Grand Singulier
Year 1996
First performance June 1997 (Brussels-CRB)
Instrumentation violin, piano
Duration 6'
Score Arends Musikverlage
details
Compulsory piece for the ‘Concours de Premier Prix de violon’ 1997
Dedicated to Florence Baily
After a painting by Anne Desobry (1994)
Grand singulier, by Anne Desobry – whom I had met at the proclamation of the ‘Prix de la Fondation belge de la Vocation’, of which she was also a laureate – had struck me with its metaphysical power. The ghostly shape of this central character and its clear face, moving in its suffering and loneliness, spoke powerfully to me and touched me. Our human condition resonates in it with intensity, capable of metamorphoses in its fragility. The character in this painting becomes emaciated, as if the matter of its body were called towards the beyond and its soul was flying away in a movement of such powerful energy. In order to express the singularity of this ‘Grand Singulier’, I started out from a note whose monophony unfolds through superpositions, echoes and resonances.