Creation : 07 November 1995, la Villette (Paris)
Musicians : 6 percussionists
Dedicated to : Les Percussions de Strasbourg
Comissioner : Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication
Duration : 25′
Publishing : Durand
There is a great deal of research activity in the field of electro-acoustic sounds. I have been involved in it for a long time and still am. This forces my imagination to consider music in a different way from that offered to me by traditional instruments. This raises new questions about the way of looking at “sound” in relation to those that have been bequeathed to me by tradition. These questions are the very foundation of the composer’s work. What is the meaning of harmony? How to conceive a melodic discourse? What is the place of rhythm in such a context? However, it is always through loudspeakers that the results of these questions are revealed. Loudspeakers can do what instruments cannot, but instruments, on the other hand, can do what loudspeakers cannot. They have an acoustic radiation that electric diaphragms lack. Their charm lies elsewhere. From this point of view, the sixens are, in addition to being the most successful in the creation of acoustic instruments of our time, the instruments that can bring together the most current musical concerns with instrumental practice. It is not a question of producing real pitches, but pitch complexes. Melodies, harmonies, rhythms and polyphonies become variable data that have to be rethought according to different categories. Nothing is more stimulating than to engage an expression that needs to be reformulated. It is not a matter of “wiping the slate clean” but of rethinking the writing in the light of a different sound reality. I think we should now take a serious look at such issues. I very often imagine that there is a lot of potential in the discovery of acoustic instruments that offer new questions. It is not the death of the loudspeaker – by “loudspeaker” I mean of course all the work that is done beforehand – but rather the influence of the loudspeaker on acoustic instrument making that is at stake. In 1989, I had written two sextet of sixens in my cycle of the Book of Keyboards. These two pieces are here merged in Métal, a vast composition that draws conclusions and amplifies what was only experimental at the time. Since the instruments are not tuned to a single form and do not sound the same when struck on the piano or forte, the play of resemblances, responses, mirrors, oppositions or polyrhythms is highly complex. Every sound body used by the composer is a musical instrument, as Berlioz prophetically wrote in his Treatise on Instrumentation and Orchestration. I would not be angry if I could prove, today, that he was devilishly right”.