Denis Dufour | Composer’s notes

​

Stèle pour Pierre Schaeffer

2013 | 05'04 | opus 169 | Maison Ona publishers

for flute, bass clarinet, alto saxophone, trumpet in Bb, violoncello

​

• Création à Paris, Salle Mstislav Rostropovitch du conservatoire Claude Debussy 75017,le 14 décembre 2013 lors du concert “Denis Dufour - Dialogues en duos" par l’ensemble Furians dirigé par Pierre Dumoussaud

​

This work comes from a singular attempt: to carry over a sound paradigm, that of Pierre Schaeffer’s Étude aux sons animés, from one genre to another, from one universe to another, to transpose a form of the indescribable. The ineffable (the unplayable, the un-writable?) – of ingenuousness, of momentum, of the nonchalant and millimetric snapshot of collage – followed up, tightly shot, accurately carried forward like a fresco enlarged by squares, and finished off with an ample movement that gives spirit and consistency to the achievement. As such there’s nothing laboured or scrupulous in this risky experience, only fervour and meticulousness. Here we meet the strong (and often controversial) musical language of Schaeffer, that of a renewed expression, surprisingly bold in stringing together unexpected figures, yet ingrained with the rules of a secret classicism. This, here in a condensed form, is an almost quintessence of the musicality of Dufour, infused for a long time by a dream, a brainwave, an idea: to make instruments chant an unknown language, to make them unfold an unaffected address, of absolute strangeness, and make it his own. [Jérôme Nylon, translated by Hamish Hossain]