Analysis / Thoughts

Après Presque Rien

For 14 Instruments and 2 Samplers

(Flute, Oboe, Clarinet. Low clarinet., Trumpet, tenor Sax and baritone Sax, Trombone, Piano, Percussion, Violin 1, Violin 2, Viola, Violoncello, Double bass)

Between the composition of “Presque Rien with Instruments” and its first performance passed about three years, reason why I forgot a little the score.

When the piece has been premiered I was extremely troubled, not that I found that good or bad but this score revealed at least the end of this Presque Rien series. And even at one moment I believed that it revealed absolutely the end. Something like after that I have nothing else to do. Bounded!

 

Exactly! I said to myself: I’ll say “after Presque Rien”. That’s it.

In fact, as the Presque Riens have a very strong concept I needed here to release myself of any concept.

Free and without priori I decided to let me guide by the time and by the chance of the encounters. So, I began to compose without any project.

At random desires like I want to do this… then I want to do that… enough, now I want to do this… and so on… I don’t know if one can understand because normally there is a plan here no I escape I don’t know which desire I’ll have tomorrow I escape and happy.

 

I think it’s like to let live the time to seize it more or less strongly and then to let it run quietly to seize it again with sensual delight seize it again tenderly seize it again with violence seize it again with nonchalance seize it again with bad taste and extirpate its vulgarity and its esthetic to let it run with its ethics (I had to place it) and also to suffer with revolt its brutality its inhumanity.

Here and there I breathe which is already not so bad I ask myself how I can.

 

I have also fun. Fortunately.

 

— Luc Ferrari

 

Thanks.

My best thanks to Thierry Jousse who let me make sound-recordings while he shot his film ‘Les Invisibles”, thanks to ‘La Foire du Trône’ (fair of recreation) that failed to prevent me from making recordings, thanks to Cécile from the Montreuil-market who lent me her nice voice, thanks to Claude Debussy who held my hand in the last sequence of the score.

 

 (from April 16th to November 1st, 2004)