creation : 02 April 1988 at Nice (France)
duration : 15′
commission : CIRM/Nice/Festival Manca
dedicated to Les Percussions de Strasbourg
The mythical figure of PSYCHOPOMPOS is linked to the reign of the dead.
The Psychopompos is the one who accompanies the souls from the reign of the living to the reign of the dead, beyond the Great River.
Duality is one of the elements that characterizes the Psychopompos, two elements that form one body. The piece PSYCHOPOMPOS tries to give a body and a voice to an imaginary choir represented by six performers and six instruments on the stage, which during certain passages dialogue and emerge like the voices of an invisible choir. From a choir of souls living in the cylindrical body of the archaic drum. The instruments used for this piece are six friction drums of different sizes, a xylo-marimba and a bass marimba. This type of friction drum is called in Naples and throughout the countryside: Putipu.
This instrument is formed by a metal cylinder, one of the bases of which is closed, while a skin membrane is stretched over the other. In the centre of this skin is fixed a reed. The sound is produced by the friction of the wet hand on this reed. I chose the Putipu because this instrument is the one that, for me, best symbolises the idea of the double.
The Putipu symbolically represents bi-sexuality. The cylinder is the feminine element, the reed the phallic symbol. It is the favourite hermaphrodite instrument of Pulcinella, the most archaic character in the Comédie Populaire, who is having fun but always wears clothes in the colours of death: the white of the costume, the black of the mask. PSYCHOPOMPOS is to be interpreted as a dialogue song for six voices in a low and mezzo register. The sound is produced either by the archaic technique of the instrument or by a new technique to be created. PSYCHOPOMPOS is written for the six Percussionists of Strasbourg who will have to lead the listener from the reign of the real to the disturbing reign of the indefinite.
G. BATTISTELLI