Baudelaire Songs for soprano and piano (with assitant) - Full Score
Baudelaire's "Les Fleurs du Mal," was written from 1845-57 in Paris. The over 150 poems cover a range of topics including beauty, death, love, evil, animals, landscapes, Greek myth, sexuality and many more unusual poetic topics such as prostitutes, vampires, fountains of blood and other macabre scenes. Due to much of Baudelaire's bawdy and grotesque language, many French readers were offended. The poem À celle qui est trop gaie, was banned by court order due to its use of blatant sadism. In my settings of À celle, Obsession, and La Beauté, I attempted to capture the rich emotionalism and sensuous expressivity that I found in Baudelaire's texts. The last song uses piano harmonics inside the piano to expand the palette of the piano.
44 pages; duration 17'
