At the beginning of 1989, the Experimental Music Group of Bourges asked me to contribute to a project of international composition to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution.
While I was trying to find a favorable angle to the approach of the project, I felt with more and more repulsion the chauvinistic harmonies of the official celebration of the French Revolution. In any way, I loved France, how could I participate in the celebration of a nation that even in the 200 years of the Declaration of Human Rights continued to try atomic bombs on the Atoll Mururoa in the South Pacific?
My participation became a lament for Mururoa, and I did not send it to France until after the end of 1989.
The creation of "The Lamentations of Mururoa" should have taken place by the sea, with two speakers in the water and two others on the beach behind the audience, the soloist standing at the edge of the water. Unfortunately, a thunderstorm canceled the project and this creation took place in a quiet location on the coast of Lolland, the island where I live.
The piece is for soprano and four-track tape that includes an electronic choir. After the creation, I developed the piece by adding a score for a real choir that would sing with the electronic choir. Thus, "The Lamentations of Mururoa" can be played in many ways.
1) single soprano and 4-track tape
2) soprano solo, choir and 4-track band
3) chorus and 4-track tape
4) a capella choir
The following text is from the composer:
Ah! Ah! Mururoa, Mururoa!
The island is a woman,
and the bombs give him his perfume.
Ah! Mururoa!
The sea,
my mother,
Human rights
are not women's rights
or children.
violations,
detonations
still your body defeated,
defeated.
Ah! Ah! Mururoa, Mururoa!
This first version is recorded with Helle Hinz, soprano, at the studio Octopus in connection with the creation of the piece