Songs of Loss and Liberation
scored for soprano and piano
duration 15 minutes
Songs of Loss and Liberation moves through different states of closeness and loss, from an unspeakable beginning to a residue of desire. In Ended, ere it begun, set to a text by Emily Dickinson, love is broken off before it can take shape: a title without a story, a promise that never comes to speech. The music is like a thought that is not allowed to be spoken.
In The Sleepers by Sylvia Plath, the perspective shifts. Love becomes an enclosed world, an intimate space in which two bodies merge and withdraw from time and perception. The outside world looks on but remains excluded; what remains is a fever dream, a state of hypnosis.
The instrumental Intermezzo functions as a fault line. Something opens, breathing becomes possible again, letting go is imaginable for the first time. I Don’t Miss It, music set to the poetry of Tracey K. Smith, is not nostalgic. Leaving the other becomes an act of liberation. Desire is still present, but it no longer dominates. The cycle ends with a paradoxical idea of freedom: love as the reclaiming of self-determination.
Ended, ere it begun
The Sleepers
Intermezzo
I don't miss it
Songs of Loss and Liberation is dedicated to Laurie Janssens and was first performed on June 28, 2018 at deSingel, Antwerp (Belgium).
Klassiek Centraal: That concert with those songs and also a composition for piano and violin as a gift for the first child of the artist couple Jolente De Maeyer and Nikolaas Kende who also performed the work – what an almost frightening thing that reflects the first impressions of what a baby' endured at birth – was of an absolute top level.
I write world class very deliberately. Coppens writes with a strong emotion, which he sets in all forms and tonally quite comprehensible and comprehensible. That is an example of how contemporary art can and may be. In fact, Coppens may well be doing what Mozart did: giving musical expression to all the emotions, feelings, influences and whatever else a person is continuously subjected to. Few are given to do it this way and those who can have something of genius and if so, then Matthias Coppens and Mozart find each other again. And just like Mozart, Coppens managed to attract the ideal singer to give his work, in this case that wonderful song cycle, its world premiere.