Creation: 9 september 2000 at Abbaye de Royaumont
Comissioner: State commission for Les Percussions de Strasbourg
Musicians: 6 percussionists
Duration: 15′
Where does this terrible authority of the skies come from? What punch was given to the sheet metal of the night to make it vibrate so radiant, to make it become so radiant, with vibrations that amplify until midday? (Francis Ponge, La Mounine). In the same way that temporal representations are certainly modified in a painting, but that the painting always speaks as if reflecting its temporality, so the pictorial representations that run through the sound world of red and blue undergo modifications, but remain rooted in pictoriality. Supported by strong instrumental colours, where each blow on the instruments says something about the rigidity of the metal that will vibrate, the form must, in this way, paradoxically form in the listener’s ear as picture and colour. “In the simple blue of the sky the soul gently glides – and as it leaves the last etiola, it rushes, wings spread, towards the infinite” (Jean-Paul, De la magie naturelle de nos facultés de représentation).