Awaiting creation

2 fl. (+ picc.) /2 htbs /3 clar. (the 3rd bass clar.) /2 bassoons (the 2nd cbs) – 4 horns /2 trps in C /3 trbs (the 3rd bass trb) /1 contrabass tuba – 3 percussionists – Hrp – piano (and celesta ad lib.) – string quintet (8/6/5/4/3 including at least one with 5 strings).

Duration : ca. 16' - François Dhalmann Editions.

This cycle is the orchestration of my work for piano 4 hands Les Modulations (2012/2013), 2nd notebook of the Les Instantanés cycle.

More than an orchestration, in the literal sense, this version includes additional variants of the motifs of the initial version as well as new motifs specific to the percussions in order to ensure an ever greater coherence to the work. The duration is thus increased.

" My snapshots are a scribble in pencil or ink, a little color, and that's it ". Van Dongen.

In 2001, the subject of my 1st Snapshots for solo piano (in 5 parts) was as follows: "  This collection of short works is neither sketches nor studies or preludes, nor to variations in the classical sense of the term, although the formal coherence is ensured by a work of variants of the motifs which cross the work from one end to the other. This kind of travel diary, like quick sketches, involves for each of the pieces different musical gestures, nervous, incisive, precise where everything is more suggested than developed ”.

The Modulations for piano 4 hands (in 6 parts) extend the spirit and develop the potential contained in the fundamentals of my writing.

Each title reflects the poetic and formal project of each of the parties.

Each part has its own coherence and must be linked to the next one.

The order of the parts is determined because thought of as an organic whole with a direction.

However, it is possible in a non-professional setting to play only certain parts.

​

1. Traces (ca. 3')

2. Inserts (ca. 2')

3. Modulations (ca.1'30)

4. Erasure/Emergence (ca. 3')

5. Vortex (ca. 5')

6. Footprints (ca.1')

1. Traces was commissioned by the 4-hand duo formed by pianists Florestan Boutin and Mickaël Ertzscheid who, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, commissioned 10 composers to create a short work of 3' maximum, these intended to be played at the same time as the Sacre in its original version for piano 4 hands. Rather than writing a Homage to Stravinsky, I preferred to reflect on the impact and the personal traces that this work of incredible power and energy left on me, still irrigating certain aspects of my writing today. . In this Rite in miniature, a distant echo of several motifs related to those of the Rite is perceptible. Besides a constant energy, there is something very cubist  in the writing : the same constituent elements follow one another more or less abruptly (musical form in blocks ), punctuated by an element of rupture, paradoxically melodic. almost quotation. Several constituent processes of the Rite itself underlie all the parts : hardness/brutality, constant energy/density, an element of suspension of time by holdings and/or trills, the fall effect, the principle of repetition, bell sounds, to which are added my own processes : timbre and intensities as structuring elements, constant instability generating movement, transitions by contrast .

1. Inserts  : against a calm background of regularly repeated chromatic notes in all registers, very brief and nervous inlays/inserts of figures/motifs/gestures stand out like so many recollections and anticipations of the other parties.

1. Modulations  : this moment of extremely dense transition, if not tense, deploys a sound space at the limit of saturation but not " noise". Consisting of a single tremolo chord, this one is “ animated from within ” by various incrustation processes timbres, colors, game modes, rhythms. A reason for appeal opens on the following parts.

1. Effacement/Émergence : as its title indicates, this moment of time suspended in various ranges of colors, is rendered by a writing of sustained and quivering sounds. The motifs barely emerge from this sound background and never assert themselves : they disappear, crumble as soon as they seem settled.

1. Vortex  : circulation of energy in its pure state, it is the vertigo of order and disorder where nothing remains in place. Everything fluctuates in a powerful and very turbulent maelstrom, made of volutes, change of regime, reminiscences in a patchwork, variegated, composite where expectations and ruptures are constant. It is an integration and synthesis of all the processes in a striking shortcut, in the physical sense of the term.

1. Footprints  : short concluding part where only the resonance of tiny fragments of various moments of the work remains. To paraphrase Claudio Parmiggiani, all that remains is “ the shadows of things ”. It is " the silence after the disaster ", emotion in its most intimate form. A hollow, fragile, fugitive writing, immaterial and ghostly ruin, a kind of white writing. At work, a process of oblivion, of disappearance opening onto an almost mystical experience.