Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

FORGOTTEN IS NOT LOST

https://jacquescoulardeau.medium.com/forgotten-is-not-lost-36a31b4c2526

“Culture is what you remember when you have forgotten everything.” Then this CD is the most cultural CD in the world because it takes my first sentence, this classic motto in France, and probably other places just front-side-back, and then “Culture is what you have retrieved from what you had forgotten in your own life.” And I must say it is a good thing Philippe Jaroussky has retrieved these arias from what our “culture” had forgotten to remember and decided to forget.

These arias had been composed for castratos, but castratos had been expurgated at the end of the 18th century and in the 19th century and had been replaced by bel canto tenors in Italy and Wagnerian tenors in Germany. I guess they had been replaced by sopranos or mezzo-sopranos from time to time in these last two centuries, rather mezzo-sopranos because many of these arias have some lower notes that are not exactly in a soprano’s pitch. And that will be your surprise since Philippe Jaroussky goes down to these notes that are more tenor or baritone. He had used that ability to shift pitch in some concerts, but that was humorous. This time it is fundamental and it gives some depth and even sombreness to the music, and the singing, the father he incarnates in the last piece, the fatherly figure he would like to be with his lover before leaving for the war but he finds it difficult to impersonate such a figure because he knows he will die in this war.

How do you know you are going to die in the war you are sent to? Easy does it! Soldiers on any side of any war are always cannon fodder, corned human meat for the vultures high in the sky who will pick the best morsels when the fighting is finished. No one will complain since no pension will be attached to this victim of the patriotic war, because a war is always patriotic.

Enjoy the music, the singing, the words and their meaning, and remember it will all be forgotten next time around. No war, and no love actually too, is eternal. The end is programmed in the beginning, just like death is programmed in anyone’s birth. Happy are the great travelers, provided they can come back. We never remember the dead except when we remember their death with chrysanthemums on the day after Halloween, and all these dead people we remember one day a year are far from all being saints.

 Éditions La Dondaine, Medium.com, 2023

# posted by Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU @ 3:03 AM