Mikel Kuehn - Works

Footprints of Debussy’s Trois Chansons de Bilitis  (2019, for flute, alto saxophone, piano, celesta)

Program Note

Footprints of Debussy’s Trois Chansons de Bilitis (2018-19) is a set of three pieces reflecting upon Debussy’s Trois Chansons de Bilitis (1897, for voice and piano), based on texts by Debussy’s friend Pierre Louÿs (1870-1925). In 1894, Louÿs published Les Chansons de Bilitis, a collection of erotic texts that he claimed he had translated from Ancient Greek; Louÿs later revealed that he had authored them as an elaborate stunt. My pieces follow Debussy’s in close shadow using an abstraction of all their basic elements: harmonies, motives, phrase structures, and form. While I have chosen not to feature the texts directly, I have used them to inform the atmospheric narrative. Currently, I have completed the outer movements: I. La flûte de Pan (Pan’s Flute) and III. Le tombeau des Naiades (The tomb of Naiades); the middle movement, La chevelure (Hair), is yet to be composed. In Pan’s Flute the text describes a playful, intimate scene between two lovers and a flute. The Tomb of Naiades depicts a winter scene in which a traveler encounters a mysterious creature at the icy tomb of the water-nymphs. In the end, the creature peers through large slabs of ice that he lifts toward the sky.