In Search for Eluding Beauty: The Semantic Subtexts and Compositional Strategies in Bent Sørensen’s Trilogy Papillons

Abstract

The article is devoted to analysis of Bent Sørensen’s trilogy Papillons, which includes in itself three cycles differing from each other in terms of their instrumentation, albeit, all of them feature the participation of the piano — Pantomime, Rosenbad, and Mignon. The compositions were created at the same time (during the years 2013‒2014), were based on the same musical material, and possessed the same number of movements arranged in different orders of succession. The present research is focused on the semantic subtexts and the compositional-dramaturgical regularities within the trilogy. During the course of the analysis, the intertextual connections with various sources (Schumann’s piano cycle Papillons, Goethe’s novel Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, and Karen Blixen’s Ehrengard) are revealed, the leading themes are labeled (the interconnection between art and love, the motives of departure and disappearance), the semantic potential of the structural variability of the cycles is disclosed, the role of the piano part and the means of transformation of the instrumental context are examined. The trilogy’s uniqueness of genre and the specificity of its narrative strategies stipulated by the controlled aleatory qualities of the form and the various principles of perception of the selfsame material is registered. With the consideration of the utmost importance for Sørensen of questions regarding the impact of music on people, the title of the trilogy is also interpreted in connection with the phenomenon of the “butterfly effect.”

Keywords: Bent Sørensen, contemporary Danish music, the trilogy Papillons, Pantomime, Rosenbad, Мignon, the structural variability of the cycles