La Traversée de Paris (album)


La Traversée de Paris is an album by the Michael Nyman Band featuring music composed by Michael Nyman for an audio-visual exhibition of the same name which took place at the Grande Arche de la Défense from July to December 1989 to celebrate the bicentennial of the French Revolution.

Track listing

The album consists of 17 pieces, each referring to a specific or generic location, historical incident, or cultural development in Paris since the time of the Revolution. There is a geographical emphasis to the first six pieces which describe the city itself without historical context. The subsequent pieces proceed in chronological order by namesake, as a musical timeline charting the city's rich and often violent history from 1789 to 1989.
  1. L'entrée.
  2. La nef de Paris.
  3. Débarcadère.
  4. Le Labyrinthe.
  5. Le Palais Royal.
  6. Le jardin.
  7. Le théâtre d'ombres chinoises.
  8. L'émeute de la faim.
  9. Du faubourg à l'Assemblée.
  10. "Ah ça ira". Refers to a bloodthirsty execution-chant from the Revolution. With the London Voices.
  11. Passage de l'Égalité.
  12. Les murs des fédérés. A setting of Rimbaud's poem L'orgie parisienne. With Sarah Leonard.
  13. De l'Hôtel de Ville à la Concorde.
  14. Cinéma d'actualités.
  15. Champs Elysées.
  16. Les manifestations.
  17. L'Arche de la Défense. Refers to the contemporary setting of the exhibition.

    Musicians

Seven pieces from La Traversée de Paris were repurposed or revised by Nyman to form the bulk of his score for Peter Greenaway's film Prospero's Books.
Four of these pieces did not undergo any changes, and were simply retitled for their use in the film and for the score's album release:
The other three pieces were revised to varying degrees:
Two other pieces were used in the film but were not included on the soundtrack CD: