Les Origines humaines
Overview: Choral settings of the philological and evolutionary writings of Jean-Pierre Brisset.
- Format
- Concert work
- Duration
- 40 minutes
- For
- SATB Choir of 36 voices
- Premiere
- The Elysian Singers/Greenall, St. John's, Smith Square, London, 1995
Scores
- I-IV (PDF)
- V (PDF A3 size)
- VI-VIII (PDF)
- IX: Instructions (PDF)
- IX: Sopranos (PDF)
- IX: Altos (PDF)
- IX: Tenors (PDF)
- IX: Basses (PDF)
Recordings
- Au Commencement
- était la Parole
- Les Ancetres
- La Nourriture
- La Grande Loi
- L'apparition du sexe
- Le Calembour
- Révélations et Diversités
Notes
The work sets texts by Jean-Pierre Brisset, edited by Andrew Hugill. Brisset (1857-1923), ironically dubbed 'The Prince of Thinkers' by Jules Romains and his crowd, was a minor functionary at the Angers-Saint-Serge railway station, Normandy. His contribution to philology stops at nothing short of a complete explanation of the Universe, incorporating God, Mankind and Nature in a linguistic theory which affirms the belief that similar sounds have the same meaning, in any language, regardless of apparent differences in their dictionary definitions.
In his book, Les Origines Humaines, Brisset charts the evolution of Man from Frog, proving this bizarre variant of Darwinist theory by dissecting language. According to Brisset, the first word-formations were spoken by our frog-ancestors as responses to their gradually dawning self-consciousness; thus,quoi? and -pourquoi? become primal questions croaked by beings emerging from a prehistoric soup. Through an incredible network of puns, which completely redefine whole dictionaries according to the sounds of words, Brisset creates a totally significant Universe which resoundingly affirms the opening of John's Gospel: In the Beginning was the Word...
Hugill's composition opens with a human-frog chorus and proceeds to chart the development of humankind through language and song, organised into a kind of heretical history of music. The text is predominantly in French, although occasional words in other European languages do appear. The music ranges from writing for 36 soloists to conventional SATB composition, and there is a certain amount of speech. The music covers a diverse range of choral and vocal styles, and transformations from one style to another are sometimes rapid.
I: Au Commencement...
A human frog-chorus develops into a statement of part of the opening of John's Gospel. The choir collectively searches for a pitch.