Partial creation during the show l'Etrangèreté in Sidi Bou Saïd CMAM (Tunisia) on 3.10.2015, on 5.10.2015 at the French Institute of Sousse and on 7.10.2015 at the French Institute of Sfax - Orchester National Tunisien, Mohamed Lassoued, conductor and violinist -

Alia Sellami, voice - The Impromptu concert, wind quintet

Editions Francois Dhalmann. Duration : ca. 20'

The title of this work - in three parts linked without interruptions - is borrowed from the Italian painter Piero Manzoni (1933-1963), some of whose monochrome paintings are referred to as Achrome . The poetic impulse at the source of this one appeared to me during the physical experience of a kinetic sculpture by Elias Crespin (born in 1965 in Caracas) Plano Flexionante Circular . What connects these two artists are, on the one hand, being at the limit of a suspension/abolition of time/gesture, on the other hand, the relationship to silence/spirituality and finally, a deep attention/sensitivity to the poetic quality of “ almost nothing ”.

The theoretical and human explanation of such a position ranges from mystical contemplation to the affirmation of what is specific to man : introspection, self-reflection, meditation, sending us back to our human condition in a contemplation not necessarily framed by a belief. It is the silence/absence as revealing, or the possibility of revealing what is deepest/personal in us, our impulses constantly in motion, more or less calm or agitated. This relationship to time turns out to be ultra-sensitive, touching, on edge. It is the total appeasement of almost nothing and the questioning of the fragility of our human condition/existence.

Elias Crespin's work will have served me as a crystallization of an idea that has been going through my works for a long time : that of an infinitely slow passage of time almost without movement - a totally contradictory notion in music , the art of time, change and space par excellence.

Musically, this translates, not by an absence, but by a reduction to a minimum of the rhythms as well as by the recourse to a succinct harmonic material, where prevail mainly clusters and intervals of octaves and fifths, masked by immense slipped. Paradoxically, it is the plasticity - the architectonics of the gestures and movements - which ensures the overall coherence of the work and not the rhythms and heights which turn out to be secondary. The complexity of the writing has here as if moved into the articulations, the intensities (often very tenuous), the textures of the timbres and ways of producing the sound, the sound balances, the ratios of the various densities, of their tensions and impacts. clean. These internal movements/gestures, reduced to their simplest plastic expressions (glissandi, contrary or parallel movements, opposition of chords and unisons, moments of stability/holdings), are “ troués_cc781905-5cde -3194-bb3b-136bad5cf58d_” of silences and a few brief, rapid and violent gestures (like slashes in a canvas).

Listening is reversed. For those who agree to place themselves in the right frame of mind, it is the time and the silence of inner listening opposed to that of the daily din. Emphasizing the spiritual and disembodied background, the stripped down writing invites a kind of meditation.