Archive of Style: New And Selected Poems

Deluxe CD and download souvenir (TWI 082) of Les Disques du Crépuscule's ambitious multimediaDialogue North-South package tour in February 1982, featuring exclusive live tracks by Antena, The Durutti Column, Rhythm of Life (Paul Haig), Richard Jobson, The Names and absurdist emcee Wally Van Middendorp (of Minny Pops). Available on CD and digital (MP3 or FLAC). To order CD please first select correct shipping option (UK, Europe, Rest of World) and then click on Add To Cart button below cover image. Digital copies are delivered to customers via link sent by email.

The 'Eight Songs' are essentially a song cycle presented in two groups of 4: the first group preceded by 4 instrumental movements and the second by 6. The texts were written by World War 1 poets all of whom, apart from the English painter-poet David Bomberg, lost their lives during the war. The songs take their starting point from the title of a series of poems by the French poet Gaston de Ruyter (who was shot down in his planes as late as 7 October 1918): ‘Chansons vieilles sur d’autres airs’ (‘Old songs to other tunes’). The ‘chansons vieilles’ are the poems by English, French, German and Hungarian poets (all sung in their original languages apart from ‘Csak Egy Eiszkara…..’ and the ‘autres airs’ are by English, French, German, Austro-Hungarian, Polish and Italian composers of the 17th and 19th centuries.

Ukrainian composer Silvestrov is known for his "metaphorical" style of music, which sounds transparent, but is technically and emotionally complex. "Music should be so transparent that one can see the bottom and that poetry shimmers through this transparency." (Valentin Silvestrov)