Les Chants de l'Amour

Gérard Grisey's Les Chants de l'Amour (1982–84) for twelve voices and electronics is built on an acoustic analysis of the phrase "I love you". The text consists of declarations of love in 22 languages, the names of famous lovers such as Tristan and Isolde and Orpheus and Eurydice, and passages from Julio Cortázar's novel Rayuela. The work is dedicated "to all the lovers of the earth".

Grisey's many kinds of love are the starting point for the programme. The work is set against the very different settings of the Song of Songs by Jean-Yves Daniel-Lesur and Jacobus Clemens non Papa, and against J.S. Bach's motet Jesu, meine Freude, in which the love is a religious one.