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Études pour Kafka

Francis Dhomont, Franz Kafka

Programme notes

Works in this cycle

Brief an den Vater

Brief an den Vater is the first preliminary work for Le cri du Choucas, a long work in progress about Franz Kafka’s world, works, and character.

Of course, this work is about the famous letter Franz Kafka wrote to his father in November of 1919, a letter he never mailed. From his long indictment, I have only used a few sentences, selected because they sum up what Kafka held against his father in explicit terms, and mostly because they translate the deep worries of the writer, the mold that gave him his shape, and, as a result, the substratum of his literary topics.

For over twelve years now, I have been working on a long work entitled Le cri du Choucas, about this author and his writings. So what has this “letter” turned into? I am surprised at the hybrid thing before me, both music and Hörspiel, that contains sounds, words, ideas, pictures, and that seems to eschew any regular classification. I might as well file it alongside my ’essays.’ However, this piece is most of all a preliminary study for Le cri du Choucas.

One word about the sound materials: other than the voice of actor Martin Engler (narration in the foreground), the sound materials were mostly obtained from the voice of the German composer Hans Tutschku, either as vocalizations or transformed into pure sonics. Kafka’s gritty and ruthless lament called for rough, tentative, and unseductive sound materials. So I decided to take a chance.

Francis Dhomont [English translation: François Couture, vi-09]


Brief an den Vater was realized in 2005 at the composer’s studio in Avignon (France) and premiered on 12 February 2005 during the trans_canada festival in the ZKM_Kubus of the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe (ZKM) in Karlsruhe (Germany). This work was commissioned by ZKM. Thanks to Martin Engler (recorded narration), Hans Tutschku, Ludger Brümmer, and Götz Naleppa.

Premiere

  • February 12, 2005, trans_canada: Topographies • Topographien • Topographies, ZKM_Kubus, Karlsruhe (Baden-Württemberg, Germany)
  • Year of composition: 2005-06
  • Cycle: Études pour Kafka
  • Duration: 17:03
  • Publisher(s): Ymx média
  • Commission: ZKM
  • ISRC: CAD500910147

Premières traces du Choucas

To composer Hans Tutschku and our friendship

Premières traces du Choucas [First Traces of the Jackdaw] is a second preliminary work for Le cri du Choucas, a long work in progress about Franz Kafka’s world, works, and character.

“Kavka” is the Czech word for “jackdaw” (“choucas” in French), a kind of crow whose image adorned the storefront of Hermann Kafka, Franz’s father. The title came from the strong animal symbolics found in the works of Kafka: a deep, solitary, never-empathic, often-muted cry one can hear in each one of his novels and tales, even in the slightest fragmentary story. As for the capital C attributed to “Choucas” in my title, it confirms the presence of a proper noun.

No text yet in these Premières traces du Choucas, but you will find sonic research on and an impressionistic approach to the Kafkaian themes highlighted in the writings of Marthe Robert.

Francis Dhomont [English translation: François Couture, i-09]


Premières traces du Choucas was realized in 2006 at the composer’s studio in Avignon (France) and was first premiered on October 21, 2006 during the 13th International Acousmatic Festival L’Espace du son (Brussels, Belgium), then on November 2, 2006 — the composer’s 80th anniversary — during the Akousma (3) festival at Monument-National’s Studio Hydro-Québec in Montréal. Premières traces du Choucas was co-commissioned by Réseaux des arts médiatiques with support from the Canada Council for the Arts (CCA), and Musiques & Recherches (Belgium). Premières traces du Choucas was awarded the Pubic Prize at the 7th Concurso Internacional de Música Eletroacústica de São Paulo (CIMESP ’07, Brazil) and was finalist for the “Premiere of the Year” award at the 11th Prix Opus 2006-07 of the Conseil québécois de la musique (CQM).

Premiere

  • October 21, 2006, L’Espace du son 2006: Concert portrait Francis Dhomont, Théâtre Marni, Brussels (Belgium)

Awards

  • Year of composition: 2006
  • Cycle: Études pour Kafka
  • Duration: 15:00
  • Publisher(s): Ymx média
  • Commission: Réseaux des arts médiatiques, with support from the CCA , Musiques & Recherches
  • ISRC: CAD500910187

À propos de K

À propos de K, obviously about the literary world of Kafka, is the third installment in that series of preliminary studies to Le cri du Choucas, a long work in progress about Franz Kafka’s world, works, and character.

There is no text in À propos de K, but a musical journey inspired by the Kafkaian topics revolving around the writer — guilt, his father, asceticism, solitude, illness — and often intertwined with the themes of his works — dual personalities, the Law, Judaism, celibacy — and the writing itself, extensively shaped by the processes contributing to the developments of dreams: “My talent for portraying my dreamlike inner life has thrust all other matters into the background […]” (Diaries 1910-1923: August 6, 1914, Kafka).

Francis Dhomont [English translation: François Couture, vi-09]


À propos de K was realized in 2006 at the composer’s studio in Avignon (France) and premiered on November 11, 2006 during a Ina-GRM concert celebrating the 80th birthday of the composer at the Salle Olivier Messiaen of the Maison de Radio France in Paris (France). It was commissioned by the French State (Music Office) — in 2007.

Premiere

  • November 11, 2006, Multiphonies 2006-07: Portrait anniversaire 2: Francis Dhomont, Salle Olivier Messiaen — Maison de Radio France, Paris (France)
  • Year of composition: 2006
  • Cycle: Études pour Kafka
  • Duration: 21:37
  • Publisher(s): Ymx média
  • Commission: French State (Music Office)
  • ISRC: CAD500910189

Le travail du rêve

Le travail du rêve (The Work of Dreams) is the fourth autonomous preliminary work for Le cri du Choucas, a long work in progress about Franz Kafka’s world, works, and character.

In psychoanalytical terms, the work of dreams describes the development process of the images populating our sleep and their tricks: associations, distortions, displacements, condensations…, a dreamworld syntax that shares commonalities with Kafka’s style: “My talent for portraying my dreamlike inner life has thrust all other matters into the background […]” (Diaries 1910-1923: August 6, 1914, Kafka). Here, my music writing draws inspiration from the unexpected figures, associations, and metamorphoses of these rhetorics, hiding under illusory incoherence the disguised discourse of the being’s depths.

Francis Dhomont [English translation: François Couture, vi-09]


Le travail du rêve was realized in 2009 at the composer’s studio in Avignon (France) and premiered on July 30, 2009 during the 25th Festival de Radio France et Montpellier Languedoc-Roussillon at the Salle Pasteur of Le Corum in Montpellier (France). A new (2010) version was premiered on July 30, 2010 during the Inventionen 2010 festival at the St Elisabeth-Kirche in Berlin (Germany). It was commissioned by the Ina-GRM.

Premiere

  • July 30, 2009, Festival de Radio France et Montpellier Languedoc-Roussillon: Rendez-vous de 18h, Salle Pasteur — Le Corum, Montpellier (Hérault, France)
  • July 30, 2010, Premiere of the 2010 version: Inventionen 2010: BEASTory 3, St Elisabeth-Kirche, Berlin (Germany)
  • January 22, 2011, Premiere of the final version: Multiphonies 2010-11: Akousma, Auditorium Saint-Germain — MPAA, Paris (France)
  • Year of composition: 2008-09, 10, 11
  • Cycle: Études pour Kafka
  • Duration: 17:12
  • Commission: Ina-GRM