Symphonie des quatre éléments

The same stream of Life…

And ineffable winds winged me at times

The Earth is my Grave

The Call of Fire

 

The ancient Greek concept of the four elements had an enduring impact on natural sciences and alchemical traditions. I retained the poetic dimension of the concept and the evocative power of the archetypal images it conjured up in my mind. Based on the number 4, this is a concertante work for string quartet and orchestra, but nevertheless in symphonic form. The 4 movements evoke (in the following order): Water, Air, Earth and Fire. Instrumentation requires soloists, a large orchestra and a few ‘descriptive’ percussion instruments such as a geophone (in the first movement), a wind machine or aeoliphone (second movement), stones (third movement) and a metal sheet (finale).

The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures

 This quote from Rabindranath Tagore’s Song Offerings characterizes the atmosphere of the first movement. After a shimmering, luminous introduction, the string quartet emerges from the orchestra with a first ascending theme. A second theme, lyrical and chromatic, undergoes many developments in the interplay between the ‘orchestral stream’ and the ‘string quartet organism’, like a metaphor on Tagore’s words. In the coda, stream and thematic material seem to dissolve progressively.

And ineffable winds winged me at times

These words from Arthur Rimbaud’s poem The Drunken Boat perfectly fit the brief, light and virtuosic scherzo. Halfway through the movement, the music switches to a binary meter in a twirling dance then back to the initial ternary meter in a breathtaking tutti.

The Earth is my Grave

I wrote these words from Oscar Vladislas de Lubicz-Milosz at the beginning of the slow (and also the longest) movement of the symphony to emphasize the relation between the Earth and Death. The movement opens with the string quartet playing a motif that seems to be hovering, faltering on the edge of silence. Progressively, a funeral procession begins and will crescendo throughout the whole movement. In the silence following the orchestral climax, the cello plays a tender melody. Over gentle harmonies, while the processional rhythm is still heard in the distance, the quartet expresses an impossible consolation and ends on unresolved harmonies.

The Call of Fire

The title of this book by French esoteric author René-Adophe Schwaller echoes the sense of anxious, even raging urgency that characterizes the final movement. Spreading like fire throughout the whole orchestra, it culminates into a frenzied dance. In the end, all the motifs overlap into an explosive coda!

GC

Commande du Berner Symphonieorchester, du Warsaw Philharmonic et de l'Orchestra della Svizzera italiana.

World premiere on November 27, 2025 by Karol Szymanowski Quartett (solo) and the Berner Symphonieorchester (dir. Krzysztof Urbański) in Bern.