MEDIATHEK

"Loathing of music" is a scenic monodrama for one actor, ten musicians and electronics, on the essay by the French writer Pascal QUIGNARD. The monodrama is fully based on QUIGNARD’s essay, a particularly powerful text on the perception of music, on music as a media for submission and on the fascination it can provoke.

During "Loathing of music" a man on stage tells us his personal and singular visions on sound and on music. He talks about the sense of sounds and the unsuspected power of music. Over all things, he talks about the history of man - our own history - built-up through the strength of musical symbols and allegories: Apollo coming down from the Olympus with a lyre on his back, killing a whole army with the sole power of his musical instrument. Ulyses being attached to the mast of his vessel, surviving after being the first man who listened to the chant of the sirens. Jan de l’Ors finally touching the ground after three days descending through the obscurity of a well, reaching the horror of the kingdom of silence. Men during the Palaeolithic era exploring in the deep darkness resonating caves to visually represent the echo of sound through their paintings. Or, much closer to us, prisoners in a concentration camp walking to the chambers, accompanied by the sound of music …

Ignoring our own skin, music pierces us, reaching us at any moment and in any situation. We are perfectly unable to defend ourselves from sound as our ears don’t have any eyelids: that is the nature and the power of music ; that is the way it can be used to influence our own history.

The hate of music is structured in five different parts, an introduction and an epilogue are the structural frame to three different parts or tableaux. Each of them presents different sections that are characterized by there own visual scenography through lights and videos. During the monodrama, the actor will gradually approach the musicians that perform in the back of the scene. Different obstacles separate him from them. Their performance, the sounds they are producing threaten the actor ... and threaten the public himself.

Music acts like a fisherman’s hook, she attracts us, she permanently fascinates us through its strong power of seduction. But through her power, she can also be leading us to death. We must then abandon ourselves to her, travelling through the sea of sound as Ulyses did : it may be the only way to listen what no other man on earth heard before us, without dying.