Michaël Levinas - Par-delà

Описание: Par-delà, pour grand orchestre (1994)

Orchestre SWF de Baden Baden
Michael Gielen

This orchestral piece represents an extension of my compositional work. This extension concerns my research on the hybridization of instrumental timbres and micro-intervallic polymodality. Initially, this research allowed me, in my recent pieces, Préfixes, Rebonds, and Diaclase, to create hybridizations between instruments with similar spectral identities, but also to generate alloys and mixtures of timbres obtained through micro-intervallic superimpositions of modes. The very notion of superimposition allowed me to connect my writing of timbre to the "polyphonic category." In Par-delà, the orchestral scale allowed for a larger and more powerful instrumental ensemble that took into account the acoustic laws that privilege certain families of instruments in their interactions. Thus, I reconnected both with a polyphony that considers the horizontal function without necessarily stemming from a fundamental resonance and I recreated the notion of instrumental groups.

First group: Keyboards, pianos, various types of resonant percussion instruments, and the orchestra's "center pedal." This group consists of a piano tuned in sixteenths of a tone and two pianos tuned in quarter tones. It is complemented very discreetly by percussion.

Second group: Two trumpets and a horn with playing techniques allowing for periodic vibrato and micro-interval relationships identical to those of the piano. These two groups interact through modal polyphony and ornamentation. The acoustic phenomenon arises from harmonic coherence and paradoxically produces a vocal timbre effect.

The third group is based on a technique of "abouchage" (a type of interlocking) between the brass instruments, a legacy of Gluck's orchestra. Bass trumpet + tuba, horn + tuba, horns + trumpets. Each instrument plays within the bell of the other. Each instrument becomes the resonating chamber of the other. The result is a hybrid with a vibrant, micro-interval color.

The fourth group, comprising flutes, clarinets, and saxophone, is written in taut tessituras and textures to highlight the differences. Here again, I used quarter-tone trills between instruments notated in unison. Strings, like a Seurat painting, "pigment" the harmonic pivots of this piece with a bow rebound technique whose rhythms I determined entirely through gradation. This particular conception of harmonic combinations and superimposed, and therefore polyphonic, modal combinations led me to omit certain instruments traditionally considered integral to the symphony orchestra. It is true that this memorable orchestra, the source of the greatest masterpieces, was born from the coherence of the tonal system revealed by our great masters of the 18th and 19th centuries.

What does it mean to develop? The formal necessity of my writing is expressed in a tension I perceive between the predictable, the trajectory, the process, the unfolding, and the rupture (continuous-discontinuous) that breaks this movement. What are these trajectories that guide the form of my writing? Ascents and descents that break in a rhythmic stillness of repeated notes. This rhythm resonates in the form of instrumental breaths, orchestrated between the instruments in close proximity and commented on by the rest of the orchestra. These trajectories, therefore, break and run out of steam.

Abstraction and concreteness—an alternative? This formal tension mentioned earlier is of the same order as a certain relationship I would like to explore in my music between abstraction, the very essence of music, and the realm beyond sound, which is also the "beyond" of systems. Isn't sound the rich and complex material in its possible combinations? Yet it seems that the history of musical language teaches us this specific relationship between the instrument, an extension of the human body, a direct or metaphorical expression of the voice (a metaphor found even in technological sound), and this transcendence. It is perhaps here that the secret, even dialectical, relationship between the pure abstraction of music and its manifestation in narrative forms, opera for example, lies. Once again, a tension between abstraction and the multiple signifiers of sound. It is perhaps here that the vocal quality of my writing in this orchestral piece is once again concealed. --Michael Levinas

Art by Francine Van Hove