Claude Ballif, "Phrases sure le souffle"

-- Liner Notes --

Amelia Salvetti (mezzo)
Louis Robillard (organiste)
Jean Martin (pianiste)

Ensemble Polyphonique
et
Ensemble Instrumental de l'O.R.T.F.
direction: Charles Ravier

In every age, the various forms of art, and music in particular, have known their schools, their cliques and their coteries...This is equally true of the 20th century. However Claude Ballif was never known to and never could take an active part within these closed musical "milieux". And there lies his force and his individual drama.

Such independance is often close to loneliness. Whether Claude Ballif wanted it or had it wished onhim is not important. What is important is that it placed this artist, born in 1924, in the wake of great innovators such as Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert etc...who were also either misunderstood or disliked by their contempories. - A large number of his scores for solists or small ensembles were created with the enthusiastic encouragement of Severino Gazzeloni, the Drolc Quartet, the Kontarsky brothers, the Berlin and Paris Octets, Jean Martin and Charles Ravier...all bringing elements for a better understanding of the range of their instruments or of their group to the composer, who himself then undertook to push these limits even further.

A number of conductors like Charles Bruck, Hermann Scherchen, Maurice Leroux and Marius Constant have also had the courage to play several of his scores for full orchestra: "Fantasio", "A cor et a cri", "Ceci et cela", and "Les imaginaires", works that others have hastily judged unplayable or uninteresting.

"Phrases sur le souffle" Op. 25 for voice and piano which was composed in 1958 at the request of Clara Henius, who was also the first to sing the work. The score was reconstructed in 1968 under the influence of Charles Ravier for its performance at the Festival of Avignon. Here we encounter a complete transformation of this strange works, which is both experimental and mystical, and not a orchestration. The human voice, a "fragile, triumphant sound in which the force and intelligence of humanity are concentrated", as Joseph Conrad has written, is presented as a field of investigations, each vowel being successively the object and the point of departure for studies in vocalies. This breath, carried by a simple yet carefully prepared voice, is as if caught at the birth of its human character, in order to be extended and multiplied in shattering reliefs and tones by the instrumental ensemble. This voice is finally magnified in the finale thanks to the choral support and by the superimposition of 5 vowels turning in a labyrinth of rhythms and timbres. -- Bernard Bonaldi