Chant
for synthetizer Yamaha DX7, harp, piano and three groupsof percussions.
Thiscomposition was written in 1983 at the request of the Festival de Wallonie(Belgium) which chose it for the “Orient-Occident” theme of the year. That explains the choice of theprincipal contituents of the work : a Japanese melody (from a Japanese song bookprovided by Henri Pousseur to the young composer I was at that time) and aserial sequence. A vaste area for explorations was thus opened up, wherein Iwas able to establish various relationships between those two components :re-interpretation, interaction and distanciation.
Thus compositionplans arise out of the acoustical characteristics of the instruments : first ofall resonances, characteristic of the piano, the harp and such percussion instruments as vibraphone andcrotales, while the synthetizer varies the timbre of those resonances. Nextfollows work on the articulation of the sound, which gives rise to a “constantevolution”, a kind of perpetual transformation in a Rhapsodic mood. Thatevolution, because of the concentration of the expressed ideas – none of theacoustical instruments used enables a sound to be sustained – varies as afunction of the several agogic modes.
“Chant”is dedicated to Philippe Boesmans. The work was premiered by the Ensemble Musiques nouvelles at the occasion ofthe Festival of Wallonia 1983 – Brussels – La Raffinerie.