Dedicated to Laurence Chave (and Julien Béranger for the 1st)

1st audition during the 2011 end-of-cycle exam at the Nancy CRR.

Duration : 2' – 3' – 3' – 8'30. Editions Francois Dhalmann

Checkpoint I for 1 percussionist

1 large cymbal (18 cm), 2 mambo bells, 3 temple-blocks, 3 toms

Easy level (end of cycle I)

Checkpoint II for solo marimba (fa–do)

Medium level (end of cycle II)

Checkpoint III for 4 timpani

Difficult level (CEM)

Checkpoint IV for 2 percussionists

Very difficult level (DEM)

Percussion I: rain stick, flexaton, wooden drum (2 heights), 2 congas, 2 bongos, 1 or 2 maracas, ordinary snare drum, 5 cymbals (low, medium, high, studded, splash), small rising gong, 1 super ball, 1 coin, 1 bow.

Percussion II : 5 temple blocks, 1 bass drum (or double bass tom), high-pitched snare drum, little siren with Acme mouth, metal-shimes, tam-tam, 2 mambo bells, 1 super ball, 1 coin, 1 bow.

These four works for percussion were commissioned by the Center Culturel André Malraux - Scène Nationale de Vandoeuvre-lès-Nancy and the CRR de Nancy for the classes of Laurence Chave and Sébastien Béranger.

With the exception of the 4th intended for the concert, these small works are written for learning an instrument. Unlike the “ pédagogiques ” works, I wanted to offer apprentice musicians real works in the formal sense of the term. It's my music but simplified in order to be playable more easily : the writing does not yield to any ease under the pretext that it is written for students. A great requirement is required here and the instrumentalists will have to take care to play very precisely what is noted on the score, in the smallest detail, without adding or subtracting anything whatsoever.

Their title is of course a humorous allusion to the context for which they are written. However, the notion of passage, often evoked in art, fundamentally reflects what a work of art produces in us : by its strangeness and novelty it transforms us. "  To feel is to feel a contact " and if we accept it there is revolution in the proper sense of the term.