slices

for violin (2016)

Duration: 15 min.

It is usually difficult to distinguish the only invention of a composer from a previously assimilated material or a pure borrowing. With Slices, I wanted to compose a personal landscape of the violin from different sources: written fragments, concrete sounds, musical memories or the idiomatic gestures of a concerto cadenza.

In this heterogeneous matter, I’ve been searching for continuities which could be the premises to a coherent form, shaping a space between sounds and moving across. The piece builds up with no narration, in the way of memory or dreams, guided by the kind of reason that crosses all thresholds – those built by language and habits.

Hopefully, imagination emerges between sounds, so tenuously that memory misleads itself most of the time ; we remember chimeras that never existed and believe that we’ve invented something we already learned. Only the commitment of composition remains: do not forget anything, leave nothing aside that could seal the unity of a work.

The title of the piece is an allusion to the ribs of the violin (“éclisses” in French) which etymology dates back to the old French “esclicer”, which meant “split into pieces” and gave the word “slice” in English.

Slices is dedicated to Winnie Huang.