Christopher Jessup - Le Revenant for Solo Piano

for Solo Piano

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Le Revenant is a solo piano work inspired by Charles Baudelaire’s haunting poem of the same name, in which a ghostly figure returns from the grave to haunt—perhaps even possess—the beloved. The poem’s atmosphere is one of quiet menace and seductive dread, blending love, death, and the supernatural in true Baudelairean fashion. Musically, the piece unfolds as a slow-burning narrative, where shadowy harmonies, whispered motifs, and sudden, jarring contrasts evoke the presence of something unseen— lingering just beyond the edges of perception. The texture is often sparse, but always charged, as if each note carries the weight of unspoken memory. Repeated figures drift like echoes in a half-remembered dream, while low, tolling chords suggest a funeral procession frozen in time. This is not a piece of overt terror, but of quiet possession—where the line between beauty and horror blurs, and where the piano becomes a voice not only of the living but of the revenant who refuses to be forgotten.

Duration: ca. 8 minutes

First performance on April 25, 2019