Creation : 24/09/2001 at Festival Musica (Strasbourg)
Musicians: 6 percussionists
Duration : 17′
Publishing : Billaudot
De la vitesse attempts to bring together two ways of hearing and conceiving music. The establishment and exploitation of “figures” puts the discursive emphasis of composition on what is usually called: writing. On the other hand, the creation of sound continuums in which the notion of matter dominates is a more contemplative approach to sound. Speed is based on a constant to-and-fro between figures and matter which is established through more or less continuous processes of transformation. When a figure changes scale, if it is greatly slowed down for example, it reaches the status of matter. By condensing, it will in turn give birth to a new figure. By propagating to an underlying sound continuum, such as the wave produced by a pebble thrown into water, the figure can influence the destiny of the water. De la vitesse wants to be neither a contemplative work nor the sound materialisation of an abstract writing. It wants to be a sound writing, a writing of sounds, a writing of sounds.
Philippe Leroux