Miserere

For me, as someone who considers myself far removed from Christian spirituality and closer to the concept of Immanence than to any form of Transcendence, it was obvious to me that I would not compose a Miserere comparable to Alesandro Scarlatti’s Lamentazioni. It was also my wish to theatricalise the subject matter, following pagan rituals which appear to have been retained in the monastic Tenebrae services up to Renaissance times. In the series of sequences in which silence plays a prominent role, a path leads to strange rites in which the listeners are invited to stamp their feet on the ground, creating waves of thundering sound, or accompany the chanting of texts. Three sopranos take on an instrumental role, deploying a broad range of vocal sounds from aspirations to screams. Thierry Pécou