Arnaud Desvignes

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Corps et cuir
for Wind Quintet (Flute, oboe, Clarinet, French Horn, Bassoon)Duration 12’
A park. Ground tanned by the passage of our feet and the weight of our bodies. Only dust escapes from this infertile soil. From a couple of notes, haunting in their variation throughout the piece, emerges a succession of tensions, of divisions.  Until the coda, like light emanating from the ruins.

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Corps et cuir
for Wind Quintet (Flute, oboe, Clarinet, French Horn, Bassoon)Duration 12’
A park. Ground tanned by the passage of our feet and the weight of our bodies. Only dust escapes from this infertile soil. From a couple of notes, haunting in their variation throughout the piece, emerges a succession of tensions, of divisions.  Until the coda, like light emanating from the ruins.

Composer website link

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D'un paysage d'eau
OboeDuration 19’
Faces of water and of wind through the rush, while reeds define an enclosed space. Blowing through the body a sound at once simple and sketched with stories. Pressing two leaves of grass in-between one’s fingers and whistling toward memories. For the echo of your eyes which turns time into dust. Sand of sound, in memory of Pan. Translated by Antoine BARGEL
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D'un paysage d'eau
OboeDuration 19’
Faces of water and of wind through the rush, while reeds define an enclosed space. Blowing through the body a sound at once simple and sketched with stories. Pressing two leaves of grass in-between one’s fingers and whistling toward memories. For the echo of your eyes which turns time into dust. Sand of sound, in memory of Pan. Translated by Antoine BARGEL
AUDIO

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Depuis la pierre
Violon soloDuration 15’
From the smooth surface of the stone, accidental shapes arise, made of lines, notches, granularity. They create a movement which penetrates in turn the density of the stone, capturing any attempt at language. When silence returns, a vibrating line questions the idea of weight.

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Depuis la pierre
Violon soloDuration 15’
From the smooth surface of the stone, accidental shapes arise, made of lines, notches, granularity. They create a movement which penetrates in turn the density of the stone, capturing any attempt at language. When silence returns, a vibrating line questions the idea of weight.

Memento Mori
Alto Saxophone and CelloDuration 11’
A fusion of tones, an inexorable crescendo which ends in dislocation, memento mori shares with 17th-century paintings the notion of vanitas, a symbolic representation of death through old symbols and themes, and of the desperate attempts to oppose destiny.
It all starts with two superimposed sounds. Then, inexorably, everything is amplified. Until the extreme overbidding that tends to undermine the very foundations of the piece: or how, starting from a chromatic dialogue and a palpable tension, one arrives at eructations in the form of repeated and vain spectral rises. For it is indeed a question here of showing the permanent vanity that motivates the musical action as well as the human action at work in this piece. Alternating tense, horizontal passages, pushing towards the next, and unbridled passages where all the vain violence arising from the previous ones is revealed, memento mori is intended to represent human follies always in touch with the same desires for power, for domination of one over the other. A permanent dialogue between saxophone and cello, one always following the other, and conversely, the piece is also an attempt to melt the timbres into each other, as if one were whispering in the ear of the other, like the slave to the general entering Rome triumphantly: remember that you are going to die... This piece is a vanity in the sense in which seventeenth-century painters understood it, carrying within it the ancient symbols and themes of death and the often desperate attempts to counter fate.

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Memento Mori
Alto Saxophone and CelloDuration 11’
A fusion of tones, an inexorable crescendo which ends in dislocation, memento mori shares with 17th-century paintings the notion of vanitas, a symbolic representation of death through old symbols and themes, and of the desperate attempts to oppose destiny.
It all starts with two superimposed sounds. Then, inexorably, everything is amplified. Until the extreme overbidding that tends to undermine the very foundations of the piece: or how, starting from a chromatic dialogue and a palpable tension, one arrives at eructations in the form of repeated and vain spectral rises. For it is indeed a question here of showing the permanent vanity that motivates the musical action as well as the human action at work in this piece. Alternating tense, horizontal passages, pushing towards the next, and unbridled passages where all the vain violence arising from the previous ones is revealed, memento mori is intended to represent human follies always in touch with the same desires for power, for domination of one over the other. A permanent dialogue between saxophone and cello, one always following the other, and conversely, the piece is also an attempt to melt the timbres into each other, as if one were whispering in the ear of the other, like the slave to the general entering Rome triumphantly: remember that you are going to die... This piece is a vanity in the sense in which seventeenth-century painters understood it, carrying within it the ancient symbols and themes of death and the often desperate attempts to counter fate.

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Pozor Zobor
Flûte, Percussions, Piano, Strings trioDuration 4’30
A piece created from almost nothing - from two or three notes. The struck chord punctuates the piece, like the evenements of a lifetime. And the music unfolds according to a logical sequence: 1+1+2+2+3+3+4+4+5+5=30.Thirty bars in the blink of an eye. Alternating group by group, balance and chaos, calm and movement, linear and fragmented. From the very title the piece is characterised by its duality.

Printed version, click here

Pozor Zobor
Flûte, Percussions, Piano, Strings trioDuration 4’30
A piece created from almost nothing - from two or three notes. The struck chord punctuates the piece, like the evenements of a lifetime. And the music unfolds according to a logical sequence: 1+1+2+2+3+3+4+4+5+5=30.Thirty bars in the blink of an eye. Alternating group by group, balance and chaos, calm and movement, linear and fragmented. From the very title the piece is characterised by its duality.

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Silence des restes
PianoDuration 12’
A church of secrets. Bones discovered under its glass paving stones. Scattered remains, with no name or date. The matter that was in this place of silence, emerging towards us, slowly,  bringing to our eyes the animation of its now vanished flesh. Going back into oblivion once the surroundings have been deserted. Its image in echo, remaining before the eyes, as long as they are capable of opening.

Audio

Printed version, click here

Silence des restes
PianoDuration 12’
A church of secrets. Bones discovered under its glass paving stones. Scattered remains, with no name or date. The matter that was in this place of silence, emerging towards us, slowly,  bringing to our eyes the animation of its now vanished flesh. Going back into oblivion once the surroundings have been deserted. Its image in echo, remaining before the eyes, as long as they are capable of opening.