The dutchman Peter Schat, born in Utrecht in 1935, studied in The Hague, London and finally in Basel with Pierre Boulez. It was in 1961 that Schat composed his “Signalement” for six percussionists and three contrabasses, for the Percussions de Strasbourg. The title of the piece comes from the signals exchanged by the interpreters to coordinate their interventions. The work, in fact, gradually gives more freedom of choice to musicians and goes from reading a specific musical text to a game where the “chance” occurs within the limits provided by the composer. The coordination signals will therefore become real signs of direction and the interpreters will each in turn have a responsibility at least equal to that of a conductor.
The contrabasses, which only appear episodically, are added to the piano treated in percussion and whose strings have been previously “prepared” by the introduction of various objects. In the last part of the work, the particular timbre emitted by the piano determines the replicas of the other desks on this or that group of instruments. “After we hear a piano string pinched by a coin, stifled by a piece of rubber or struck with chopsticks, the percussionists will play the corresponding sequence only on metal, wood, or skin instruments”, says the author.
“Signalement” is therefore an “open” work whose sonorous life does not go away for a moment. Here we can follow not only the thought of the composer, but the most personal reactions of the interpreters who have the opportunity to influence the speech in the direction of their own sensitivity.