Béryllium - Michel Lysight

Béryllium - Michel Lysight

Poème de Alain VAN KERCKHOVEN

Beryllium is a light, fragile and toxic metal, a fundamental constituent of emerald. Alain Van Kerckhoven's text offers an ambivalent reading of The Emerald Table, a short and famous alchemical text from Arab antiquity, which tradition attributes to Hermes Trismegistus. The work of the alchemist on matter is also a work on himself and, from there, on the world. The seven songs are nourished by this prism, interweaving the passions of the alchemist - sometimes Hermes, sometimes Aphrodite - and the stages of the realization of the Great Work.

Michel Lysight's music is a sound interpretation of these different stages. The seven songs are grouped in pairs and separated by three purely instrumental interludes. The work opens with a prelude and closes with a postlude, also instrumental. The musical ambiences are strongly contrasted, but always deeply expressive, the various sonorities of the text becoming one with the composition in a sort of alchemical fusion.

1. Magma : calcination
2. Soif : dissolution
3. Tramontane : séparation
4. Petrichor : conjonction
5. Mort de l’Enfant Royal : putréfaction
6. La Dame à la licorne : distillation
7. Le Coeur du monde

Score and parts

Duration: 50'

CD available on DUX Recording here!