Le caillou dans la chaussure
Delphine de Blic (2016)
Production : Editions de l'agité - Empreinte digitale
In 2013, Bernard Cavanna, the French composer took a pamphlet from Louis-Ferdinand Céline against Jean-Paul Sartre for the booklet of his latest creation: A l'Agité du bocal.
Later, while the play is running in France, scandals, insults and reviews are linked in debates and on social networks.
Beyond this uproar around anti-Semitism and the battle between Sartre and Céline, this piece takes us in a reflection on the movements of ideas and in a meditation about being human, “Human enthroned over his 10,000 years of civilization, acting in paramecic reflexes ”says Bernard Cavanna.
“The Agité du bocal” is an essential piece in France whose speech, especially political, is muzzled in the arts.
This piece of music is bold. Insults to Sartre. Insults to Céline. Insults to Cavanna. Beyond everything, beyond the noise, remains the beauty of music. The one that Cavanna brings us with a barrel organ, cymbalum and bagpipes, and with tenors who yell and belch.
Delphine de Blic (September 2016)
Teaser
La peau sur la table
Production Les Films d'ici
Composer and teacher, Bernard Cavanna is a multi-faceted figure: self-taught, provocative, intuitive and original. Whether ironically auctioning off his own music at cut-rate prices in a market or displaying a pallid face at the rehearsal of one of his concertos, the artist always exposes himself to the camera with delicacy and a graceful sense of propriety.
Geek bagatelles
Production : Track B
Composer and teacher, Bernard Cavanna is a multi-faceted figure: self-taught, provocative, intuitive and original. Whether ironically auctioning off his own music at cut-rate prices in a market or displaying a pallid face at the rehearsal of one of his concertos, the artist always exposes himself to the camera with delicacy and a graceful sense of propriety.
Aurèle STROE
Bernard Cavanna et Laurence Pietrzak (2002)
Aurèle Stroe, entretien avec Bernard Cavanna
Film de Bernard Cavanna et Laurence Pietrzak
54' Format 4/3
Production: Bernard Cavanna - Les Films d'ici
Prix - Mention spéciale du jury - festival "Classiques en images"
Born in Bucharest in 1932, Aurèle Stroë studied at the Higher Conservatory in her hometown (writing, composition, musicology). Between 1962 and 1975, he taught orchestration at the same Conservatory. From 1974 to 1985, he led his own composition class. He lived in Manheim since 1986. Aurèle Stroë studied with Stockhausen, Ligeti and Kagel, and taught composition and orchestration in Bucharest. He worked at the University of this city on the use of computers in music composition; in the United States on various aspects of electronic music; in Berlin, in 1972-73, he was invited by the "Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst as composer in residence; at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana (USA), as" visiting Professor ". He held courses at the Darmstädter Ferienkurse in 1986 and 87. Aurèle Stroë is an impressive and engaging figure in contemporary music. Considered as a leader in Romanian music. After the revolution of December 1989, the comfortable and peaceful existence of a recognized and almost official artist, publicly condemned and with rare virulence, the exactions violentes of the "people's militia", manipulated by strong men in place, and who terrorized the population of Bucharest.Philisophe, mathematician, linguist, musicologist, Aurèle Stroë has written numerous works including 3 sonatas for piano, Arcade for orchestra , Canto 2 for orchestra, 5 operas (l'Orestie), 3 concertos (clarinet, violin or accordion), and many chamber works. His works have been heard in France at festivals in Royan, Avignon, Musica festivals or Présences at Radio-France. A C.D. is in preparation for the Label Silence (Music Bees) with the Ars Nova ensemble and the Bucharest National Radio Orchestra. Bernard Cavanna
Cavanna, un jour ordinaire
Isabelle Soulard (1998)
Documentaire 26' Morgane production
Réalisation: Isabelle Soulard Production: Morgane production, Mezzo, avec le soutien de France 2 et la participation du CNC et de la DMDTS - 1ère diffusion: 27 novembre 1998
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Bernard Cavanna's music, is now official in the contemporary repertoire. However, this man with an atypical personality refuses to sacrifice everything to the composition. Director of the Genevilliers conservatory, very active within the 2e2m musical association, he wishes to keep these functions to stay close to reality. Portrait of a sensitive and charismatic musician for whom musical engagement is "a political act".
Article published in the edition of the newspaper Le Monde on November 27, 2005
There is formal music and inhabited music. The former are only attractive, because we perceive the presence of the author there. Bernard Cavanna (born in 1951) is one of the composers who feel the music they write. As a child, he remained to listen to his grandfather playing the accordion in a corner, for himself alone. At 9, he finds it natural to compose; he learned a little piano with an extraordinary teacher and, without going through the Conservatory, showed his essays (once a year) to Henri Dutilleux, who severely corrected them. When something finally executable comes out, Paul Méfano reveals it to the audience of the concerts of the 2nd 2m ensemble. Io is a success; Ion, according to Euripides, presented in Avignon in 1982, will be a disaster and a decisive lesson. Since then, Bernard Cavanna only relies on his instinct. "I compose intuitively, like a sculptor," he says. I have an idea, but I try not to follow it too much. »His Violin Concerto for Noémie Schindler, his strange trio with accordion (a way, according to him, of escaping the preciousness of avant-garde circles), Vivo, his disturbing Mass for an ordinary day, his opera Immodest confession, are works whose ear keeps a sensitive and indelible mark. Shot in 1998, the documentary by Isabelle Soulard widens the portrait and keeps its topicality. Because Bernard Cavanna is still director of the National Music School of Gennevilliers, a place of healing, where he feels good, because he satisfies, on a daily basis, his need for authentic relationships, both with the teachers and with the students , avoiding superfluous power relations, because, in his opinion, "music does not call that". To grown-ups, he likes to say, to loosen them up: "The Conservatory is made for you, not for teachers. You must have a looter's attitude, take from the master what he has to give you. The same warm attitude, as we will see, with his interpreters.
Gérard Condé
This film is preserved and available for consultation at the National Library of France (research library, by accreditation).
Portrait sur le périphérique
Alain Fleischer (1991)
Realization: Alain Fleischer. 16mm - duration 26 '- co-production Muse en circuit and the Péniche Opéra
On the way from his home in Alfortville - southern suburbs of Paris - to Gennevilliers - northern suburbs of Paris - Bernard Cavanna makes this journey every day by car. Leaving at dawn, around 5 a.m., it will not arrive until 11:30 p.m. at the Gennevilliers conservatory. Along the way, we discover this composer through his activities - in his car! - (composition, telephone, lunch, dinner ...); does he not himself say that he "composes best by car!" .
music that his car radio plays endlessly, or voices from his cassette answering machine. During his long journey, he met some of the best performers!
Finally, the film begins on a plan "of the general staff of the city of Paris where the composer imagines a thousand strategies to try to establish himself in the musical world. In vain! Because he must admit that he will always be a peripheral composer, and again, only from Porte d'Ivry to Porte de Clichy!
