Denis Dufour | Composer’s notes

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Cinq formes d’appel

2013 | 09'01 | opus 165 | Maison Ona publishers

for bass clarinet and trumpet in Bb

1. Appel [02’30]  ·  2. Alerte [01’48]  ·  3. Annonce [01’20]  ·  4. Invite [01’10]  ·  5. Rappel [01’49]

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• Dedicated to Jean-Paul Merlin

• Création à Paray-le-Monial, jardin du Cloître de la Basilique, le 23 juin 2013 lors du concert “Esprit de suite / Paray-Le-Monial” donné dans le cadre de Esox Lucius propose : Acousmatique 10, with Pierre Antoine Savoyat, trumpet, and Loïc Vergnaux, bass clarinet

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Cinq formes d’appel (alluding among others to a famous piece by Jean-Philippe Rameau) renews the genre of ‘character pieces’. Here is one that evokes practices – still in use today – where circumstances of danger, needing to regroup people scattered in a territory, requires to sound a call for them to act in unison. The cries are those of questions and of songs resounding in the mountains. The sound signals are those emitted at sea to guide the captains of ships or, in foggy weather, to warn of a presence or of an obstacle. The sirens warn people of an approaching danger or an emergency. The bells, as a carillon or being pealed out, phrase the life of a slumbering country and inform inhabitants of the current events. So many ages recalled, references points drowned-out today in the contemporary din, which still remind and testify – beyond modern means of communication – the ancient organization of our societies, where human links were still ruled by reflexes and the senses, and not by automatism.

[Jérôme Nylon, translated by Hamish Hossain]