1981

Histoire du plaisir et de la désolation (November 1979 – February 1981) — 35′

Story of pleasure and its distress

For symphonic orchestra. (4 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 cors anglais, 3 clarinets, 1 low clarinet, 3 bassoons, 4 horns, 4 trumpets, 3 tenor trombones, 1 bass trombone, timbalum, 4 percussions, piano, 2 harps, 14 violins I, 12 violins II, 10 violas, 10 violoncellos, 8 double basses)

Commissioned by Radio France for the Orchestre National de France.

Premiered : Paris Radio France Nov. 1982 by the Orchestre National de France, Conductor : Michael Luig

«The initial matter of this story is to let oneself go to the devil’s harmonies and the pleasures of the sensuality (one would say now in the search of a “new sensuality” to say it in sense of mode or label). The pleasure is a course going from the logic of a chain of ideas to the break of any logic so that the desire is expressed. But the way is marked out by the distress which punctuates and makes failure with the pleasure… And that is terrible… This narrative statement clears a passage through changing styles, whose contradictions are used for their expressive qualities. Thus the speech develops along three connected movements: The devil’s harmony; Pleasure-desire; Round of the distress.»

International Prize Serge and Olga Koussewitzky (1990)

Salabert Editions

CD La Museen Circuit – Musidisc 242242 MU 750

Ateliers (September 1981) —13’30

Music for a film on the painter Jean Clerté (colour 16 mm)

Directed by Joël Farge

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