Louis "Moondog" Hardin (1916-1999)
Bells Are Ringing
Voices of Spring
What's the Most Exciting Thing?
All Is Loneliness
My Tiny Butterfly
Why Spend a Dark Night With Me?
Coffee Beans
Down Is Up
Be a Hobo
Remember
I Love You
Nero's Expedition
No, the Wheels Was Never Invented
With My Wealth
This Student of Life
Some Trust All
Wine, Women and Song
Sadness
Maybe
Each Today
Imagine
You, the Vandal
Trees Against the Sky
Behold
Sparrow

Ensemble Muzzix
Ensemble Dedalus
Didier Aschour, direction
Christian Pruvost, direction

Moondog (de son vrai nom Louis Thomas Hardin) est un compositeur et musicien américain né à Marysville (Kansas) le 26 mai 1916 et mort à Münster en Allemagne le 8 septembre 1999.. Au début de sa carrière, Moondog est un musicien de jazz original. Puis il a combiné les rythmes du jazz et les procédés extrêmement contraignants du canon et du contrepoint renversable à deux, trois, quatre ou cinq voix. Voix, percussions, cuivres …c’est la signature de Moondog, musicien inclassable dont le centenaire de la naissance est célébré en ce moment à travers le monde. Ses compositions, 300 œuvres vocales et instrumentales (qu'il appelait "madrigaux, passacailles, canons "...) et plus de 80 « symphonies » (en réalité des œuvres pour orchestre) ne laissent aucune place à l'improvisation, chaque partie étant écrite avec précision. Son œuvre est donc considérable, mais sa discographie n'en a donné qu'un mince aperçu. Voici donc une sélection de 25 compositions réalisées entre 1950 et 1968. Ces œuvres sont interprétées par la réunion de deux ensembles : d’une part, l’ensemble expérimental Dedalus créé en 1996, par Didier Achour et, d’autre part, le collectif Muzzix composé d’une trentaine de musiciens. Un disque sur mesure pour les mélomanes qui souhaitent sortir des sentiers rebattus. (Karim Douedar)

To reduce the music of Louis Thomas Hardin (1916–1999) to the legendary figure of Moondog would be to pass over the real work of the composer. The melodic invention, the prodigious rhythms, and the mixture of genres, as original as they are obvious, all come together form a music that merits consideration strictly as music. To interpret Moondog’s Madrigals, we wanted to develop aspects of the original recording of 1970, but also to produce a “live” version, one that would express the vitality and energy of ensemble music, and in order to enrich the instrumentation we chose a different combination of instruments for each piece. Round the World of Sound is an album of songs, and the singers were employed in many ways: alone or in duets, polyphonic (sometimes a capella) or in chorus, and sometimes the musicians added their own voices to those of Vincent Bouchot and Nathalie Duong. When we were invited to play this music in a festival that contained many types of music, the organizer asked to try to define the genre, and we answered, “Well, let’s just call it pop chamber music.” —Didier Aschour, music director, Dedalus This twenty-five piece selection is entitled Madrigal Book 1, and is a nod to the system Johann Sebastian Bach used for his Well-Tempered Clavier. Here, Moondog passes through all the major and minor tonalities, following the cycle of fourths. Thus, the opening Bells Are Ringing is in C major, followed by Voices of Spring in A minor, What’s the Most Exciting Thing in F major and so on until the return to C major with Sparrows. The recording spans twenty years of composing and bohemian life in the very heart of Manhattan, on its streets and under its porches. It features pieces from the early 1950s (All Is Loneliness, Be a Hobo) as well as later canons written in June 1968. All are autobiographical, or at least reflect the state of mind of their author. As such, they are either melancholic or cheerful, and can evoke the everyday life (Coffee Beans) or a longing for recognition (Maybe), at all times vibrant with his good turns of phrase and his distinctive philosophy.