Jeux en filigranes (2024)

Album "Filigranes" - Label INITIALE (2025)

Commissioned by trio Arkayī and CNSMDP

Instrumentation : violin, cello, meta-piano and electronics 

(Meta-piano = hybrid system combining an electronic device with the acoustic structure of a traditional piano)

Performers : trio Arkayī

Reika Sato, violin

Yi Zhou, cello

Arhzel Rouxel, meta-piano

François Longo, computer music designer

Premiere : 09/26/2025

at Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et Danse de Paris (CNSMDP)

Duration : 13'30 ca.

Editeur : Lacroch'

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« Ces jeux étaient de petits drames, presque exclusivement monologues, et ils reflétaient la vie spirituelle de leur auteur, aussi éprouvée que lumineuse, comme un parfait portrait, peint par lui-même. Il y avait là, non seulement un concert dialectique et un conflit entre les différents thèmes et groupes de thèmes, sur lesquels reposait le Jeu et dont la succession et l’opposition étaient fort ingénieuses, mais la synthèse et l’harmonisation des voix contrastées n’étaient pas conduites à la manière courante et classique jusque’à leur terme final ; cette harmonisation subissait plutôt toute une série de fractures et s’arrêtait chaque fois, comme prise de fatigue ou de désespoir, avant de se résoudre ; elle se perdait dans l’interrogation et le doute. » (excerpt from Le jeu des perles de Verres by Hermann Hesse in the French translation by J. Martin). This singular work, of which Thomas Mann appreciated the discreet irony and parodic tone, has always fascinated me, just like its author who wrote it in the middle of the Second World War, then exiled in Switzerland and banned from publishing in Germany, his country. native. In its complexity, and at the same time its synthetic vision of a utopian society whose ideal would be this famous "Game", the culmination of all culture, this work would be for me the poetic starting point of a musical composition made on fragile, moving materials, and at the same time precisely organized in a form articulated according to a "progression made of fractures", a form which could offer a counterpart to the very finely chiseled textures of Osja - 7 Stanzas for a Literary Drone by Marco Stroppa. This “mobility” of the musical material will also be highlighted by the instrumentarium, because with the violin and cello my “Méta-piano” will interact. It’s an hybrid instrument (augmented by transducers broadcasting sounds or electronic treatments directly via the table harmony, with second digital keyboard) thus allowing a real-time mutation or deformation of the timbres and the traditional acoustic space of the chamber formation.