Michel CHION
“La vie en prose”

A concrete symphony composed between 2006 and 2011. Four parts : “Le chant des heures”, “Le souffle court”, “Dans la chambre”, “Salut au jour”.
“Thanks to musique concrète ways and means, La vie en prose fulfils my childhood dream of composing a Symphony of Energy in four movements of sharp contrasts. The title of the work was inspired by Flaubert, in a sentence explaining how as the era of rhyming poetry ended the age of prose began. There’s no narrative in this one hour and a half long Symphony, but a cast of characters, some vocal instrumental theme and sounds that circulate, disappear, pop up, stretch, decline and lose themselves in time.” MC.
Michel Chion is a French composer, director, writer and theoretician. La vie en prose is his first musical work composed in the 2000s. Thanks to musique concrète ways and means, it fulfills his childhood dream of composing a Symphony of Energy in four movements of sharp contrasts. There’s no narrative in this one hour and a half long Symphony, but a cast of characters, some vocal, instrumental themes and sounds that circulate, disappear, pop up, stretch, decline and lose themselves in time. This work features analog and digital sounds that have been carefully collected for 40 years.