Guillou plays Alice au pays de l'orgue Op. 53 part 4/1

Guillou plays Alice au pays de l'orgue Op. 53 with narrator (Francois Castang) Part 1.
Guillou writes in the preface of Alice in Organ Land:
"Ever since my earliest encounters with the organ, I have always considered the organ stops-that is, various different registers of the instrument-as resembling a collection of living beings, their character corresponding less with the form of the sound they produce. Certanly the very shape of some pipes is such thatit can give rise to what is almost a psychoanalytical interpretation; thus the idea occured to me quite naturally of bringing these different stops to life in a kind of musical story, with an accompanying narrative to introduce them and their individual sounds as sentient beings endowed with the power of movement. Lewis caroll and his heroine Alice offered an ideal framework for a dramatisation of my musical idea. Thus i imagined Alice retracing the steps which took her thought the looking-glass and, this time, stepping into world quitedifferent from that of the chessboard, a world with no Queen, no Tweedledee, no Humpty Dumpthy, but with organ stops brought to life as animated flowers, with dancing Flutes, oboes, chettering Bourdons, pedantic Bombardes, biting Cromornes, rugged Clarinettes or harsh, snake-like Ranquettes. This entire universe sets itsefl in motion and gradually takes shape, suggesting snippets of dances or conversations in such a way that a sort of symphonic poem is built up, featuring contrasting or challenging sequences in which certain figures and themes recur with, after a strange moment of calm, ends in a wild outburst with all the stops combining in a feverish and dazzling frenzy. Alice in Organ Land may equelly well be preformed without the Narrator, by giving the audience the text to read, or, again, by playing just the two Waltzes together with Tarantella, or even the Tarantella alone. In this case, the pauses marked become simply a bar's rest, without a longer pause"
Jean Guillou

This work of Guillou is used to be rank among a kind of "piece for children", a tale. I think this view is misundestanding the aesthetics of the work wrong. This work really referred to the (absurd) "human relation", based fantastic space in organ corpus as a story (physical) frame. This dramaturgy in among which Guillou placed his hero Alice, enable to diffrent interpret of the work. Alice 's story (as the original Caroll work also) is not a child piece, but a fantastic (absurd) world is realized. The diffrent characters of registers could reflect the human (social) reality in the fantastic way. So, in my opinion this work needs to be dicoverd, and this piece contains much more understanding horizont and aspect, that could be imagined at first sight. Alice is (one of) the most signifcant opus among Guillou's works.
Biblosz

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Guillou
• Alice
• orgel
• orgue
• organ
• eustache
• carroll
• lewis
• Alice's
• Adventures
• in
• Wonderland

[biblosz]

Many people (could) consider this work of Guillou, that it would be something interesting (tale) music for children. In fact , this work' s fantastic world (as Caroll's original work also doesn't children literature) referred to a real life, so the Alice au pays de l Orgue is represented (in fantastic "organ" frame) the absurd human relations. So, Alice' s tale contains much more deeply meaning, than it's shown at the first look, and more significant work, than could be attributed to firstly.

[MrABBOHLER]

Oeuvre géniale! Mêlant poésie, pédagogie et musique!

Surperbe pour rendre compte de la poésie, du mystère de l'orgue et de sa facture! Bravo et merci monsieur Guillou pour ce chef d'oeuvre!

[stephen12470]

Fantastic! I played the US Premiere of this work in the late 1990's at St. Bartholomew's Church in New York City. Wonderfully imaginative music.