JEAN-JACQUES WERNER (1935-2017)

For forty years, the work of Jean-Jacques Werner has been unerringly taking form, asserting its coherence and originality from score to score.

It appears coherent because the author consistently opts for authenticity in his aesthetic and spiritual choices, and original because he refuses any submission or concession.

He has forged a personal language, even more free than independent, in which he is aware of his refusal to give allegiance as well as of what he accepts. While he knows that systematic fidelity to any principle whatsoever would mean an oppressive stranglehold, he obeys the rules of musical discipline, which are the guardian of intelligibility.

His patient thorough training at Strasbourg and then Paris has given him lovingly acquired technical mastery. He leads an ardent, active musical life as instrumentalist, conductor and teacher, convinced that music must be shared. This exchange assumes that a work of art is based on the limpidity of the need to express an interior truth.

Jean-Jacques Werner’s compositions swing between asceticism and lyricism without any contradiction, only because they express the delicate gracefulness of the soul’s swings of mood. They breathe with intelligence and moves with life, expressing bursts of joy, desire or rupture. They also express the voice of conscience, its alarms or complaints.

In his musical alchemy, Jean-Jacques Werner appreciates the effective influence of verbal language which he uses to leaven his work. The texts of modern poets, in which he feels exaltation or restlessness underlie his lyrical, melodic or choral work.

The importance of chamber music and symphonies in his output bears witness to his attraction for building an architecture of moving blueprints along asymmetrical lines, with only the mystery of instruments. He uses a vigorous instrumental palette to map out incisive miniatures as well larger forms with lighter development. Concertos, canzoni, and sonatas integrate an acknowledged virtuosity, whether in pages for soloists such as the Récitatif-Poème or for orchestra, such as the 3 Gathas or the sinfonia brevis Alpha es et O which generously shape the lines, durations, and volumes.

All his works liberate the secret breath of an interior fervor and transfigure a reflection which the author nourishes with reading, contemplation and exchange.

His lyric meditation, haunted with images from dreams and memory, blossoms and swells with humanism in a poetic epic.

Like André Gide, Jean-Jacques Werner believes that «there is no art but general art», and his creator’s voice participates in the human adventure in terms of current interest as well through his universality.

Pierrette GERMAIN

-----------------------------------2016

> News

- CD release: ”Intégrale de l’oeuvre pour piano” with 3 mouvements circulaires, by Geneviève Ibanez, and W... Comme Gombrowicz, by Daniel Spiegelberg, for the label Marcal Classics (MARCAL 151001).

Concerto N°1, for piano and orchestra
Concerto for tuba and orchestre
Spiritual, for violin and string orchestra
Piano : Huasming Surmelian
Violin : Annie Jodry
Tuba : Régis Boeykens
Orchestre Léon Barzin, under the direction of Jean-Jacques Werner
CD Marcal Classics MA091102

Spiritual, for violin and organ

Elsa Grether, violin / Béatrice Piertot, Notre-Dame des Champs organ

Psaume VIII, for choir and organ

Maîtrise de Notre-Dame de Paris, dir: Lionel Sow

Yannick Merlin, Saint-Antoine des quinze-Vingt organ

Editions sonores Ctésibios - CTE-062

3 mouvements circulaires, for piano
W... Comme Gombrowicz, for piano
Daniel Spiegelberg (piano)
> 2016 / Marcal Classics - MARCAL 151001 - ”L’Intégrale de l’oeuvre pour piano”