Creation: 07 July 2021, La Scala, Paris
Musicians: 3 percussionists
Duration: 13’42
“The term invariant, “that which is constant, fixed and stable”, is a concept used in mathematics, physics and linguistics. The advent of equal temperament at the end of the Baroque period introduced this concept of invariant into composers’ musical writing, notably from J.S. Bach onwards.
The stability of temperament, which enabled the development and formal organization of the tonal system, formed the basis of a language founded on stable, invariable pitch scales, allowing complex, modulating forms, the discoveries of which formed part of the history of nineteenth-century European music. But the 19th century was also the beginning of another musical modernity, that of new lutheries, acoustic research opening the way in the 20th century to the discovery of unheard-of sounds, electronics and percussion, that of Varèse, Messiaen, Xenakis and so many other masterpieces, one of the foundations of which was the infinite variations in timbre identity and openness to extra-European cultures.
The concept of invariant is not anachronistic. The organization of stabilized scales opens up polyphonic formal, temporal and harmonic possibilities, based on other modulating (what I call the innumerable clearings of these modulations) and hierarchical principles than the initial modalities of the tonal system. The very structure of writing based on invariants is not simply a return to the spirit of the late Baroque. It’s a creative search for a beyond of timbre and a form of abstraction of the musical that also opens the way to transcription of the work freed from its overly strong sonic identity.
Writing a percussion piece for three tempered keyboards is an act of writing and a radically contemporary exploration of this concept of invariant“.
Michel Levinas