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Programme Note

Kaija Saariaho originally wrote Nuit, adieux in 1991 for vocal quartet and electronics. Five years later, at the request of the Joyful Company of Singers, she wrote a new version in which the mixed choir replaces and imitates the electronics of the original. The various echoes, delays and other effects have been transferred to the choir part.

© Risto Nieminen
translated by © Jaakko Mäntyjärvi

Jacques Roubaud, Echanges de la lumière
Editions A M Métaillé

Dans l'air
s'arrache
de la terre
au noir la lumière
et la crache
dans l'air
la nuit rêche jusqu'aux bords
des arbres
dans la terre
------
Nuit
tu
es venue
les
lumières
ont poussé
sur

les herbes, les pentes
vidées
de

lumières, les
lumières
sont

devenues
sombres
------
dans l'herbe
s'attachent
de la terre
au noir les grains les vagues
de la lumière
et les crachent
dans l'herbe la nuit réelle jus-
qu'au bord
des arbres
sous la terre
------

Nuit, c'est cela
chevelure
de noir révérend la lumière n'est
que pour le définir
ainsi
la nuit première précéda le jour

English Translation © BBC
In the air the light flies out of the ground
into the darkness and spits it into the air.
Night harsh in the ground up to the edge
of the trees

Night you have come,
lights have advanced over the grass,
the slopes devoid of light,
the lights have become dark

In the grass seed, waves of light
cling to the earth in the darkness and
spit them out onto the grass,
deep night up to the edge of the trees
beneath the ground

That’s what night is: a dark holy head of hair.
The light is only to define it.
Thus the first night gave way to day.



Honoré de Balzac, Sèraphîta, Berg International Editeurs
Adieu, granit, tu deviendras fleur; adieu, fleur, tu deviendras colombe; adieu colombe, tu seras femme;
adieu, femme, tu seras soufrance; adieu, homme, tu seras croyance; adieu, vous qui serez tout amour et prière.

English Translation © BBC
Farewell, granite, you will become a flower; farewell, flower, you will become a dove; farewell dove, you will be a woman; farewell woman, you will become pain; farewell, man, you will become belief; farewell, you who will be all love and prayer.