creation : 29.09.2009, France, Strasbourg, Festival Musica, Cité de la musique, by Les Percussions de Strasbourg.
duration: 12′
publishing : Suvini Zerboni, Milan
musicians : 6 percussionists
One of the peculiarities of music (perhaps the most important) is to be able to make us perceive different qualities of time.
The piece explores three qualities of time. A still time, where nothing happens except a regular pulsation like the seconds passing by. It is a time in the image of physics; a time “in the distance”. A rotating time, where the same musical formula is always repeated, evoking the automatism of the machine. Finally, a dynamic time, driven by the development of musical material that is always evolving. It is an animated time, like that of our daily life, a time “that surrounds us”, that we inhabit. It is the time of the place where we are. But this time of place often escapes us when we allow ourselves to be carried along by the speed of today’s world. The speed of communication networks gives us the illusion of being everywhere at the same time and makes us lose the notion of distance. We forget where we are.
The whole room is traversed by a slowing down movement at several levels of musical construction. The music slows down and invites us to slow down. Slow down to escape the speed of the flows, slow down to listen, observe what surrounds us, slow down to regain awareness of where we are.
Jean-Luc Hervé.