Love Songs without a Subject
first performance: Ditte Marie Bræin and ‘Asamisimasa’; ‘Only Connect’ Festival, Oslo NOR April 2024 — commissioned by Norwegian Council for the Arts — instrumentation: mezzo-soprano/contralto and chamber ensemble (bass clarinet, violoncello, electric guitar, keys (rhodes and grand), percussion, recordings of Roland Juno 106 synthesisers and tape delay) — text: excerpt from Seminar XII by Jacques Lacan, with quotations from various love songs — duration 40′ / 2024 (rev. 2025)
Love Songs Without a Subject is a setting of a text from Jacques Lacan’s ‘Seminar XII’: ‘Love is to give what you don’t have to someone who does not want it.’ This text is set across a four measure chord sequence which employs the ‘lament’ bass. This occurs in all twelve major keys and their corresponding relative minor variants. The sequence appears in a clear harmonic form and is also re-harmonised, either using the original chromatic chord sequence as extended chords or shell chords with added extensions. This results in a very slow ‘shepard tone’ effect, whereby one senses falling, but never quite lands; as in love.
The chord sequences are bracketed by references to popular love songs which also make use of the lament. Given the wealth of songs that employ this device, these references appear in parallel in the piece for brevity — e.g ‘Dido’s Lament’ alongside the ‘The Most Beautiful Girl in the World’, ‘Michelle’ alongside ‘My Funny Valentine’. They also appear in parallel because, in deference to Boudleaux Bryant’s song of the same name, when two memories are recalled simultaneously, love hurts.