Fantasia after Aucun vont /Amor qui/ Kyrie

for solo violin

Duration: ca. 5'00

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Some of the oldest examples of notated, non-liturgical polyphony are contained in manuscripts of motets compiled in the 13th-century. The music is often lyrical, playful and complex. I became very interested in the ability of these composers (who remain anonymous; the idea of collective creation cannot be entirely ruled out) to fit different songs together in a highly combinatorial art. The motet, ‘Aucun vont /Amor qui/ Kyrie’ exists in various versions, in the collections now know as Turin, Montpellier and Cambrai.

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When Yuanju Liu asked me for a new piece for solo violin, I immediately thought of using the solo fantasia as a vehicle to translate the melodic and contrapuntal playfulness of the motets into something that could be heard by contemporary listeners. The fantasias of the lute and keyboard composers of the 15th and 16h centuries are an important precedent for this. In these works, composers reimagined ancient, often vocal, music on their instruments to create a dialogue between the old and the new.