of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Debussy, Ravel, Roussel). So it is rare to have a commission for two harps and ensemble, such as the Ensemble Ars Nova proposed to me.
The aim of having two harps in the orchestra was to amplify the instrument. Here I chose to write contrapuntally, using different complementary modes of playing, thus constructing a dialogue between the two harps. In addition, each is independent and interacts with the other instruments of the ensemble.
The title Spring corresponds to the period during which I wrote this piece, evoking the transition from winter to spring, from darkness to light, from immobility to growth, by working with tessituras, dynamics, and movements.
Édith Canat de Chizy
Clessidra – Justė Janulytė
Commissioned by and written for the 60th anniversary of Ensemble Ars Nova, Clessidra (“sandglass” in Italian) contains two opposite processes happening simultaneously, which overlap and create a musical metaphor for a sandglass, with one part being filled and the other emptied.
One layer of the texture (vibraphone, accordion, and synthesizer with an organ timbre) constantly descends from the instruments’ highest overtones, while the rest of the ensemble (strings, bowed harp and winds) gradually expands its space and dynamics, until their paths cross and merge into one spectrum.
Justė Janulytė
Post-Apocalyptic Pastorale – Gregory Vajda
I imagine us, humans, after an apocalyptic scenario, reduced in numbers and void of means of making use of the progress of our now defunct civilization. I imagine that after exhausting all our stacked away food, water, and other resources, we are now relying on one another, and on whatever remains and still functions that could sustain us. We must leave home if we are to survive. I imagine small groups of post- apocalyptic humans searching for electricity; cozying up to gently buzzing refrigerators, or hiding near surviving electric generators. We are not in the safety of our home any more, but we are not out in the wild yet.
In my composition, machines are still humming. They are out of tune with our well-tempered human harmonies, played by unplugged instruments, but they are still here, providing a somewhat comforting background noise, a kind of faint acoustic memory of much better days. In my Pastorale, our music, and with it our true human self, is trying to stay afloat. Fragments of once complete musical pieces, harmonies we used to know, melodies we could sing by heart, are still around us, they are still inside us. However, in my music there are no directions, no arrivals; there are only never-ending attempts at rebooting.
I first read about the phenomenon in Paul Watson’s blogpost of 9 January, 2020 at lazaruscorporation.co.uk entitled “Post-apocalyptic pastoral and post-industrial”. Watson himself borrowed the term from a book review by a Goodreads user, Terry from Toronto. Terry (about whom we know nothing more) has provided a nice working definition of “post-apocalyptic pastoral”, a term referring to books like Richard Jefferies’ After London: or, Wild England (1885), or Richard Cowper’s The Road To Corlay (1978). “In essence we see the world long after a disaster of some kind has laid waste to our society, but while the horror of that event is not diminished, the resulting world is often seen as the chance to start again and perhaps correct the mistakes of the past. The apocalypse has, in effect, allowed us to start again with a more or less blank slate and thus there is a pervading optimism beneath the implied pessimism of the genre.”
Gregory Vajda
Du Lyrisme de l’obscurité – Lisa Heute
Lyricism, contained in the incisive impulses of the quintet, alternates with suspended moments where sonorities are disturbed, transformed, and disintegrate. The
musicians sculpt a sound material that is always in motion, with some improvisation.
From these sound magmas the different instruments emerge, revealing their colour palettes and expressiveness, sometimes allowing this hazy atmosphere to give birth to light.
The work is a tribute to Marius Constant, whose richness and plurality of work inspired me to compose this quintet.
Lisa Heute
The musical commissions for the works Du Lyrisme de l’obscurité, Clessidra, Post-Apocalyptic Pastorale and Spring were supported by Sacem and La Culture with Copie Privée.
The commission for the work Spring was sponsored by Les Harpes Camac.
ENSEMBLE ARS NOVA
Founded in 1963 by composer and conductor Marius Constant, Ars Nova is the first instrumental group dedicated to creative music in France and around the world.
A passionate defender of aesthetic pluralism and a diversity of formats, the ensemble aims to open surprising and inspiring access points to new works and artists of our time.
Over the years, Ars Nova has created several masterpieces of the twentieth century, such as Des Canyons aux Étoiles (From the Canyons to the Stars) by Olivier Messiaen (1975), many works by Maurice Ohana, or The Tragedy of Carmen, adapted by Marius Constant, directed by Peter Brook and premiered in 1981 at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord in Paris.
Today as in the past, the Ensemble Ars Nova participates in fostering and promoting of some of the greatest talents of our time: composers such as Pascal Dusapin, Betsy Jolas, Régis Campo and many others testify to this principle of mentoring as part of a long-term partnership.
As guarantor of skills transferred from one generation to the next, the instrumental ensemble also includes a new generation of performers. Side by side with their more senior colleagues, they thus become guarantors of a heritage, and actors in a prospective artistic project.
Finally, whether in the programmes of its concerts or as part of digital projects such as Mosaïque, Ars Nova is committed to offering a space and particular visibility to young creators. Since 2020, the ensemble has been pursuing a proactive policy of commissioning musical works, and very regularly gives its active and concrete support to projects led by emerging artists.
More than an ensemble, Ars Nova is a part of the living and plural history of music of today and tomorrow.
With the constantly re-affirmed goal of making creativity a force for re-enchantment, which opens horizons and nourishes the links between people.
www.ars-nova.fr
Ars Nova permanent team:
Béryl Begon – production manager
Agnès Cosnier – executive assistant
Charlotte Le Sourd – administrative and financial manager
Stéfanie Molter – project and communication manager
Benoît Sitzia – managing and artistic director