{"id":1579,"date":"2025-07-21T07:09:24","date_gmt":"2025-07-21T07:09:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thomasmeadowcroft.com\/?page_id=1579"},"modified":"2025-11-11T13:06:55","modified_gmt":"2025-11-11T13:06:55","slug":"love-songs-without-subjects","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.thomasmeadowcroft.com\/index.php\/love-songs-without-subjects\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Love Songs without Subject<\/em>s<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

first performance: Ditte Marie Br\u00e6in and \u2018Asamisimasa\u2019; ‘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<\/em> by Jacques Lacan, with quotations from various love songs — duration 42′ \/ 2024 (rev. 2025)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Love Songs without Subjects is a setting of a translated text from Jacques Lacan\u2019s ‘Seminar XII’: \u2018Love is to give what you don\u2019t have to someone who does not want it\u2019 (orig.: ‘L’amour, c’est donner ce qu’on n’a pas \u00e0 quelqu’un qui n’en veut pas’).<\/em> This text is set across a four measure chord sequence which employs the ‘lament’ bass. This occurs in all twelve major keys and their 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; <\/em>as in love.

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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 \u2014 e.g \u2018Dido\u2019s Lament\u2019 alongside the \u2018The Most Beautiful Girl in the World\u2019, \u2018Michelle\u2019 alongside \u2018My Funny Valentine\u2019. They also appear in parallel because, in deference to Boudleaux Bryant\u2019s song of the same name, when two memories are recalled simultaneously, <\/em>love hurts.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Love is to give what you don\u2019t have
To someone who does not want it
Love is to give what you don\u2019t have
To someone who does not want it
\u201cRemember me, remember me, but ah! forget my fate\u201d
Love is to give what you don\u2019t have
To someone who does not want it
\u201cTell her I\u2019m sorry, tell her I need my baby, tell her I love her\u201d
Love is to give what you don\u2019t have
To someone who does not want it
“I will say the only words I know that you\u2019ll understand”
Love is to give what you don\u2019t have
To someone who does not want it
\u201cDon\u2019t change a hair for me, not if you care for me, stay\u201d
Love is to give what you don\u2019t have
“I\u2019m not in love so don\u2019t forget it”
To someone who does not want it
\u201cBlue days all of them gone, nothing but blue skies from now on\u201d
Love is to give what you don\u2019t have
To someone who does not want it
\u201cI hope you don\u2019t mind, I hope you don\u2019t mind that I put down in words\u201d
Love is to give what you don\u2019t have
\u201cRemember me, remember me, but ah! forget my fate\u201d
To someone who does not want it
Love is to give what you don\u2019t have
To someone who does not want it
Love is to give what you don\u2019t have
\u201cBlue birds singing a song, nothing but blue birds all day long\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Love Songs without Subjects first performance: Ditte Marie Br\u00e6in and \u2018Asamisimasa\u2019; ‘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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1579","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thomasmeadowcroft.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thomasmeadowcroft.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thomasmeadowcroft.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thomasmeadowcroft.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thomasmeadowcroft.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1579"}],"version-history":[{"count":44,"href":"https:\/\/www.thomasmeadowcroft.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1579\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2033,"href":"https:\/\/www.thomasmeadowcroft.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1579\/revisions\/2033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thomasmeadowcroft.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}