Utopia
The ideal in music
Utopian societies were described as early as ancient Greece or in more sporadic ways in the Middle Ages, but they really took off in the 16th century: Thomas More and his Utopia laid the foundation stone, followed by Francis Bacon, Thomaso Campanella, etc., up to the present day.
Music is present in these idealistic accounts and has several faces: on the one hand the musica mundana, or harmony of the spheres, a cosmic and paradisiacal music played by angels, but also a musica humana, a sublimated vision of Nature, of human expression and of its noblest feelings.
The viol consort has a special place in this utopian music: the sound principles of Pythagoras, Plato's harmonei, or a proportionate manifestation of sound in resonance with the divine geometry of the spheres, are indeed put into practice in the 16th century with the viol consort. If music can make this divine harmony resonate here on earth, it is also an ethical tool for Man: by imitating the voice and its highest feelings, but also the essences of an Arcadian nature with its enchanting bird sounds and other paradisiacal echoes, the musical narrative carries a real didactic message, painting an Ideal in music to which the listener is drawn insensitively...
Cast
François Joubert-Caillet, viola da gamba
Julie Dessaint, tenor viol
Aude-Marie Piloz, tenor viol
Marie-Suzanne de Loye, bass viol
Sarah van Oudenhove, bass viol
