Fragrances of stories
The works presented here explore an intermediate territory between literature and contemporary music. Dominique Dupray develops narratives in which the storytelling extends into a musical composition conceived as a space for echo, tension, or poetic expansion.
The first pieces take the form of short stories read aloud, accompanied by a deliberately understated musical environment, akin to ambient music.
These are followed by eight sung and orchestrated works, where the music becomes fully structuring. Voice, orchestra, and text are closely interwoven, transforming the short story into a hybrid form situated between dramatic narrative, oratorio, and musical theater. Five excerpts are offered for listening to each of these stories.
These excerpts extend the author's literary universe: paradoxical situations, metaphysical fables, and questions about memory, freedom, power, and the meaning of existence.
Thus, each story explores a situation that is both simple and dizzying: a man delves into the memory of a drowned friend (The Ferryman), a group of walkers must prove their own existence in the face of a question mark (The Calling), a mistake tasked with executing someone suddenly doubts the legitimacy of its mission (The Mistake and Its Dilemma), two shadows exchange owners (A Tale of Shadows II), books revolt against their captivity (The Library), or a man sets off to speak to happiness itself (The Man Who Spoke to Happiness).
Here, music acts less as illustration than as a revealer of the inner space of the situations, intensifying the strangeness of the images and transforming the narration into a sonic experience.
The Man Who Spoke to Happiness
A man would like to understand why his friend drowned in this lake. He will then accept the offer of a mysterious "ferryman" who will help him penetrate the memory of the deceased at the bottom of the water to see his last moments.
Duration: 18 minutes.
The Ferryman
A small group makes their way before being stopped by a question mark suddenly in their path. The latter orders the appeal. Everyone should respond "Present!" to utter his name in the most convincing way possible to be free to pass. The less motivated will be struck down on the spot.
Duration: 40 minutes.
Present !
The mistake
and his
dilemma
A mistake goes to an individual to execute it. By mistake obviously since it is a mistake. However, faced with the extreme feeling of mediocrity and failure of the life released by the occupant of this modest cottage, she begins to feel the discomfort of not being there by chance. Hence a dilemma because if his coming is relevant for this man who by dying by mistake ends his failure in beauty, it seems on the other hand to distort his primary character which is to be unjust. What will she do then?
Duration 23 minutes.
Shadow Story II
This piece is the orchestrated and sung version of the short story entitled Histoire d'ombres. The story of two shadows having exchanged places. One for an owner endowed with a chef's soul because of her character as a follower, the other on the contrary for a follower for the opposite reason. The latter is the narrator. The two owners meet and share their impressions of their new companion as well as their predictable dislike for each other. This workis a reflection in the form of a tale about power.
Duration 34 minutes
A library is built to house works relating to freedom. The night following the inauguration, in this place deserted by visitors, the books revolt against their captivity. The night watchman witnesses the tumult.
Work divided into nine parts, of which here are the first five to listen to.
Total duration of the five extracts approximately 30 minutes.
The Library
Seven dreams within a moment already dreamed. A dreamlike mise en abyme where thematic sensations float like flavor, reason, pain...
Here are the first five nights to listen to.
The Dream of
7 Nights
In a bourgeois salon, a selected audience witnesses the assassination of a composer by his work on the evening of his first hearing. Work constructed in ten scenes, of which here are the first five.
In the Ink
of the Octopus
The Man who spoke to the Happiness
A man whose name and past we will never know claims to go and speak to happiness. He will walk in a mute, transparent nature where everything will be a pretext for seemingly futile and useless questions. Halfway through, tired of solitude, he conceived the idea of ​​a companion, a big man in a gray coat, an approximate, mute being, an idea made concrete but to be developed like any idea. Poetic-philosophical narrative divided into 65 parts. Long doubtful as to the relevance or simply the possibility of setting to music such a long and particular text, I waited twenty years before launching in 2024 when the desire to close in an illustrative way my lyrical journey begun in 1984 imposed for my mind to combine this story so imbued with my lifelong questions with a vision of the orchestra which definitely makes sense to me. It is therefore an acme point as well as a final one.
Duration : 7h
