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Ensemble Universal Edition Work

Échos éloquents

for seven players (2016): flute, clarinet in Bb (also bass clarinet), percussion (1 player), piano, violin, viola, violoncello;
version pour Mons (2019): + trombone and guitar

Échos éloquents | Ensemble Musiques Nouvelles | Jean-Paul Dessy (conductor)

Échos éloquents
for seven players (2016)
version pour Mons for nine players (2019)

English

Let us try to figure out the shape of an echo: What is said by an echo is what it does not articulate. The information about the echo itself is to be derived from what is swallowed by it or from the way how the reverberation is distorting the original message. An echo itself might be contoured as the phantasmorgia of a reality of which we might only guess its silhouettes by noticing a deviation to a formerly known content.

Échos éloquents tries to portrait this phenomenon in a sonic way. Sounds are being triggered by preceding sounds and sometimes mirrored in a very blurred and hardly recognisable way. Listening to music is similar to a memory game: We strive towards understanding a context by re-cognizing a theme, a chord, a gesture or whatever else. If someone alters the memory cards while we are playing, it starts to get exciting as we might wish to find out, who caused the mess.

The work itself is a kind of an echo to my work miroirs noirs which pictures another way of describing the same phenomenon by a different orchestration. Both work spoon their musical materials—like two sister-volcanos—from one magma chamber.

German

Was aus dem Echo spricht ist, was es nicht sagt, was es verschluckt, was es zerdehnt, was verhallt. Das Zerrbild einer Wirklichkeit, das verräterisch die Umrisse jener Oreade erahnen lässt, die, längst Stein geworden, alles Gesagte verschlingt um es wieder neu auszusprechen. So vielsagend ihre Laute sind, und zugleich so nichtssa-gend, so sehr hören wir in diesen Klang hinein, um darin irgendetwas zu finden.

Échos éloquents spinnt sich als Dialog zwischen Gesagtem und Zurückgesagtem durch die stumme Kulisse der Zeit fort. Der Sprechende findet im Wider-hall die Resonanz des Findenden, steigert sich in seine aufschaukelnden Worte hinein, um sie am Ende zu verlieren, um sprachlos zurück zu bleiben.

Das Werk selbst ist ein Echo auf mein neues Werk miroirs noirs, welches das dazu parallele Phänomen nicht spiegelnder Spiegel thematisiert. Beide Werke schöpfen ihr Material, wie zwei verschwisterte Vulkane, aus einer Magmakammer.

INSTRUMENTATION:
Flute, clarinet in Bb (also bass clarinet), percussion (1 player), piano, violin, viola, violoncello
Version pour Mons: + trombone and guitar

PERCUSSION INSTRUMENTS:
bass drum, tam tam, xylophone, glockenspiel, vibraphone, gong tuned C, tubular bells

DURATION:
11 minutes

PUBLISHED BY:
Universal Edition

PREMIERE:
November 21, 2016 • Graz, Minoritensaal • Schallfeld Ensemble • Leonhard Garms, conductor

PERFORMANCES:

  • November 30, 2019 • Mons, Arsonic • Ensemble Musiques Nouvelles • Jean-Paul Dessy, conductor
  • April 29, 2023 • Seoul, Seoul Arts Ceneter • ensemble blank • Jaehyuck Choi, conductor

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