Le Jardin des Délices (The Garden of Earthly Delights)

for Dixtuor : Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, Bassoon, Horn, Violin I, Violin II, Viola, Violoncello and Double Bass

Dedication: "pour Carson P. Cooman et L'ensemble Gordon"

Duration : ca. 12:00

This work is inspired, of course, by the famous painting by by the Dutch artist Jerome (Hieronymus) Bosch (c.1450-1516). However, this short work for double quintet is not a musical illustration of the triptych in the Prado Museum. I would call this piece a "promenade" -- a journey through a dreamlike universe where events happen one after the others and others at the same time. While the painting by Bosch is in an antiquated style, in that the artist uses the narrative procedures of Medieval art and displays a total lack of propriety regarding the representation of the human condition (the Rennaissance would put an end to this frankness), the painting is also very modern, because the artist takes into account the subconcious expression through dreams and through calculated madness. The greatest expression of modern thought is perhaps the two exterior panels which represent, in an astonishing manner, a sort of “primordial soup.” Cast in a gloomy and transparent bubble, this has nothing to do with the “authorized versions” of the Genesis during Bosch’s lifetime, but which corresponds to a poetic, yet almost scientific, treatment of this idea in modern thought.

I tried in my own way to recreate this principal of multiple and simulatious temporal perspectives (diachronia/synchronia) through the use of the most classical means of tonal musical composition. One goes from one musical event to another without any heed for convention and without any worry other than one’s whims -- rather it moves with a sort of musical gluttony. And if, in front of Bosch’s painting, I am tempted to have a “roving eye” in a global vision which also offers side trips to hidden details (in a natural desire not to miss anything), I would suggest that in this piece there must be a sense of a “roving ear”. The listener goes from here to there in different emotional climates, which I would hope would be poetic and dense. One remains nevertheless within the frame and, to return to the pictoral and finally cimematographical metaphor, goes from one event to another -- from traveling shots, to fadeouts, to effects of shadow and light, from zooming in and zooming out to finally dissolve in the last fade-to-black which comes out of a small thunderbolt.

Jean-Thierry BOISSEAU