ExclusiveDuparc: La vie antérieure (A former life)

【Classical music and nature 古典音樂小站】Henri Duparc: La vie antérieure (A former life). Libretto by Charles Baudelaire. This beautiful piece was played by Ivan Ilic. It has Creative Commons license (CC BY 3.0 DEED, Attribution 3.0 Unported) and is provided through www.musopen.org.

La vie antérieure is a song for voice and piano by Henri Duparc with a libretto by Charles Baudelaire. It was composed in 1884 and first published in 1902.

Music critics were unanimous in their praise: "This score, Henri Duparc's last, closely follows the poet's thoughts. It is one of the most beautiful commentaries on a poetic work ever written by a musician".

Lyric:
La vie antérieure (A former life)
For a long time I lived under porticoed halls
whose ocean sunshine was coloured with the light of many flames
and whose majestic pillars, standing straight and tall
made them appear at dusk like vast palatial basalt caves.

The sea-swells as they rolled the images of the sky,
united by a solemn and mystical power
the sonorous chords of their overwhelming music
with the colours of the sunset reflected in my eyes.

There, there, I lived in the most exquisite tranquillity,
with the blue of the sky, the splendour of the waves
and the elegant, naked, sweet-scented slaves

who refreshed my hot forehead with palm fronds,
and whose only duty was to intensify
the secret malaise that made me ache and sigh.
Note: This is a singable translation for the Duparc version.

The Snowy Mountain was filmed in Switzerland, but we don't remember who made it. I think it was my husband Christian Schlegel. The video was edited by Wenjing Ma.





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