Quatuor Voce

As we approach the bicentenary of Beethoven's death (1770-1827), we are particularly interested in the composer's final period. Despite being completely deaf, his creative power was extraordinary. He wrote his last five string quartets, which are absolute masterpieces. The Cavatina, the slow movement of his Quartet Op. 130, is included on the Voyager Golden Record, a disc containing sounds from Earth that was sent into space in 1977 with the Voyager probe as an ‘interstellar message in a bottle’ intended for possible extraterrestrial intelligence.

Our encounter with Akira Mizubayashi, a Japanese author writing in French, began with the reading of his novels, in which music plays a central role. We were also impressed by one of his interviews, his very apt words and his enlightened vision of the string quartet. After several fascinating exchanges, we decided to collaborate on his texts and our repertoire. In his next novel, entitled La forêt de flammes et d'ombres (The Forest of Flames and Shadows), the author focuses on two major works from the string quartet repertoire: the Cavatina from Opus 130 and Felix Mendelssohn's Opus 13, a tribute work composed shortly after Beethoven's death. This novel also explores the theme of overcoming disability through art.

Our encounter with the 10 Doigts en Cavale collective and our discovery of chansigne, an expressive and physical practice derived from sign language, has had a profound impact on our reflections on Beethoven's creative power in his final three years.

Following various exchanges, we imagine a form of augmented concert where deaf and hearing people are carried away by music performed and chansigned and literary texts translated into sign language, centred on the figure of Beethoven and his last quartets.

Through this multifaceted project, we aim to show the universality of Beethoven's legacy and ‘how a man, through his intense focus on his inner self, communicates more deeply than perhaps any other musician with humanity as a whole’ (Bernard Fournier).

Depending on the circumstances, the stage production can take different forms:

- Concert reading with the Voce Quartet and Akira Mizubayashi or an actor (depending on the availability of the author, who lives half the time in Japan).

- Sign language concert with the Voce Quartet and a sign language actor, with the texts projected for audience members who do not know sign language.

- The complete form, with all three elements—music, literature, and sign language singing—on stage.