Flute in C (+ picc.), oboe, clarinet in A, bassoon, horn, trumpet in Bb, trombone, percussion (1 instrumentalist) [Marimba (5octaves)/Low timpani (Eb)/5 Toms/GC/3 Temple-blocks/Steel-drums medium (F#3-C#6)/4 Cymbals (large, medium, small, studded)/TT deep/7 gongs (E3-F#3-G3-A3-Bb3-C4- C#4)/Bells/Metal Shimes], harp, main piano, strings (2/1/1/1 or 4/3/2/2/1)
Commissioned by the Ensemble Orchestral Contemporain (EOC), director Daniel Kawka
Created on January 30, 2019 at the Saint Etienne Labor Exchange by Ancuza Aprodu, piano and Claire Levacher, direction
Duration : ca. 23' - François Dhalmann Editions
« We are such stuff / As dreams are made on /and our little life is rounded with a sleep »
“ We are the stuff of which dreams are made and our little life is all sleepy”.
Shakespeare (The Tempest Act IV, Scene 1). The writer Italo Calvino quotes these verses in the first lecture of his American Lessons devoted to the opposition between lightness and weight.
« Gravity without weight, as a particular lyrical and existential modulation which allows one to contemplate one's own drama as if from the outside and to dissolve it in melancholy (the sadness that has become light) and in irony/humor (the comic which has lost its bodily heaviness, this carnal dimension which calls into question the self, the world, and the whole network of relationships that build them).
I would therefore like to dedicate these conferences to a few values, or qualities, or specificities of literature that are particularly close to my heart, trying to situate them in the perspective of the new millennium : lightness, speed, accuracy , visibility and multiplicity ”.
These are the qualities that I wanted to develop here. Contrary to my 4th chamber symphony with principal harp where I developed an organic and complex writing, this 5th chamber symphony is part of the lightness, the subtlety, the precision and the melancholic sweetness.
Like all my chamber symphonies, the writing uses a main instrument, here the piano. Either soloist, or of the same importance as the other instruments, or absent, the main instrument makes it possible to multiply the possibilities of sound combinations.
Formally the work is built in 8 parts linked without interruption :
A: Prelude
B: Exposure
C: 1st cadence of the piano
D: Development
E: Prelude
F: 2nd cadence of the piano
G: Time suspended
H: 2nd cadence of the piano and Coda
