Love Songs Without Subjects
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 piano), 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 42′ / 2024
Love Song Without Subjects makes use of a short text taken from the seminars of French psychoanalyst and philosopher, Jacques Lacan: ‘Love is to give what you do not have to someone who does not want it’ (orig.: ‘L’amour, c’est donner ce qu’on n’a pas à quelqu’un qui n’en veut pas’). In the piece, written for and dedicated to Ditte Marie Bræin and ‘asamisimasa’, Lacan’s aphorism is set across four measure chord sequences built on the ‘chromatic bass lament’, a compositional device often found in love songs. (TM)
Love is to give what you don’t have
To someone who does not want it
Love is to give what you don’t have
To someone who does not want it
“Remember me, remember me, but ah! forget my fate”
Love is to give what you don’t have
To someone who does not want it
“Tell her I’m sorry, tell her I need my baby, tell her I love her”
Love is to give what you don’t have
To someone who does not want it
“I will say the only words I know that you’ll understand”
Love is to give what you don’t have
To someone who does not want it
“Don’t change a hair for me, not if you care for me, stay”
Love is to give what you don’t have
“I’m not in love so don’t forget it”
To someone who does not want it
“Blue days all of them gone, nothing but blue skies from now on”
Love is to give what you don’t have
To someone who does not want it
“I hope you don’t mind, I hope you don’t mind that I put down in words”
Love is to give what you don’t have
“Remember me, remember me, but ah! forget my fate”
To someone who does not want it
Love is to give what you don’t have
To someone who does not want it
Love is to give what you don’t have
“Blue birds singing a song, nothing but blue birds all day long”