‘Biguine d’amour’ : ‘recitual’ intermelodicity in La Mulâtresse Solitude

Abstract

In La Mulâtresse Solitude, André Schwarz-Bart tells a story at the junction of several song texts which he echoes, transmits, reinterprets, emphasizes, covers and transforms. Applying to this story the transposition of the principle of the intertextual approach to the musical domain, as Florence Mouchet suggests in her study on medieval songs, seems obvious. This study will concern itself with intermelodicity, the secondary story of which can be read as a long ‘recitual’ dedicated to the memory of the slaves and more particularly to that of the Mulâtresse Solitude. The work carried out by Kathleen Gyssels, Élie Duprey and Francine Kaufmann allows us to extend the reflection in this direction. This is why this analysis attempts to shed a new light on the deeply enigmatic character of Schwarz-Bartian music.