PRESENTATION
Les paroles gelées is a project of sound’s dramaturgy conceived for the Grande Salle of the Nouvelle Philharmonie in Paris. The Grand Orgue Rieger will be the center and the fulcrum of the project and his sounds will be developed, expanded and spatialized by the voices distributed in the architectural space, singing and playing organ pipes.
The organ is also representing “la mer glaciale” described by Rabelais, disseminated by the “paroles glacées”, frozen words, acoustical survivors of an old cruel battle.
Rabelais describes the explosion of the frozen words given by the progressive dissolution of the glace. The words, while dissolving, give back a sort of audio-film: lamentations, cries, explosions of the old shots, running of horses, crashes of blades.
The words are now appearing as “dragée perlée de diverses couleurs”, magic coloured pearly ice stones, ready to restore the original acoustic sound life.
Rabelais conjures a miracle, stopping the sound, finding a way to fix it, to free it from the time passing by, as in an acoustic still-life. The frozen battle can be played again and again, with the chaos given by the uncontrolled dissolution of the ice, generating a futuristic sound poem. Suddenly we attend to the attempt by Rabelais to describe the sound battle, blossoming from his ice-stone collection of frozen words distributed by Pantagruel to everyone.
The musical work will attempts to give life to this futuristic dream ideated by Rabelais.