Surgir

Surgir

Two Preludes for solo piano (2019)

Surgir… two moments, two preludes connected by a shared desire : the desire to translate the world in which we live, subject to what Francois Jullien calls a « silent transformation », a process of which we only peceiye the suddenly appearing events. Already in my Notizen-Fragmente (2013) I quoted Rilke and his Notes on the Melody of Things : « There is no deep pain to make people equally sllent, one of them will hear more of the powerful melody of the background, the other less. Many no longer hear it at all. [...] Many people don't have time to hear it. »

What do we hear of this background to the world ? Maybe a humming, a silent transformation, an almost nothing — the Orientals would say « the void » - from which only the calligraphic gesture can surge, the sound wave which brings about an acceleration of thought in readiness for its annihilation. Everything is sound, even the silence which begins the first piece of my diptych. For only silence can permit the sudden appearance of the strange sound of these muffled strings in perpetual transformation. Filtering, journey, space of resonance in metabole which opens onto the sudden appearance of the piano gesture. Thus, music claims to be the ‘mise en abyme’ of tha different appearance, up to the fingering frenzy and its obtiteration in sound itself. As for the second part, it picks up on tha same material taken in different conditions of existence, inspired by the lines from Mallarmé : « Surgi de la croupe et du bond (Arisen from the rump and bound) ». The rump as a carnal erotic hint, the bound as a palpable kinetic clue. Gesture and movement which permit one to pay tribute to the agogical suppleness typical of the much loved jazz musics. The shadow of the crossing of genres.

By way of conclusion, some words read recently, a final shadow to the preceding paragraphs : « Les sons font taire le language ordinaire, l’endorment. La musique est la vibration du temps lui-même en une poussée ininterrompue, ma modulation de la pensée, la face cachée de la lune, rendant le temps inévitable  (The sounds silence ordinary language, put it to sleep. Music is the vibration of time itself in an uninterrupted thrust, modulation of thought, the dark side of the Moon, rendering time inevitable) » (Etel Adnan, Surgir, 2019).

Surgir was premiered by Elodie Vignon at the Piano Days, Bozar, Brussels, February 2020.

This piece is recorded on the CD « D’Ombres », Elodie Vignon, piano – Cyprès 2020 – CYP4658