'Trois chansons: 2. Trois beaux oiseaux du Paradis'
From the album 'Cambridge Singers A Cappella'
Composer Maurice Ravel
Conductor John Rutter
Soprano Donna Deam
Alto Frances Jellard
Tenor Paul Badley
Bass Ben Parry
Choir The Cambridge Singers
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Trois beaux oiseaux du Paradis
(Mon ami z-il est à la guerre)
Trois beaux oiseaux du Paradis
Ont passé par ici.
Le premier était plus bleu que ciel,
(Mon ami z-il est à la guerre)
Le second était couleur de neige,
Le troisième rouge vermeil.
“Beaux oiselets du Paradis,
(Mon ami z-il est à la guerre)”
Beaux oiselets du Paradis,
qu’apportez par ici?”
“J’apporte un regard couleur d’azur.
(Ton ami z-il est à la guerre)
“Et moi, sur beau front couleur de neige,
Un baiser dois mettre, encor plus pur.”
“Oiseau vermeil du Paradis,
(Mon ami z-il est à la guerre)”. . .
Oiseau vermeil du Paradis,
que portez-vous ainsi?”
“Un joli cœur tout cramoisi
(Ton ami z-il est à la guerre)”. . .
“Ah! je sens mon cœur qui froidit . . .
Emportez-le aussi.
(Three lovely birds of paradise (my love has gone to the wars!), three lovely birds of paradise
passed this way. The first was bluer than the sky (my love has gone to the wars), the second
was white as snow, the third vermilion red. ‘Lovely birds of paradise, what do you bring?’ ‘I bring
a fond look of azure blue,’ ‘And I must bestow on your snowy-white brow a kiss that is purer yet.’
‘Red bird of paradise, what do you bring?’ ‘A true heart of crimson red. . .’ ‘Ah! a chill grips my
heart . . . I yield it to you.’)
Trois chansons
Ravel’s musical response to the horror of World War I (in which he participated as a transport corps driver) was characteristic: rather than wave flags in any obvious manner, in two wartime pieces he asserted the values of French culture as it had been in an earlier and more civilized era. 'Le tombeau de Couperin', completed in 1917 in its piano version, took the form of a Baroque dance suite, and the Trois Chansons (1914–15) paid homage to the Renaissance chanson, a form characterized by its pastoral atmosphere and simple tunefulness. The texts are Ravel’s own and just as typical of his personality as the music he wrote for them, Nicolette with its wry humour, Trois beaux oiseaux du Paradis with its tender fairy-tale symbolism (the three colours of the birds being those of the Frenchflag), and Ronde, a virtuosic display of tongue-twisting verbal dexterity worthy of Stephen Sondheim (whose Into the Woods inhabits a similar imaginative world to the Trois Chansons). The inventiveness and skill of Ravel’s handling of the a cappella medium makes it all the more regrettable that the Trois Chansons is his only work for unaccompanied choir.
Cambridge Singers A Cappella
This album explores the great wealth of music written for unaccompanied choir in England, France and Germany during the Romantic era and into the twentieth century. The pure, distilled beauty of the a cappella medium inspired the composers heard on this album to some of their most poetic and delightful compositions.
John Rutter, English composer and conductor, is associated with choral music throughout the world. His recordings with the Cambridge Singers (the professional chamber choir he set up in 1981) have reached a wide global audience, many of them featuring his own music in definitive versions. Among John’s best-known choral works are Gloria, Requiem, Magnificat, Mass of the Children, and Visions, together with many church anthems, choral songs and Christmas carols.
