Vingt Chansons pour Jean Cocteau (review)

Maurice Methot's 20 quiet songs are full of ephemeral references to Erik Satie, Claude Debussy and other French or "impressionistic"-sounding piano works. Methot's trick, however, is that this sweet and meditative CD was derived and shaped all on a computer, not on a piano.

The liner notes barely mention the music, however. Instead they concentrate on the MIDI interface, the computer and the technical way it was created. But don't let me give the wrong impression here—the songs, despite being made from samples of a real piano, are soft and a little moody, which I like. But the audience for this seems unclear. Is it for other so-called digital composers who like to experiment with new software? Is it for those who like "all things French"? I think this is a fair question, because people who are drawn to "all things French" are also drawn to ideas such as passion, beauty, nobility of cause and the exaltation of desire that is often associated with Frenchness.

So I am not sure what to make of the quiet music on this CD. At first I think of the difference between the tension contained in the pause of a piano player and the simulated tension made on a computer. Whereas live music could be seen as a conversation partly with the audience and partly between the musician and the instrument, what happens when the music is completely derived from a program? What becomes of the conversation that makes a piano player's skill affect people emotionally? Jean Cocteau is not mentioned in the liner notes and so I am also not sure what connection he or his work has to Methot's work. So I wonder if this is informed by the now-classic image of Baudrillard's "simulacra," where the map is considered more important than the landscape it describes? The landscape we are dealing with here is music.

Even though the meditative sounds in Vingt Chansons pour Jean Cocteau are nice to listen to, its process and lack of clear audience bring up a lot of artistic issues, especially those of authorship and inspiration. I feel a little let down, because the liner notes give little sense of the composer's perspective or purpose. It is intriguing to think of a group of compositions dedicated to Cocteau, but I want to know what the connection is. Did he meet Cocteau as a child? Was Methot influenced by certain works of Cocteau, or is he simply trying to evoke the music of an era long gone and just using Cocteau's name to create context? Rather, this appears to be a kind of experiment or one-off idea. Music, like other art, needs a context, and it is unclear what that is on this CD.