Murs et Racines

About

“My first powerful encounter with contemporary music dates back to September 2011, when I attended the posthumous premiere of Christophe Bertrand’s Quatuor II by the Arditti Quartet. I have a vivid memory of the impression this work made on me, in which I perceived, through the musical lines, a raw, living energy. Moved by this piece, whose intensity shook my youthful certainties about music, I enrolled in a composition class at the Strasbourg Conservatory just a few days later.
It is therefore in the spirit of a tribute to Christophe Bertrand’s Quatuor II that I conceived this piece, ten years after its premiere. Murs et Racines, while maintaining the linearity of the musical discourse, particularly plays with the blurring of contours and the creation of sonic hazes. More precisely, the piece is composed of several repeated cells, blurred by organic textures, where the sound sources are not clearly identified thanks to the use of extended techniques. These two elements form a foreground/background interplay with the hybrid texture, which gives sensations of changing spaces, varied reverberations, and a multiplicity of colors. The form is established according to a principle of repetition of the same material, taken up but developed each time, extended, stretched. Some highly virtuosic passages alternate with much slower ones, where time is almost frozen, and each musical figure is articulated with infinite slowness.”



Clara Olivares, September 2021