Accentus Accentus, an award-winning French a capella
vocal group, will perform at UCLA’s Schoenberg Hall Thursday night
in its North American debut.
By Michael Rosen-Molina
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
Over the years, the walls of Schoenberg Hall have reverberated
with the sounds of innumerable instruments from myriad
concerts.
Now Schoenberg will host another concert but the instruments
will remain silent. Celebrated French a cappella group Accentus
will make its U.S. debut at Schoenberg Hall on Nov. 2.
The ensemble is the brainchild of Artistic Director Laurence
Equilbey, who formed the group after studying a cappella music
abroad. Since its creation in 1991, Accentus has sought to bring
recognition to the often overlooked field of pure vocal music.
“What appeals to me in a cappella is the purity of the
sound, the homogeneity of the material,” Equilbey said.
A cappella is vocal music that relies entirely on the strength
of the singers’ voices, without instrumental
accompaniment.
Accentus specializes in music of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Instrumental works dominated the music scene prior to the turn of
the 18th century, so it is only within the last 200 years that a
cappella music has come into its own as an art form.
 IMG Artists Laurence Equilbey is the
artistic director for Accentus, the celebrated French a cappella
group. Accentus’ work in this genre earned the group the 1995
Liliane Bettencourt Award, bestowed upon it by the Academie des
Beaux Arts, and the “Musical Personality of the Year
1997-98″ title, from the Syndicat Professionnel de la
Critique Dramatique, among other distinctions.
A cappella differs from other music not only in its lack of
instrumental accompaniment but also in the difficulty to achieve
uniformity of its sound.
“It’s a unique way of expression performed,”
Equilbey said. “It’s fantastic, you get a purity of
intonation, of rightness, and the timbres of the voices create a
very liquid, acoustic quality. When it works, the feeling is quite
physical.”
Named after a Latin musical term, Accentus refers to a
composition technique from medieval Gregorian chants; specifically,
a tonic accent, used to raise the melody.
“We wanted to suggest an idea of energy, of elevation, and
of mystical exploration,” Equilbey said.
Prior to founding Accentus, Equilbey studied at the Paris and
Vienna Conservatories. While in Vienna, Equilbey performed with the
Arnold Schoenberg Choir, an experience that inspired her to form
Accentus.
“I sang a lot in the Arnold Schoenberg choir ensemble and
I thought that we lacked such an ensemble in France,”
Equilbey said.
“Especially for pieces from Poulenc, like “˜La Messe
en sol Majeur,’ which is the most celebrated French piece
abroad, and no ensembles in France performed these great pieces of
work,” she continued.
Equilbey was disturbed by the neglect that a cappella suffered
in her native France.
“It was not a French tradition because people didn’t
know of it,” she said. “In France now, there’s a
rebirth of interest for this vocal art, in part because of us and
other ensembles.”
“We are the only ensemble using 32 professional singers
who perform this repertoire,” Equilbey continued. “We
helped rekindle public interest in those pieces.”
Historically, a cappella music has not been associated with
France, despite the art form’s popularity in France’s
closest neighbors.
“For historic reasons, the French had forgotten this
repertoire, and now, with the European unification, we are catching
up with the German and Scandinavian repertoires,” Equilbey
said. “This was something that we couldn’t hear in
France.”
The Schoenberg program includes Francis Poulenc’s,
“Motets pour uns Temps de Penitence” and “Un Soir
de Neige Figure Humaine,” Pascal Dusapin’s
“Granum Sinapis,” and Arnold Schoenberg’s
“Priede auf Erden.”
“I picked those pieces because I’d like to take a
stand for the contemporary work,” Equilbey said.
Although all the pieces are widely regarded by music scholars as
modern classics, “Granum Sinapis” is noteworthy as a
piece only recently completed in 1997.
Started in 1992, Dusapin began work on the composition after
discovering inspiration in a late medieval philosophical text by
Rhenish theologian Master Eckhart. Dusapin used Eckhart’s
writing as the basis for a choral work commenting on man’s
quest for the infinite. Equilbey and Accentus became the first
choir to publicly perform “Granum Sinapis” in September
1998, and has continued to perform the piece in concerts since.
“It was very moving because it’s very new to have
French composers writing a cappella, and it was thrilling to
deliver a piece for the first time,” Equilbey said.
Not given to static repetition, Accentus has continued to modify
their treatment of the composition in subsequent concerts.
“While we were working on it, it got more refined,”
Equilbey said. “It got more subtle, more colorful, we shaped
the phrasing, the balances, and now it’s a cycle that we
handle better than we did at the first performance.”
Equilbey anticipates audiences will react to Accentus’
music just as well on this side of the Atlantic as they do in
Europe.
“I would expect the audience to leave the theater with the
feeling of fusion with the work,” said Equilbey. “A
feeling of beauty of sound, of emotion, of color.”
MUSIC: Accentus performs at Schoenberg Hall on Nov. 2, at 8 p.m.
For ticketing information, contact the Central Ticket office at
(310) 825-2101.