I was undecided about which piece by Gérard Pesson (1958) to propose for a listening session. Perhaps Butterfly's Note Book, an extremely delicate small collection for piano? Or Wunderblock - Nebenstücke II for accordion and orchestra, a bizarre and fascinating "transcription" of the first movement of Bruckner's Sixth Symphony? Or maybe La lumière n’a pas de bras pour nous porter, also for solo piano? Or Aggravations et final for orchestra? ...
In the end, I settled on Le Gel, par jeu for six instruments... it is from 1991, somewhat preceding the limits of the 21st century, but it seems absolutely indicative of Pesson's style to me; furthermore, it has the great merit of being able to follow the score!
Pesson's writing is quite dense (without being... saturated!) but its sound is always very subtle, delicate. pp and ppp prevail, occasionally punctuated by an sff accent. The use of extended techniques, "à la Lachenmann", is intensive, yet the result is far from instrumental musique concrète. Why? The "secret" is not so much the harmony—though even from this point of view, consonance prevails—as it is the rhythm: the rhythm of Pesson's music is "tonal". The 3/8 is not an "aid to reading" as in Ligeti; it is a true 3/8, very lively, complete with triplets and dotted rhythms.
Pesson's music reminds me of a balancing act: when it works best—and Le Gel, par jeu is not among my favorite pieces—it has the ability to evoke the scent of tonality, of a distant world that we remember and love, and then immediately withdraw into the fog, vanish, dissolve like a cloud.
(By the way, I really like his piece titles!).
Program notes
Le Gel, par jeu and the Cinq Poèmes de Sandro Penna were written in Italy and are the result of two poetic discoveries, two capital encounters: Sandro Penna, a contemporary poet who died in Rome in 1977, and Emily Dickinson, an American poetess born in 1830 in Massachusetts. Their work, apparently so different, shared a common depth and a quiet gravity, is linked in my memory to the city of Rome and the gardens of the Villa Médicis that I saw from the windows of my study.
Having renounced the subtitle, I must provide an explanation for this Le Gel, par jeu. It is a danse macabre, or, to be more exact, a series of small ghostly dances, of grating and licentious scenes.
The danse macabre is the only gay genre that is also profound. I have not renounced the little paraphernalia it imposes: the struck wooden slats that traditionally represent the clashing of bones; but instead of a somewhat "marked" xylophone, I preferred the more mysterious and muffled low marimba. The dies irae is included, as it should be, but in such a cryptic way that I myself have already forgotten the complex operation involved in its grafting.
This music is spectral in its own way since ghosts parade through it. It is entirely vertebrated with chromatics (the bones of our poor scales), hurried, traversed by air currents and scrapings. Siciliennes, waltzes, spring auguries in bands, the measured dances freeze and become fixed.
This music is my first experience in the strictly continuous, in what was formerly called the concitato style.
The title of the work is the free translation (Guy Jean Forgue) of a verse by Emily Dickinson, provincial angel from Massachusetts, who spent her life following funerals, a flashing genius barely incarnated who more than a century ago transcended the two subjects of every danse macabre—and of this one (panic and irony): The Frost beheads it at it's play.
Gérard Pesson.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3yf8fbYYmI
Ensemble FA - Dominique My
