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Track(s) taken from CDA67725

Sonnet 'Doux fut le trait'

composer
1924; subsequently incorporated as No 2 of Deux sonnets
author of text
significantly altered, probably by Caplet

James Gilchrist (tenor), Alison Nicholls (harp)
Recording details: November 2007
St Martin's Church, East Woodhay, Berkshire, United Kingdom
Produced by Philip Hobbs
Engineered by Philip Hobbs
Release date: August 2008
Total duration: 2 minutes 34 seconds

Cover artwork: Windy Day near Blainville. Rosemary Hunt (1937-2003)
Reproduced by kind permission of Richard Townley
 

André Caplet’s Deux sonnets (published together in 1925) set some words of two of the ‘Pléiade’, a self-termed constellation of poets who appeared in the sixteenth-century skies over France, including Joachim du Bellay and Pierre de Ronsard. While the literary language is elevated (although oddly only one of the poems is in fact a ‘sonnet’) and multifaceted (e.g. ‘verses by Joachim du Bellay expressing the state of a soul’), the music is by contrast direct and expressive. André Caplet was never much one for trend-following and his voice remains distinctive and imaginative.

from notes by Alison Nicholls © 2008

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