based on an original poem by Elena Andreyev
16 mixed a cappella voices
ca 20 min.
composition: 2025

The night of Lacrime di San Lorenzo—literally «The Tears of Saint Lawrence»—is popularly associated in Catholic countries with the Perseid meteor shower. Every 10 August, these meteors become celestial tears, reminiscent of those shed by Lawrence of Rome during his martyrdom.

In many places, it is traditional to spend the night of 10 August awake, gazing at the sky, waiting to see a shooting star. In the white silence of the night, before the brightness and harmony of the stars and in a form of peaceful concentration, a grandiose moment arises, a moment of wonder and fulfilment, as a shooting star passes by. From this fleeting, ephemeral moment springs the hope of seeing a second star.

To evoke this gaze at the celestial vault, the poet and cellist Elena Andreyev wrote a poem that has no beginning and no end: like the movement of the stars, it is in perpetual rotation and can be read starting from any word. The words, all monosyllabic, form constellations that revolve endlessly in our minds and in the temporality of the piece.

Cécile Banquey, Laurent Bourdeaux, Jean-Christophe Brizard, Agnès Bucquet, Paul-Alexandre Dubois, Leopold Giloots-Laforge, Ivar Hervieu, Celeste Ingrand-Consigny, Alexandre Jamar, Pierre Jeannot, Kyungna Ko, Cyrille Lerouge, Calliopée Perrot, Marie Picaut, Alan Picol and Michiko Takahashi — Franck Ollu (cond.)
Conservatoire de Paris (FR), 18 Sept. 2024 — world premiere

images: poem by Elena Andreyev
starred night
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, San Lorenzo (ca 1655-1660)