Instrumentation : piano solo
Composition : 2008
Commission : Festival d'Alençon
Duration : 5 mn 30 s
First performance : Romain Hervé, October 12, 2008, Auditorium in Alençon - Cour Carrée de la Dentelle (F)
Publisher : inédit
The work weaves a dialogue between two musical ideas: the ticking of time and the echo of memory.
From the very opening, time asserts itself — swift, insistent — through a circular melody, sweeping and almost breathless. But a sudden gust scatters its traces, and in the silence that follows, childhood emerges. It appears in broad, noble chords, carried by a disarmingly simple melody.
The musical fabric then coils into swirling spirals, into stubborn circles — as if trying, again and again, to grasp the ungraspable. Amid these rhythmic eddies, pauses open up, breaths slip in. And with each one, an old folk tune reveals itself a little more — fragile, persistent.
It is this melody, À la claire fontaine…, that gently prevails. It carries within it the memory of childhood and the calm of rediscovery. Bathed in its quiet light, the piece comes to a close, cradled by a gentle breeze that, for a moment longer, suspends the flow of time.