To Francis Dhomont

“We await destruction.” This leitmotif hits like a blow through ten lines that demonstrate how death is the only way for our civilization to be reborn under different auspices. It uses all of humankind’s activities and sensations as a spring board, and is delivered with the evocative power and sensibility of one of our most eminent French-speaking Belgian poets, Werner Lambersy.

I was taken by that horrific poem. And I had no choice but to support it with “horrific” sounds. These are constantly renewed as a segueing suite of short tableaux that stick to the structure of the text, in the spirit of a cantata-form Hörspiel.

Simultaneously, Françoise Vanhecke commissioned from me a work that uses the backward singing technique, where one sings while inhaling, which she was then developing, the focus of her PhD at UGent (Gent, Belgium). To me, it felt emblematic of what the poet was saying.

— Annette Vande Gorne [English translation: François Couture, v-20]

Déluges et autres péripéties [Floods and Other Adventures] was realized in 2014-15 at the Métamorphoses d’Orphée studio of Musiques & Recherches in Ohain (Belgium) — recordings, composition, spatialization — and in 2014 at the Studio PANaroma de Música Eletroacústica da Unesp (São Paulo, Brazil) — source materials, generation and spatialization. The work premiered on October 25, 2015, during the festival L’Espace du son at Théâtre Marni, Brussels (Belgium). It was commissioned by Françoise Vanhecke with the support from the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles (Administration générale de la culture, Service de la musique). Recorded voices: Werner Lambersy, reader; Françoise Vanhecke, soprano, inhaling singer, improvisation; Annette Vande Gorne, reader, transformed voice. Thanks to Flô Menezes for inviting me to Studio PANaroma.

Premiere

• October 25, 2015, L’Espace du son 2015: Annette Vande Gorne, Théâtre Marni, Brussels (Belgium)