Un ciel fait d’herbes II (1990)
for clarinet, violin, violoncello and piano (1990 - 12 min.)
Premiere : Aquarius quartet – Olne Festival 1990 (B)
The first draft of this piece was a song for alt-voice, clarinet and piano, composed on a poem (Un Ciel fait d'herbes I ) of the Belgian poet Marc Imberechts. An expanded version for quartet (without voice) was written later on the occasion of a concert in tribute of Jean-Louis Robert, a young belgian composer who died accidentally in 1979.
This music tries to transpose in musical structures the subtle play of language and the erotic references found in Marc Imberechts’s poem. As often in my works, the harmonic structure was completely determined by computer, allowing to create musical models of some natural sound transformations. Multiple references of acoustic distorsions therefore affect the elaboration of the musical discourse (from harmonic distorsions to timbre distorsions). The form is elaborated around the collapse of the music itself in a quasi-central point where three players have to whisper the poem over a long note holded by the clarinet :
Déchire-moi la peau des désirs.
Que mon sang, qui aspire au grand air
oxygène le frisson grésillant
aux creux de tes hanches
Mes griffes zèbrent le grand fuseau blanc.
L'araignée violette
se précipite le long de la grande vergue.
Fleur mauve ouvre ses pétales.
Perle la liqueur.
Les deux pigeons blancs
Tendent le bec vers mes lèvres.
Marc Imberechts, "Un Ciel fait d'herbes"
(Editions Tétra-Lyre)
This piece was prize winner at the UNESCO International Tribune in 1992.