When Beethoven visited the director of music at the cathedral in Linz, Franz Xaver Glöggl, in autumn 1812, the latter asked his guest to 'compose socalled Equali for 4 trombones for All Souls' Day [2 November]?. Beethoven readily complied - and it was to be his own funeral music. For in 1827 the Equali were sung in an arrangement for male choir as a 'dirge for Beethoven's funeral procession?. The original instrumental version is today a core work in the trombonist's repertoire. Our Urtext edition is based on the musical text in the Beethoven Complete Edition and contains a score and single parts (both in the original C and in modern bass clef). / 4 Trombones

Par SPEARS GREGORY. The Tower and the Garden is a setting of three poems for choir and string quartet. The texts juxtapose the dangers of technological hubris (the tower) and the need for a place of refuge (the garden) in a world threatened by war and ecological disaster. Each text suggest ways in which Catholic thought and imagery might challenge the status quo. The first text, poem 80 from the collection “Cables to the Ace,” was written by Trappist monk and social activist Thomas Merton. It is an eschatological meditation on the garden of Gethsemane, where Christ’s disciples slept on the eve of his crucifixion. Merton compares their slumber to society’s indifference to the destruction of our natural world by potentially dangerous new technologies and war. The second text was written by poet and Catholic activist Denise Levertov. It is a meditation on the Tower of Babel and the tendency for technology in the information and nuclear age to serve only its own growth and to potentially destroy our lives in the bargain. The third poem, written by Keith Garebian, is an homage to queer filmmaker Derek Jarman and his cottage garden at Dungeness on the English coast. Situated precariously between a towering nuclear power plant and the sea, the garden was Jarman’s austere refuge during the final months of his struggle with AIDS. While an atheist and highly critical of the church, Derek Jarman was intrigued by the role religious and hagiographic narratives could play in his filmic indictments of Thatcher-era Britain. This is most notable in his film The Garden, which was shot on location in Dungeness. – Gregory Spears / Niveau : Avancé / Répertoire / Chœur Mixte SATB et Quatuor à Cordes

Par PAUSET BRICE. 'Sleeping Beauty', one of the most famous of the Grimm Brothers' fairy tales, has been the object of numerous analyses, commentaries, and renditions of all sorts. Its motifs, typical of the genre (pact, numeral symbolism, destiny, curses, enclosed space) abound in the crude and concise text from the 1812 version, the one I chose from among the seven versions spanning 1812 to 1857. The themes of suspended temporality (the entire castle deeply asleep) and fragile beauty are less common, but musically very inspiring. The instrumentation being used (string quartet, double-choir and orchestra) is treated as a composite derived from opera. The principle theme is distilled in the solo string quartet, the double-choir is assigned the narration, while the orchestra is entrusted with numerous descriptive elements designed to transpose the real action: ascending the stairway, spinning, etc. Of course, specific situations will put this lovely construction into peril. In the context of my work on 'critical exegesis' with regards to the stage, this project is an attempt to create music that in itself satisfies a large number of the demands normally present in the operatic setting: characters, action, movement, singing, dramaturgy, scenography, décor, lighting, etc. It is not a question of inventing new metaphors, but rather, of managing to transcribe the phenomena used in the Grimm Brothers' fairly tale with purely musical classifications and objects, rich with associative images: thus a music of situations and phenomena, more than of representation. Two sections of the piece were already composed for double-choir in a preparatory form (Zwei Studien über Dornröschen composed in 2007). The whole, amounting to about 25 minutes, is divided into 9 'scenes' equivalent to the interpretations of transitional moments in the Grimm Brothers' story: 1. '...keine Kinder...' 2. die Feen 3. '...alle Spindeln abschaffen...' 4. '...ein Wunder von Schönheit...' 5. Der alte Turm 6. '...Eine alte Frau... 7. Stich und Schlaf 8. Dornen und Kuss 9. Die hohe Zeit / contemporain / Répertoire / Quatuor à Cordes et Orchestre