Jean-Louis Florentz
     
While still studying Natural Science and Literary Arabic at the Universities of Lyons and Paris, Jean-Louis Florentz entered the conservatory classes of Oliver Messiaen and Pierre Schaeffer. He also worked with Antoine Duhamel. In 1978 he won the Lili Boulanger Composition Prize, followed after 1980 by various other prizes awarded by the SACEM and the Institut de France. His numerous field trips in the tropics have taken him to the West Indies, Polynesia and Africa, in particular Kenya where he frequently carries out research into animal acoustics.

 
Jean-Louis Florentz is Professor of Etnomusicology at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Lyons and has been a resident of the French Academy in Rome and the Casa de Velázquez in Madrid. In 1995 he was elected to the Institut de France (Académie des Beaux-Arts).
   
   
   
   
   


   
   

Jean-Louis Florentz
Laudes, Kidân Za-Nageh, 7 pieces for organ, op. 5
New, corrected edition entirely revised by the composer

AL 29 213

Album of all seven pieces
 

Ref.: BP
Inspired by the office of Matins in the Ethiopian liturgy, the Kidân Za-Nageh, these seven organ pieces composed between 1983 and 1985 are among Florentz’s most important works. They form part of a symphonic triptych consecrated to the Virgin Mary. The composer has retained the general form of the Ethiopian Matins - a succession of short prayers, mixing modernity with aural splendour.

 
While drawing attention to the presence in his score of irrational quintuplets and triplets, Florentz points out that he has revised and simplified the registrations in this new edition so that the work may be suited to the greatest possible number of organs, though still leaving the organist a certain latitude in this area.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

New title :
L'Anneau de Salomon. op.14 a
Symphonic dance. Version for orchestra alone

AL 29 174
AL 28 175

Score
Orchestral parts

Ref : BP
en location
            

op. 14 b, Version with mixed chorus

AL 29 280

Piano reduction by Anne le Forestier
 

Ref.: BH
Composed between 1997 and 1998 as a ballet with chorus, this symphonic fresco, an allegory of recent South African history, is based on an argument by Florentz himself that was inspired by oriental tales, Biblical stories, and the autobiography of Nelson Mandela, to whom the work is dedicated. Florentz’s taste for travel has led him principally to Africa, where he has been able to assimilate various different cultures.

 
Fascinated not by traditional music but by "Africa in its totality", as he says, he has written a work in which rhythm has an very important place.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

Available in a few weeks :
Les Jardins d'Amènta, op.13.
Symphonic tale for large orchestra

AL 29 114
AL 29 115

Score
Orchestral parts
 

Ref.: DD
on hire
This "symphonic tale", completed in 1997, turns once more to Africa for inspiration. Based on a fragment of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, it relates the journey of the deceased’s soul through the various stages that take it to the beyond. This is a purely instrumental narrative, a kind of "concerto for virtuoso orchestra", in the composer’s words, "whose formal conception is mainly inspired by the structure of African tales". For this dense and richly varied music, Jean-Louis Florentz uses an essentially tonal language.

   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

Magnificat - Antiphone pour la visitation, op.3
for tenor, mixed chorus and orchestra

AL 28 848
AL 28 849

Score
Orchestral parts

In prep.
On hire
Commissioned by Paris’s Festival d’Art Sacré, this original, four-part work for tenor, mixed chorus and orchestra, first performed in 1980, is a work brimful of light, albeit at times sorrowful or serene. African music, so dear to the composer, is clearly in evidence, and Henri Dutilleux sees in it "a keen sense of mystery without which (…) there can be no true music".
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

Le songe de Lluc Alcari, op.10
Concerto for cello and orchestra

AL 28 862
AL 28 863

Score
Orchestral parts

Ref. : In prep.
On hire
Commissioned by the French State and the association Musique Nouvelle en Liberté for the Orchestre de Paris, this cello concerto was first performed by Yvon Chiffoleau in 1994. Its four movements are played without a break. Dedicated to the memory of a deceased friend, this consonant though not tonal work is based on an highly colourful orchestration that makes great demands not only on the soloist but on the instruments of the orchestra as well.