Jean-Christophe Groffe on Ensemble Thélème's 'All we get is Life'

John Cage and John Dowland. Name a more iconic duo?

In truth it seems quite a curious pairing - the Renaissance master of melancholy and original 'emo kid', and the twentieth-century iconoclast perhaps most famous for composing four and a half minutes of silence (and a piece whose current performance has been ongoing for 23 years and is set to end in the mid-27th century).

Ensemble Thélème certainly enjoy putting a new spin on works from ages past - as in their previous album, exploring the potential of adding contemporary electronic sounds to the songs of Josquin - so I spoke to their director Jean-Christophe Groffe to find out more...

We normally just talk about the music on an album, but the cover art for this one is so striking - rather David Lynch*! What was the inspiration for that?

all we get is life brings together the music of two Johns, Dowland and Cage. This is a combination that we have been performing on stage with Thélème for many years in a variety of casts. Some of the works by John Cage taken from the Song Books are short performance instructions and cannot be recorded. For example, Solo for voice 54: 'Leave the stage by going up (flying) or by going down through a trap door. Return in the same way wearing an animal's head'. The cover image, produced in collaboration with the photographer Benjamin Hénon and the stylist Valentine Mazel, combines various of Cage's proposals in a refined universe with a ‘post-pop’ atmosphere. More than just an album, we wanted to create an entire universe combining music, photography and music videos.

Many artists explore the combination of Renaissance and more contemporary music - why did you choose this specific pairing of Dowland with Cage?

It was originally a joke that prompted us to link these two musicians. The ‘Booke of Songs’ and ‘Song Books’ seemed to have more than a few words in common in the titles of some of their works. Chance - and the importance of this in John Cage's philosophy - and an invitation from a contemporary music festival some ten years ago made this association a reality.

Some four hundred years apart, the Second Booke of Songs or Ayres by John Dowland and the Song Books of John Cage bring together pieces of great expressive sobriety. The former, in the songs for two voices and lute, offers a sort of very delicate threeway conversation; the latter, behind an apparent simplicity that sometimes verges on the facetious, is the result of a work of concentration intended to reduce music to its essential elements, among which silence also has its rightful place. In short, it seems that John Cage and John Dowland share a sense of intimacy.

We hear so much about Dowland and his obsessive melancholy - was he really unique in this, or were other artists of his time expressing similar sentiments?

Although melancholy is often associated with Northern Europe, perhaps because of its meteorological characteristics, it transcends artistic genres and eras. Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher, considered melancholy to be the mood par excellence of exceptional men. Robert Burton (1577-1640), an Oxford academic, mathematician and astrologer, wrote an ‘Anatomy of Melancholy’, often referred to as ‘that English disease’ (ce mal anglais)! During the Renaissance, many artists took up this character trait. Literature for voice and lute, a particularly popular genre in the 16th century, was full of ‘Songs’ that set to music a form of lassitude, often linked to amorous despair. The visual arts are not to be outdone: Dürer's ‘Melencolia’ is still the talk of the town. Today, you only have to listen to most albums by singer-songwriters or pop musicians to realise that melancholy still occupies a central place in our moods. But, more than a gloomy mood, perhaps it's a way of taking the time to question ourselves?

Sting raised some eyebrows some years ago with his album of lute songs Songs from the Labyrinth - how did the collaboration with him on the final track of this album come about?

I met Sting during the filming of the video clip produced by Le Jardin des solutions for the track ‘Flow My Tears’, in which he appears. His charismatic and passionate presence triggered the desire to work in more detail on this project. As a curious musician and an artist sensitive to the unexpected, Sting was immediately enthusiastic about a cover of his timeless hit, arranged here by Thélème and Nikki Buzzi. Vocals and lute mingle with electronic transformations and modular synthesiser sounds. Shape Of My Heart becomes a kind of lute song for the 21st century.

Having given an old-meets-new spin to Josquin, and now this meeting of Dowland and Cage, can you give us any clues as to what your next projects might be?

I feel particularly at home with English music, despite the poor pronunciation I have as a French speaker! Dowland again, this time in association with musicians such as Peter Warlock or Benjamin Britten, could be at the heart of our next album. True to the Rabelaisian motto, ‘Do what you want’, we won't hesitate to collaborate with a variety of artists from worlds sometimes far removed from classical music... always trying to surprise ourselves and those who want to listen!

*This interview was carried out before the sad news reached us of the death of David Lynch, visionary film-maker and musician, aged 78 on January 15th.