Viola (Parfum d'un Autre Monde )

Parfum d'un autre monde is the evocation of a sensory journey inspired by the piece of Noh, Hagoromo (the feather robe, n.1), known as a prayer for peace. 

“As I land on the shore of Miho-no-Matsubara (n.2) and look around me, flowers spring into the ethereal space, music resounds, and a supernatural fragrance fills the air…” (Hagoromo).

The musical materials are based on improvisations on the violin (which I play). They are analyzed, intuitively selected, and then used as syntax to develop a generative musical grammar – research I have been doing for several years. The range of the musical palette concerns the gesture, the figures, the timbre and the sound synthesis of the work. So I transform musical materials in various ways.

When Ircam offered me a specific sound broadcast for the creation of this work at the Philharmonie de Paris, images immediately came to mind as I composed: on the one hand, the fluctuation of the sound fog, as an ethereal element that diffuses in the air in the manner of perfume; on the other hand, the image of a luxuriant nature that is reflected in the iridescent water, evoking the metamorphosis of the instrumental gesture.

Electronics are made from string sounds – analyzed, segmented, scrambled, fused, superimposed, immersed, dissected, transplanted… The targeted figures go through different transformations. On this spatial canvas, viola and electronics merge into a sharp perfume, in constant flux. I imagined a singular musical form, which is not defined: its facets appear according to the concept "Ikai" - another world - in the theater nô. In nô, the time is often not defined; the same goes for the border between day and night. The form develops in a multi-directional way according to changes in the musical atmosphere. Capturing the fleeting moment, rendering variations by gesture, timbre, diving into the figure, grasping the intangible, is what the term «metamorphoses» induces, in a music with continuous development. This music records the fluctuation, the mobility of forms in space and the progressive changes of atmosphere.

Parfum d'un autre monde opens on a flight, a flexible improvisation in the image of the wind, in a phantasmagorical ambient. As the sound waves shape the sea, the wind sculpts the undulating dunes. The progressively enriched intensity carries us into the delight of lyrical expression. At the heart of the work, a quivering texture in trills alludes to yugen (deep and mysterious beauty of the world, ineffable and subtle charm). The transparent universe of harmonic sounds leads to a development in the turbulence of staccatos and detached.

“The sound fills the sky. Hues of the sunset, azure ripples on the waves. The storm scatters clouds, rain of flowers falling from the sky. The heavenly nymph rises beyond Mount Fuji and then disappears into the ether…” (Hagoromo).

1. One spring morning, a fisherman named Hakuryo wants to appropriate a feather robe that he finds hanging from a pine branch. As he tries to bring it home as a family treasure, a supernatural being (a young celestial nymph) appears and asks him to return the dress. At first, Hakuryo refuses, but is moved by this lamenting celestial nymph, because she cannot return to heaven without her. She asks him to return the dress in order to return to heaven, and promises him in exchange a dance describing the Moon.

2. Miho-no-Matsubara is a pine forest crossed by sea winds.