Songs
Les Hiboux
(1921)
Les Hiboux
Sous les ifs noirs qui les abritentLes hiboux se tiennent rangésAinsi que des dieux étrangersDardant leur oeil rouge. Ils méditent.Sans remuer ils se tiendrontJusqu'à l'heure mélancoliqueOù, poussant le soleil oblique,Les ténèbres s'établiront.Leur attitude au sage enseigneQu'il faut en ce monde qu'il craigneLe tumulte et le mouvement;L'homme ivre d'une ombre qui passePorte toujours le châtimentD'avoir voulu changer de place.
Owls
Beneath the shelter of black yews,The owls perch in a row,Like alien gods, whoseRed eyes flash. They meditate.Motionless they will perchTill the melancholy hourWhen, pushing aside the slanting sun,The shadows will settle into place.From their pose the wise man learnsThat in this world he ought to fearAll movement and commotion;The man drunk on fleeting shadowsWill always pay the penaltyFor having wished to roam.
Translations by Richard Stokes, author of A French Song Companion (Oxford, 2000)
If you would like to use our texts and translations, please click here for more information.
Composer
Louis Victor Jules Vierne (8 October 1870 – 2 June 1937) was a French organist and composer.
Read more here.
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Poet
Charles Pierre Baudelaire was a French poet who also produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe.
His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil), expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the 19th century. Baudelaire's highly original style of prose-poetry influenced a whole generation of poets including Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud and Stéphane Mallarmé among many others. He is credited with coining the term "modernity" (modernité) to designate the fleeting, ephemeral experience of life in an urban metropolis, and the responsibility art has to capture that experience.
Read Les Fleurs du mal here.
See Full Entry
Sorry, no further description available.
Previously performed at:
- 23 Oct 2019: 63. French Fables: Jess Dandy & Sholto Kynoch
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Les Hiboux
Owls
If you would like to use our texts and translations, please click here for more information.
Composer
Louis Victor Jules Vierne (8 October 1870 – 2 June 1937) was a French organist and composer.
Read more here.
See Full Entry
Poet
Charles Pierre Baudelaire was a French poet who also produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe.
His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil), expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the 19th century. Baudelaire's highly original style of prose-poetry influenced a whole generation of poets including Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud and Stéphane Mallarmé among many others. He is credited with coining the term "modernity" (modernité) to designate the fleeting, ephemeral experience of life in an urban metropolis, and the responsibility art has to capture that experience.
Read Les Fleurs du mal here.
See Full Entry
Sorry, no further description available.
Previously performed at:
- 23 Oct 2019: 63. French Fables: Jess Dandy & Sholto Kynoch
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