Call us : +33 257 880 074
en 
Michael Jarrell
When I compose, I am faced with choices that affect the immediate succession of events or the course of the form: once a path is chosen, one cannot go back. In this sense, composition resembles a branching system: a motif, a 'Gestalt' can develop in different ways. Certain elements of a work can serve as a seed for another work. This is how deep links exist between the pieces recorded here: Trei I, Trace-Ecart, Modifications (...) This idea of repeated notes implied other formulations, which I decided to update with Modifications. In this work, I established a sort of development cycle based on two opposing elements having repeated notes as the main axis: thus the listener can follow the transformations ranging from the sustained note to groups of appoggiaturas, passing through the trill and different kinds of rapid figurations. These elements are, at the start of the piece, superimposed. They also have a "signal" function and articulate the different parts of the work from a formal point of view. More than a writing game, such work is linked to psychoacoustic phenomena and the search for a language; it aims at a formulation that the listener can grasp, at a satisfactory match between language and perception based on the use of identifiable elements such as motifs, frozen pitches, musical gestures. Just as I do not intend to make a clean break with the past, I do not wish to construct each piece from zero. What matters, on the contrary, is to work with elements that I master better and better, to achieve a certain fluidity, and to establish a meaningful continuity between works. Fascinated by artists who, like Giacometti or Varèse, constantly work on the same idea, I conceive my own development as a kind of self-analysis.
Michael Jarrell
Presentation text of the Accord disc
Recording:
1 CD Accord, 461 764-2
Trei II - Modifications - Eco - Trace-Ecart
Ensemble Contrechamps, G. BernasconiAuthor: JARRELL Michael Discipline/Instrument: piano and ensembleFormat: Score Style/Genre: contemporary Release date: Jan.-87Number of pages: 56
