All his life, Sauguet had been in touch with artists of diμerent generations and backgrounds: composers of course, interpreters, choreographers and dancers, poets, actors, painters and decorators, film-makers… He often spoke of his many friendships as constituting, in his mind, a spiritual family, to which he had written many pages of occasion, tributes and testimonies (Prélude à une exposition de peinture, for a premiere at the Rive Gauche art-gallery in 1937; Toast pour Henry Barraud to celebrate his achievement within the French radio institutions; 80 notes clavecines, written for the 80th birthday of Wanda Landowska).
The Chant de l’oiseau qui n’existe pas is written to “illustrate the poem by [friend] Claude Aveline” and is taken from his collection called Portrait de l’oiseau-qui-n’existe-pas et autres poèmes (Hoffmann publishers, Canada, 1961).
Bruno Berenguer
(translation Philippe Do)