LA CASSURE DES NUAGES

Although brief and using a small group of musicians, this piece offers an interweaving of procedures previously used in Trames, Transmutations or Cantate.

The structure proceeds, apart from the articulation (and the disarticulation) of the text, from the use of main tempi, and one or more secondary tempi, simultaneous or successive, that multiply the pulsation of the voice, that is not « accompanied » by the clarinets, but « instantaneously developed » as a mobile image projecting a real object.
Here metric modulation used with more complex variations and speeds that generate each other before coming to a stop, thus the superposition of tempi.
The instrumentalist apprehends each new pulsation more as a new phrased directive than as an exercise in arithmetic ; nevertheless, the tempi are not approximate, but all derive from the beginning pulsation.
The percussions usually played by the singer give secondary pulsations, sometimes introduced for short periods.
The density of the piece, the maximum tension demanded, depends on the attention and particular effort shown in the instrumental interpretation ; this short text describing a « banal » street scene must be « nourished », so that its intensity comes from its poetic and « cinematographic » aspect.

D. Cohen