“The Requiem XIX, a committed work in response to the troubles of our time”

Laurent Couson is a composer and conductor.

Actress and essayist, Rachel Khan, won the 2021 National Secularism Prize for her book

Racée

War, communitarianism, hatred and contempt for the other, this is our world at odds.

So, on the edge of the precipice, the artist, as Camus said, is

.

In short, the artist can no longer sing for nothing!

The time demands something of him, an immediate embarkation towards his responsibility as an artist.

However, it is in this already difficult context that environmental activists have the good idea to stick to works of art to better insult the fruits of our humanities.

These gestures are the visible symbols of a state of affairs.

Art is now attacked in its very essence.

The artist is hit in his work, in this long time that is the creation, preventing him from fulfilling the role, from taking his place, that the context requires.

Cut off from its humanist transcendence, it no longer escapes either its self-censorship or this dictatorship of the moment, imposed by an overly rushed society that no longer learns, no longer listens, but which consumes in turn arms.

From Instagram

to the short, every 20 minutes of the news channel, everything is done to reduce the ability to concentrate, a

condition for the creation, as much as for the reception of a work.

In a few years, the “influencer” replaced the artist;

a

dubbed by the high authorities, which to offend no one, underline "with benevolence" that all music is equal.

Yet the work of art that tends to change the world is the opposite of that.

Beethoven's ninth, Balzac's unknown masterpiece, or Picasso's Guernica, are works that shine by their perfection because they have, over a long period of time, been thought out, prepared, worked on, a hundred times on the job.

The work of art is thought out, argued, developed, it requires going beyond tenuous limits to be crossed.

In reciprocity, the spectator or the reader has learned to accept being shaken up in his convictions, knows that it will also be necessary to offer the work a time of digestion and reflection around it.

The spectator is not passive, he has, like the artist, the taste of the effort to go towards something, a displacement.

We then find ourselves in a paradoxical situation.

In the midst of the noise and the perceptible chaos, the work of art is a necessity, an "essential good", and yet, at the same time, creation itself has become a danger.

Indeed, if keeping silent or talking about something else would be a betrayal, being an artist who creates runs a risk, that of living dangerously.

Today, any real creation, that is to say, off the beaten track or the thought of a pack, exposes to the hatred of social networks, kingmakers and other supporters of the least effort, as long as there is a buzz.

The question is therefore not to know if this is harmful to art, the question is to know how in this formatted, dogmatic and, basically, not very courageous context to bring solutions to our world, the creation of a work of peace is still possible.

In times of war, the artist cannot be subjugated, neither to silence, nor to the massive assaults of deadly ideologies.

Laurent Couson and Rachel Khan

If the paths of our republican motto and secularism are maddening, it is because they have almost become foreign to us "culturally", for lack of art, precisely.

So, since religions divide, let's face them, thanks to the artist.

If the fraternity moves away, let us catch up with it, with the work.

In reality, we find ourselves in the time of the Tower of Babel.

This immense tower had been built by men who walked in the same direction, spoke the same language and who, for lack of identity, were identical.

Through this tower, they wanted to reach the heavens.

Result of the races: a disaster.

Men deprived of themselves, without singularity, without personality, no longer tolerated the slightest difference between them.

Strange similarity with current egalitarianism.

The tower was thus destroyed and with it the uniformity of men.

Our differences then appeared, those of language, first;

not to create complications, but to understand that learning from others requires effort, that this plurality is a treasure for everyone, but if and only if we embrace it instead of fighting it.

It was also at this moment that "tolerance" and "fraternity" were born.

In 2019, the Covid, while preventing us from being in contact with each other, revealed our interdependencies and therefore our necessary solidarity.

It is there, embedded in this unprecedented situation that the Requiem XIX was born.

The choirs meet there like us, just after the destruction of Babel, singing in Hebrew, Latin and Arabic.

They reflect, in the three languages, on their human condition, until they manage to find the solution.

Impacted by the threat in which the world finds itself, the Requiem XIX is more than a committed work, it is an embarked work, making it possible to breathe this sought-after fraternity, the only response to the troubles of our time.

In times of war, the artist cannot be subjugated, neither to silence, nor to the massive assaults of deadly ideologies.

And if the aesthetic is seen as an insult to some, the reality is that it serves only one thing: peace.

Requiem XIX by Laurent Couson, Thursday December 15, 2022 – 8 p.m. - Saint-Médard Church – 75005 Paris.

Information and reservations: www.requiemXIX.fr.

The teaser for the event can be viewed here.

Requiem XIX by Laurent Couson, Thursday December 15, 2022 – 8 p.m. - Saint-Médard Church – 75005 Paris.

Requiem XIX