Litanie des derniers quartiers de la lune (Litany of the last quarters of the moon) for voice (mine) & piano

Hello dear fellow composers.

This poem (1886) is part of Laforgue’s Imitation of Our Lady the Moon.

Here the Moon is no longer a muse or confidante, but becomes the star of farewell and forgetting, sealing human hopes in silence and nothingness.

I truly believe that this cycle reflects a part of Laforgue’s own biography — that of a young poet caught in an impossible, broken love story, one almost erased from history, save perhaps for the initial of a name glimpsed in his correspondence. At least, that is the conviction I had while reading these poems.

And so here is the end of my cycle: a piece deliberately sparse, rarefied, silent. It is also, perhaps, a farewell to Laforgue — for now. Time has come for me to explore new paths (and I have been kindly reminded more than once that I am probably composing with a delay of about 120 years…).

I can only hope that these pieces may nevertheless have found some resonance with you. This is one of my most sincere works, born from a curious overlapping of states of mind with Laforgue. And I believe — to confess under the cover of anonymity — that one is never truly safe from falling secretly in love, even at my age. Perhaps this is what makes the kinship so troubling.