Dedicated to Yves Charpentier and Pierre Roullier

Created on December 11, 1998  by Pierre Roullier at the CNR in Gennevilliers for the 60th birthday of composer Francis Bayer.

Duration : approx. 7'. Editions Lemoine

Literally “ souffler ” in Kirundi, the national language of all inhabitants of Burundi.

The ubuhuha (pronounced oubouhouha), which were once performed by  women during wakes, have virtually disappeared today. The woman uses her lips as reeds to shake the volume of air contained in the cavity formed by the two hands united against her mouth. The resulting sounds vary in pitch, timbre and intensity depending on the disposition of the hands and lips.

It is obviously the literal meaning that justifies retaining this term as the title of a work for solo flute and not the writing of a real ubuhuha.

Apart from this anecdotal aspect, if ever there was one, this work owes a lot to the different ways of  playing the flute around the world : Burundi,_cc781905-5cde -3194-bb3b-136bad5cf58d_ India,  Solomon Islands, Rajasthan, Turkey among others. I wanted to reconnect, beyond Varèse, Jolivet and Berio with the agrarian flute, pastoral of Debussy but by integrating all the playing techniques " actuelles " then that they have been found absolutely everywhere for centuries.

This work is a very free improvisation, of a joyful and tender character, to be played with fantasy. It is made up of multiple patterns with which the performer must “ jouer ” as if he were “ tournait tournait -bb3b-136bad5cf58d_” with his hands in all directions to finally abandon them for the benefit of others, come back to them, abandon them again and so on ; it is ultimately a work that is built over twists and turns.

Tips for flautists for performance

This work requires freeing oneself from barlines and finding, beyond the complexity of the writing, a real simplicity of playing by avoiding giving in to a brilliant playing gratuit ; no emphasis here, which is why the extreme treble is banned except at one moment which is an exacerbation of the joyful character of the work.

The writing takes into account the uneven timbre and the non-tempered pitches of the fingerings " factices " indicated on the score. These sequences of fingerings are chosen for their simplicity in the speed ; there is therefore no fixed scale of 1/4 or 1/3 of a tone which determines the structure of the work, but in certain places, a succession of fingerings generating pitches with a strangely expressive timbre that it does not must in no case be corrected under penalty of destroying the fragility of the work.