
Et le rêve s’en fut …
In spite of its evocative title, the work is in no sense «programme music»; on the contrary, this quartet represents a conceptualistic attempt at a musical transposition of the notion – my subjective notion – of dreams.
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In effect, dreams, that realm of illusion and non-logic, that interface of the imagined and the real, are nevertheless governed by deep-rooted internal, but subconscious structures. Transposed into music, that concept engenders paradoxes and surprises, like those cliches evocatives of jazz and the unexpected changes of tempo; they nonetheless induce simultaneities, overlapping of the past and the present, occasionally slow periods when the explosing melody condenses into tonal harmonic arrangements.
Thus is born a world of sound, based upon four principal themes, developed through the work… as four ambiences, ranging from the sweet, even voluptuous, to the nightmarish, explaining the fourth motif, which brings the work to its end in an orgy of instrumental virtuosity. I leave it to the listener, however, to discover the signification of the final chord!
This quartet for violin, clarinet, piano and percussion is dedicated to Philippe Dewonck.
Chant
Chant, a composition for synthesiser, harp, piano and three percussion groups, was written in 1983, at the request of the Festival de Wallonie which chose it for the «Orient-Occident» theme. That explains the choice of the principal constituents of the work: a Japanese melody and a serial sequence. A vaste area for exploration was thus opened up, wherein I was able to establish various relationships between those two components: interpretation, interaction and distantiation. Thus the composition plans arise out of the acoustical characteristics of the instruments: first of all resonances, characteristic of the piano, the harp and the percussion instruments such as the vibraphone and the crotal, while the synthesiser varies the timbre of those resonances. Next follows work on the articulation of the sound, wich gives rise to «constant evolution». That evolution, because of the concentration of the ideas expressed – none of the acoustical instruments used enables a sound to be maintained – varies as a function of the several agogic modes.
The work is dedicated to Philippe Boesmans. Claude Ledoux
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Formats | Vinyl |
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