Video created by Nancy Bogen.

This work is, purely and simply, a slide choreography of a chanson by Elodie Lauten so titled and is a new, far more sophisticated version of a slide choreography of it that I created in Flash in November of 2000. The latter was premiered as part of CHANSONS AND LIEDER I by The Lark Ascending, a small performance group that I headed, and was performed again on April 29, 2001 as part of CHANSONS AND LIEDER II; that earlier version can be found in the Gallery of thelarkascending.org.

THE MUSIC

Nancy Bogen writes:

"VERLAINE VARIATIONS is #4 of Ms. Lauten's DEUS EX MACHINA CYCLE, PART I. One of the key musical concepts of the DEUX EX MACHINA CYCLE is the combination of two leading melodic lines, and VERLAINE VARIATIONS is an example of this with the interactive melodies of flute and soprano moving together in unison or in harmony. Ms. Lauten added in her liner notes: "I think I may have gotten the idea from watching my two cats running around in my studio, interacting in all different ways. The metaphor is two energies working together through the unfolding of time, connecting or coming further apart, in an evolving relationship, but with the added feline playfulness in the interaction--like adding a second soprano line in one variation. The A minor natural mode--the "minor mode" referred to by Verlaine in the poem--which occurs throughout the piece with no modulation, sets the mood as rather dark, while the brightness of the tessitura of flute and soprano contrasts with the mode and creates a balance between melancholy and lightness. The short poem is repeated in variation form in a cyclic pattern, like a memory that keeps coming back, bringing slightly different impressions each time."

"For what it's worth, my own feeling about Ms. Lauten is that despite her many years in the U.S., she is French to the tips of her fingers as a composer, and that she will one day rank as one of the greats in the chanson-tradition."

In creating the visuals, I must confess that I paid scant attention to the text and followed Ms. Lauten's music, which I found enchanting and intoxicating.

THE SLIDES

Nancy Bogen writes:

"I took my cue from Ms. Lauten conception of her work as a "flashback to the 18th century decadence of a Watteau painting with a sense of the uselessness of pleasure." However, I did not--and still do not--share her feelings about Watteau, whose paintings are, to me at least, a celebration of sensuality such as one seldom finds in European painting, and the slides reflect my extreme admiration. In using excerpts from his various paintings as design elements, I intended to elucidate; hopefully I have not desecrated."

"As per usual, my visuals began as photos; most were taken digitally hither and yon in the last five years with my Nikon D-90 and a 20 x 200 zoom lens, but some date back to real film, taken with a Konica or an Olympus as far back as the late 1970s in such places as the island of Lanyu off the east coast of Taiwan. All were digitized in Photoshop, as were various elements of Watteau's paintings and a sketch of Verlaine from postcards and the like. I did the sequencing and synching of the slides to the music in Proshow Producer."

Visit Elodie Lauten at [ Ссылка ].

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