Et le sel est resté

About

“Et le sel est resté is a piece for mandolin and electronic tape in which I wanted to explore the traces of uprooting. Salt from a tear, salt from the abandoned sea, salt that lingers in the mouth like a somewhat painful memory—here, memory is approached not as a narrative, but as a material to be shaped, made of contrasts, interrupted gestures, waves of tension and erasure. The piece is organized into several zones of intensity, traversed by movements of rising and withdrawal, but always in an implacable tempo (by the second). Motifs appear, fragment, repeat, deform. The dynamics are constantly changing, with passages of sonic accumulation followed by almost mute suspensions.
For the mandolin, I sought to express a language in constant tension, where nothing settles or becomes habitual. The short musical chapters thus follow one another without interruption. The electronic tape acts as an unstable and distant double. Built from transformed sound materials (breaths, voices, granular textures), it does not "comment" on the mandolin part: on the contrary, it seeks to displace, absorb, reflect, or deny it. At times, it almost seems to prolong the instrumental gesture; at other times, it draws it into other dimensions and spaces. I conceived the electronics as a memory within memory, allowing me to test the notions of loss and transformation. Ultimately, in this piece, memory never asserts itself frontally. It slips, surfaces, resists... like a taste of salt left on the tongue.”



– Clara Olivares, April 2025