3 Chansons de Bilitis, L. 97: II. La Chevelure (Transc. Heggie for Voice & String Quartet)
George Barbieri
String Quartet: Brentano Quartet
Mezzo-soprano Vocals: Joyce DiDonato
Composer: Claude Debussy
Transcriber: Jake Heggie
Poet: Pierre Louÿs
Sung in the French Vernacular:
Debussy's Chansons de Bilitis -- Maggie Teyte/Alfred Cortot
Claude Debussy (1862-1918):
Chansons de Bilitis -- 3 melodies
(poetry by Pierre Louÿs)
1. La flûte de Pan
2. La chevelure at 2:30
3. Le tombeau des naïdes at 5:37
Maggie Teyte (1888-1976), soprano
Alfred Cortot (1877-1962), piano
Recorded in 1936
Pictures of Samos, Greece
The Songs of Bilitis
by Pierre Louÿs
translated by Alvah C. Bessie
1. The Flute
For the Hyacinthian day he gave me some Panic pipes, of measured reeds well-cut, bound each to each with soft white wax, sweet as honey to my lips.
He teaches me to play, I seated on his knees; perhaps I tremble just a bit too much. He then plays after me in tones so sweet I scarce can hear them.
We did not have a word to tell each other, we were so close together all the time, but the songs we sang were answers to each other, and time again our mouths would seek the flute to find each other's there.
How late it is! the green night-frog commences now to sing. My mother never will believe I stayed so long to try to find the girdle that I lost.
2. Tresses
He said to me: "Tonight I dreamed a dream.-- Your hair came down and fell about my throat. Your locks were as a yoke about my neck, a black fan spreading on my breast.
"And I caressed them; and they were my own; and we were bound together thus forever, by the same tresses, mouth on mouth, like two twin laurels with a single root.
"And little by little, it seemed to me, our limbs were so entwined that I became your body, or you entered into mine like some sweet dream mingling with my own."
When he had finished he softly placed his hands upon my shoulders, and looked into my eyes with such a look I lowered them and trembled...
3. The tomb of the Naïads
I walked through the frost-encrusted wood; my hair blossomed with tiny icicles before my mouth and my sandals were heavy with soiled and caked-up snow.
He said to me: "What do you seek?"--"I follow the tracks of the satyr. His little cleft foot-prints alternate like holes in a snow-white robe." He said to me: "The satyrs are dead.
"The satyrs, and the nymphs also. For thirty years there has not been so terrible a winter. The tracks you see are those of a goat. But stay here, here is their tomb."
And with the iron of his hoe he broke the ice of the spring in which the naïads were wont to laugh of yore. He took some of the great frozen chunks, and, raising them to the pale heavens, looked through them.
dr. π (pi)
♫
enjoy!
.
Click to viewString Quartet: Brentano Quartet
Mezzo-soprano Vocals: Joyce DiDonato
Composer: Claude Debussy
Transcriber: Jake Heggie
Poet: Pierre Louÿs
Sung in the French Vernacular:
Debussy's Chansons de Bilitis -- Maggie Teyte/Alfred Cortot
Claude Debussy (1862-1918):
Chansons de Bilitis -- 3 melodies
(poetry by Pierre Louÿs)
1. La flûte de Pan
2. La chevelure at 2:30
3. Le tombeau des naïdes at 5:37
Maggie Teyte (1888-1976), soprano
Alfred Cortot (1877-1962), piano
Recorded in 1936
Pictures of Samos, Greece
The Songs of Bilitis
by Pierre Louÿs
translated by Alvah C. Bessie
1. The Flute
For the Hyacinthian day he gave me some Panic pipes, of measured reeds well-cut, bound each to each with soft white wax, sweet as honey to my lips.
He teaches me to play, I seated on his knees; perhaps I tremble just a bit too much. He then plays after me in tones so sweet I scarce can hear them.
We did not have a word to tell each other, we were so close together all the time, but the songs we sang were answers to each other, and time again our mouths would seek the flute to find each other's there.
How late it is! the green night-frog commences now to sing. My mother never will believe I stayed so long to try to find the girdle that I lost.
2. Tresses
He said to me: "Tonight I dreamed a dream.-- Your hair came down and fell about my throat. Your locks were as a yoke about my neck, a black fan spreading on my breast.
"And I caressed them; and they were my own; and we were bound together thus forever, by the same tresses, mouth on mouth, like two twin laurels with a single root.
"And little by little, it seemed to me, our limbs were so entwined that I became your body, or you entered into mine like some sweet dream mingling with my own."
When he had finished he softly placed his hands upon my shoulders, and looked into my eyes with such a look I lowered them and trembled...
3. The tomb of the Naïads
I walked through the frost-encrusted wood; my hair blossomed with tiny icicles before my mouth and my sandals were heavy with soiled and caked-up snow.
He said to me: "What do you seek?"--"I follow the tracks of the satyr. His little cleft foot-prints alternate like holes in a snow-white robe." He said to me: "The satyrs are dead.
"The satyrs, and the nymphs also. For thirty years there has not been so terrible a winter. The tracks you see are those of a goat. But stay here, here is their tomb."
And with the iron of his hoe he broke the ice of the spring in which the naïads were wont to laugh of yore. He took some of the great frozen chunks, and, raising them to the pale heavens, looked through them.
dr. π (pi)
♫
enjoy!
.