Hypnos

Hypnos, in Greek mythology, is the god of sleep. He can put both men and gods to sleep, to the point that Hera calls him "master of men and gods".

He is the son of the goddess of the night, Nyx, and of the Darkness, Erebus. His twin brother is none other than Thanatos, god of death, and he is himself the father of Morpheus, god of dreams. He is at the centre of a divine pentalogy of everything related to the meaning behind what is hidden, behind mystery.

His domain, which Ovid describes at length in the Metamorphoses, is silent, obscure and foggy. Sunlight never enters it : it is always midnight there. Lethe, the river of oblivion, silently flows past the palace. Numerous flowers grow in peaceful gardens, including poppies, from which powerful sedatives are obtained.

Hypnos helped his friend the god Dionysus on many occasions, in order to seduce large numbers of young girls in their sleep.

The music in this programme has a special connection with this complex world of hidden, and even obscure, forces. Nighttime, therefore sleep, is the kingdom of dreams. Death is both a sort of long sleep, and is not one.

Certain pieces of funeral music therefore have a utility and a force which are much more important than that for which they were composed, if they are kept for funeral rites only. They can even, in many cases, give listeners pleasure, if the latter just close their eyes and blindly follow the voices. They can sometimes cause psychotropic effects, that are beneficial for the body and mind. This evokes the antique conception of music, as a therapeutic discipline in the same way as dance or poetry, which are, in fact, associated with music. This programme seeks to rediscover the very strong links which unite the poetic, mystical and therapeutic virtues of music through works, for the most part sacred, from several different eras which echo each other : the 9th century, the 15th and 16th centuries, and the 20th century.

It is a sensory, spiritual and emotional journey in which the audience is invited to follow the physical and poetic movements of the singers in the sonic architecture of the places and spaces invested.