Énergie blanche, bleu lointain

This nonet is inspired by Fabienne Verdier's White Energy series. The smooth, midnight-blue background of the canvases contrasts with strokes of white paint, like an opposing force. Throughout the paintings, this energy evolves into fluid or rough nocturnal undulations, light sparkles, vaporous clouds, or even crackles. The canvases seem filled with weightless matter, and that's why I imagined a soaring music, seeking a balance between movement and stillness. For me, this two-tone series emanates the idea of a vitality, a force, a light that inhabits the infinite and distant void of the sky.

I recreated this white energy in roughness (grains of matter or fragile touches of light) disturbing these layers of vibrant and mysterious blue with long and stretched values. My work was to imagine variations of these two matter-colors thanks to the extraordinary palette of textures offered by the string instruments. The piece is thus conceived as a colorful and hypnotic journey in seven tableaux, each corresponding to a canvas from Verdier's series.

Off-screen is a cold, nocturnal episode in which faint glimmers of light barely attempt to pierce the darkness of the night. Disturbing glissandi emerge from the violas and cellos in stereo, presenting the motif that will permeate the entire work. The double bass emits an irregular and mysterious pulse in the distance.
A gentle, then majestic ripple rises in Ascendance . With the arrival of the violins, it crosses the dark matter, spreading its brilliant, luminous beams.
Turbulence is the place of disturbances. White energy, made up of vibrant, chaotic particles, is constantly disrupting itself and invading space.
In Synchronie I , the cellos share the work's founding motif in a single, pure, suspended breath. Then, they unite to form a single voice and a violin song joins them. The latter becomes the harbinger of light during this brief lull.
Mémoires du vent recalls the beginning of the work with this irregular palpitation of the double bass and the disturbing glissandi of the lower strings. But these memories are also the echo of the Turbulences which here transform into Vortex, in which the white and chaotic energy becomes a veritable whirlwind of liquid light.

To close the piece, Synchronie II reprises Synchronie I with the colder, more mysterious color of the violas, still in stereo. The touches of light from the upper strings fade before fading completely in the distance.
This piece belongs to the same cycle as my string quartet Feuilles d'eau de Silvacane, inspired by the series of the same name by Fabienne Verdier.

Camille Pépin

M4H Commission - The Ideal Concert - Besançon International Festival.
Premiere on August 7, 2021, as part of the Musique aux 4 Horizons Festival, in Ronchamp, by the Le Concert Idéal ensemble under the direction of Marianne PIKETTY.