Duration: 13 min.
Working with the flute orchestra poses to the composer, more than the string orchestra and its canonical status, the question of the common and the singular in music. How can differentiated sounds emerge from the same family of instruments, how can we superimpose singular acoustic properties, those of the piccolo with its piercing sound or those of the octobass flute evoking some ghostly ophicleid?
Traditionally, instrumental common sense is the object of orchestration, a discipline which designs the different kinds of flutes, their ranges, their timbres and their possibilities; it decrees the immaterial law of ideal instruments, always similar and predictable, the heuristic techniques to conform the sound to a musical imagination. But as soon as the sound phenomenon is summoned, it makes the singular, the technology of the instrument and the physiology of the performer heard. In this case, with two hundred and forty fingers, forty-eight lungs and lips, half of the larynx, tongues, diaphragms and other organs must be taken into account – not to mention the brains! Orchestration gives way to anatomy; organum in Latin first designates the musical instrument.
La stratégie du rebelle is written to highlight these sonic interferences; rather than ignoring or hiding them: write them down, even if it means not mastering all of their achievements; superimposing speeds, mixing and modulating timbres, finally dealing with the differences that remain between two instruments of the same genre, between two performers with equal talents. In front of the orchestra, the soloist gives the composition its shape and infuses the fragile textures that surround it with the violence necessary for them to blossom. He is the rebel, the one who literally resumes the war.
statégie du rebelle is dedicated to Pierre-Yves Artaud.
Premiere
March 25, 2010 by Julien Bourin (solo bass flute) and Orchestre de Flûtes Français under the direction of Paul Méfano at the Salle Cortot.