{"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":"2026-08-04T10:17:03","modified_gmt":"2026-08-04T10:17:03","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<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Love Song Without Subjects\u00a0makes use of a short text taken from the seminars of French psychoanalyst and philosopher, Jacques Lacan: \u2018Love is to give what you do not have to someone who does not want it\u2019 (orig.: \u2018L\u2019amour, c\u2019est donner ce qu\u2019on n\u2019a pas \u00e0 quelqu\u2019un qui n\u2019en veut pas\u2019). In the piece, written for and dedicated to Ditte Marie Br\u00e6in and \u2018asamisimasa\u2019, Lacan\u2019s aphorism is set across four measure chord sequences built on the \u2018chromatic bass lament\u2019, a compositional device often found in love songs.\u00a0<\/em>(TM)<\/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

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<<\/a>            ><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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":77,"href":"https:\/\/www.thomasmeadowcroft.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1579\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3016,"href":"https:\/\/www.thomasmeadowcroft.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1579\/revisions\/3016"}],"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}]}}