Imperceptibly, but not entirely unpredictably, the issue shifts: from “good music” versus “bad music” to “being music” versus “not being music”. I understand the metaphor of levels, but I do not share it. Partly because I cannot bear to think that Scales could be—in any sense—on a higher level… I don't know… than Haydn's Ninety-first Symphony? Or perhaps Mahler's Sixth Symphony? Partly because interest in different types of music does not follow a linear path, neither from a historical point of view (where to listen to Bertrand “as music” I must first listen to Ligeti, and before listening to Ligeti I must listen to Bartók, and before listening to Bartók…) nor from the point of view of technical complexity (generally speaking, I understand neither reggae nor melodrama, but I do not believe they are intrinsically more complex musics than Bertrand's) … In short, the palace metaphor does not hold: different types of music do not reside on different floors of the same palace—at most they are different palaces, of different construction and size, located in different places …
I wonder: if the differing interest that each of us feels for different types of music does not follow an ascending path, how can we explain it? I do not know where it comes from. Lachenmann recounts that in the post-war period, in Darmstadt, as a man not yet twenty, he was disconcerted by Stockhausen's music (who was, after all, only seven years older than him): he understood nothing of it, but it attracted him like a mysterious object that, compared to everything he knew, seemed to exist in another world. More modestly, although having nurtured a certain curiosity for some time, I began to truly interest myself in “contemporary” music when a highly esteemed friend recommended I listen to a certain piece that, for me, “changed the rules of the game.”
I do not intend to convince anyone, however: you can live perfectly well without Bertrand and his ilk. Besides, after Mahler, Bruckner and Sibelius await you.
As far as Scales is concerned, a listening guide—perhaps not exactly “subtle”—is provided by Christophe Bertrand himself. Fatalistically, Gustav Mahler reappears here as well. And it fatally makes an impression to read in the closing “my creative future,” considering that shortly after, not yet thirty, Bertrand would take his own life.
http://www.christophebertrand.fr/notices/scales.html
S c a l e s (2008-2009) for large ensemble (20')
Co-commissioned by the Ensemble Intercontemporain and the Concertgebouw Amsterdam
To Susanna Mällki and the musicians of the Ensemble Intercontemporain
World premiere: April 24, 2010, Concertgebouw Amsterdam - Ensemble Intercontemporain, dir. Susanna Mälkki
German premiere: May 9, 2010, Philharmonie Cologne - Ensemble Intercontemporain, dir. Susanna Mälkki
"Scales" is without a doubt the piece that has given me the most difficulty to compose – never have I crossed out, violently torn, erased, rolled into a ball, and thrown in the bin so much! These difficulties are as much of a musical order as they are, in a sense, personal: the permanent and apodictic questioning to which I found myself faced during the writing of this work, which forced me – voluntarily – to use new compositional processes, which I will briefly detail below.
These new processes, to which the title refers – Scales echoes both scales and modes, more or less complex, which have been one of the essential bases of my work – are of different orders. On one hand, the main paradigm is the use of a seventh of a kind (it goes without saying, without any tonal reference), the very one that radiates motivically to the trumpets in the first movement of Mahler's 3rd Symphony, which itself becomes a harmonic field in Berio's "Sinfonia," with an insistence on C-Db-G-B, and which finally becomes scalar in all directions in "Scales": this matrix is "translated" in every imaginable way, and all transpositions (all twenty-four!) are present throughout the work. Furthermore, in many places, this seventh is layered from the extreme low to the extreme high (cf. ms. 227); never had I used this harmonic configuration, and I believe it confers a quite particular color to the whole of the work. There are, of course, some other references to certain composers that I claim quite spontaneously: Ligeti of course, though less than usual; Berio, therefore, but also Berg (in an agogic indication – thus visible only to the musicians: "delirante" [delirious]); Strauss for the virtuosity of the writing and the very lush orchestration; and not forgetting, obviously, Xenakis, for the extreme"
violence of certain passages.
The harmonic unity I just mentioned is countered by a structure of twenty-one very heterogeneous sections (even if they respond to very meticulous formal criteria), whose proportions, following the Fibonacci sequence in undulation, range from 1 (9 seconds) to 13 (112 seconds) for a total of a little more than twenty minutes – 19 minutes are planned (my predilection for prime numbers) but the hazards of composition mean that these 19 minutes are widely exceeded, and that the form itself has been found slightly modified compared to the initial project. This structure is ultimately very "jarring": there are not transitions strictly speaking (with a few rare exceptions), without the whole sinking into the ease of a patchwork; but there remains a great gestural, harmonic, rhythmic, motivic unity, as well as numerous sonic signals (for example the layering of thirds in the brass at the ffff nuance, returning regularly – very much referenced, and intentionally, to Berio. To use Brian Ferneyhough's expression, I create "carceri d'invenzione" for myself, cells in which the imaginary can unfold.
Notwithstanding this compositional constraint, I have frequently added "anecdotal" events, which are unrelated to the process, but which are, ultimately, the composer's prerogative, namely the "right" to write lines, chords, and gestures that give meaning, certainly, but which step outside the rigidity of the composition: the further the piece progresses, the more numerous these events become, finally becoming the constitutive gestures of the final section. This is a novelty in my language, because until then, I respected the constraints, sometimes the coercions, that I imposed on myself to the letter. There is therefore a duality between the strict and the epiphenomenon, just as, as is my habit, and like a counterpoint, the ugly and the beautiful cohabit.
To return to the novelties present in this piece, one can mention this passage from section D, where twenty-three different frequencies of speeds are superimposed (another prime number), evolving from low and high towards the medium. I have also used clustered klangfarbenmelodien, which I had sketched in Vertigo, but in a simpler way (scales, whereas here it involves much more complex rugged lines). And, a very rare thing for me, there are some slow passages (!) ; slow, certainly, but very tense, feverish, absolutely not breaths. The piece must keep the audience in suspense, by no means comfort or reassure them: as proof, in section N, the hateful and bloodthirsty stridency in the extreme high register of the woodwinds and strings, at the ffffff nuance! is surmounted by the indication: "Attack the audience!!!"
As this provocative phrase demonstrates, "Scales" is above all characterized by violence. This is not a joyful violence like in "Vertigo", but a savage violence, as evidenced by the solo percussion passages (six toms, one timpani and one bass drum, all at the fffff nuance and each playing at a different speed), or even the descents of the brass at the fffff nuance, there too. Moreover, I have not hesitated to use clearly hideous sounds: measure 69 superimposes multiphonics and split sounds of the woodwinds, the brass all play in flatterzunge and the strings crush the bow, the piano making a glissando on the low strings making them zing, not to mention the enormous bass drum roll that overwhelms the whole: it is an innovation for me, to use saturation as a structural element.
Regarding the use of micro-intervals, it is to be noted that it is less intensive than in my previous pieces. These micro-intervals are always present, of course, I could not do without them. But I preferred to use inharmonic sounds (bells and gongs) or even natural harmonics on the horns and strings to create mysterious halos or, on the contrary, volcanic aggregates. In contrast to my first "String Quartet", where each quarter tone had its compositional and structural legitimacy, here they are relatively freer: it is important for a composer to grant themselves a part of license, precisely so as not to become totally enclosed in these "carceri d'invenzione" and to allow oneself an ultimately demiurgic attitude: it is the composer who decides above all!
All this is not intended to make a catalogue that would be vain and devoid of any interest: I am simply seeking to show what the few novelties are that I have attempted to exploit in this new piece. Of course, there are others"}
novelties, perhaps less obvious at first glance, but just as essential, which will open, I am sure, new compositional perspectives in my creative future.
