Alba

Alba is the present-day Gaelic name for Scotland. It was on returning from a trip in 2016 to the far north of this country, to the Shetland Islands, that the desire was born to one day write a work of chamber music intimately linked to this place.
So, when the Orchestre Symphonique de Bretagne asked me to write a quintet for flute, string trio and harp, I was immediately impressed. harp, I immediately thought of this Alba. And I wanted to bring her to life, like a goddess, an entity. So, in the course of this one-piece piece, there are six episodes:
1. Loch, the place, the setting of emergence
2. Apparition, Alba’s, in a misty, mystical setting
3. Prayer, that of man facing the entity, hope and doubt
4. Alba dances, in the form of a little fugue, she charms, turns around and moves.
5. Alba seduces, for like Wagner’s Erda, she rises from the earth and speaks to mankind.
6. Alba falls asleep on the land of men, rested, having delivered her message, before returning to the Celtic soil.
Alba is thus the story of a meeting, that of a Breton with his brothers from the Celtic north-continent, and that of a composer with this very particular medium, initiated and developed a little over a hundred years ago by Pierre Jamet and his ensemble, and which gave rise to magnificent pieces by Roussel, Pierné and Ropartz.
Following on from my Monologue d’Anna for soprano, clarinet and piano, Alba sheds light in its own way on the dream that I’ve made my own: if the earth spoke to us, it would be through a goddess; if man can be touched and still act, it would be in response to her. in response to her, mother, wife and daughter.
Benoît Menut