Jérôme Combier

Embâcle

Several figures guided the writing of Embâcle, becoming an a priori for me. They consist of chords repeated and enhanced by a descending often concealed movement, or brief crossing arpeggios constructed on octave intervals, rapidly descending scales with swift irregular rhythmic figures in the low register, or stroked sounds inside the piano, audible without the slightest attack and lacking high string resonance. All of this is difficult to describe and take into account, but as is said, comprised my creative imagination. Initially fragmented, it became a question of conceiving a framework - as in a form - related to the development of these elements, to their interchange and their rivalry, to their evolution.In Embâcle, certain low piano notes are damped, depriving them of brilliance, while other low notes are prepared using pieces of eraser to obtain unexpected resonances. The idea of finding - as in working like a sculptor - a particular quality of resonance strongly influenced my research and my aural focus. The choice of the octave as an interval and as a sound reference moves in the direction of the openness I intended, an enlargement.And then, without knowing why, throughout the composition of Embâcle, I could not extricate myself from the melody of the slow movement from Franz Schubert's A Major Sonata, D 959. This is hardly customary for me, who devotes myself to trying from one piece to the next to evacuate a world where colloquialisms from the past are respected from a distance, without however the slightest wariness, only as something that could have never been, youthful. Jérôme Combier