Gérard Pesson - Aggravations et final (2009)

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Gérard Pesson - Aggravations et final (2009)

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Rescousse (marginalia): Does speed in music help precision? Does it sweep away any question? Would it not be akin to a silence resulting from centrifugal forces? I have long wondered whether speed participated in erasure or whether instead it was a slope leading certain composers to a sort of Edenic stasis - a definitive tranquillo that would be a "beyond-tempo". Like a torrent in spate, fast music annexes every idea in a dizzying motion. It can also allow for wandering off the point. This is the marginalia effect. In "Rescousse", I let this movement of contamination of ideas play by indexing to each of the 19 linked sequences an idea that I had noted down in the margin of my music readings. Those are, in no particular order: averse by the American poet Susan Howe, an Arab mode, a Hindu rhythm, a Greek rhythm, yet others by Ravel and Messiaen, a chord from Bruckner, an old English song, an Ethiopian lullaby, a Techno bass line, a page by Lachenmann (the 1st of Movement), a hymn composed by the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, etc. At the centre of the form is a divertimento on the "Nancarrow principle" drawn from Study 4. It is to a fever of idea-devouring energy that Rescousse is dedicated, to a non-achievable dream of restraining chaos.

Vexierbilder II: The first book of "Vexierbilder" (Vexierbild might be translated as "trick" or "puzzle"), written in 1991, exploited the idea of the misleading image, out-of-phase referent, and concentrating on intentionally impoverished material. In these three new pieces, the music seeks to construct itself round a gesture, a systematic figuration, a form cutting any development short. At the centre of the present work is the art of the American poet Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) and particularly his first collection, "Harmonium" (published in 1923), in which he attempts to find, with narrowed means, "the transcendent character inherent to music" (Claire Malroux). In sum: replacing the great organ of poetry, which has become unsuitable, by an instrument less noble in appearance, whose inspiration and impact would result from stubborn, concentrated but almost derisory, activity. Stevens, practicing the sacred, occasionally ironic, recall through an astounding play of degrees of refinement, has taken the art of making something new with memory to its peak.

Aggravations et final: In Aggravations, I wanted to move forward without looking back, which is intellectually impossible (and in music even more so than in any other art), using, by crushing them, marches, horse-ride and waltz rhythms, ritornelli, familiar echoes, no quotations since it was a matter of archetypes but rather samples as if for a self-vaccine. Speed, being sucked up by the void, the impression of vertigo, a sort of progressive exhaustion of matter by acceleration brings us back to the idea of fright, of inexorable mechanics, of slope or leaning (also in the sense of inclination or propensity). At times whilst writing Aggravations, I indeed thought that I had captured the music too late, when it was already in its "spindrying" phase. The principle that precipitates, links and contradicts this rule is the loop, pure repetition, iteration by locking, the closed furrow. This rondo effect by continuous refrains inlays a certain structural slowness in a frenetic tempo - the subject is stuck (Roland Barthes). On the way, aggravation has become a format, poetic entity in this work, like the Beatitudes with César Franck. Thus, every aggravation is followed by a loop (one could say a "double"), precipitated by the previous matter. Two conducti-coloured silences-punctuate the form before the finale, denser and more unitary, in which one easily spots the ride motif then a sort of dry, grating mechanic that marks the last forces of the spring. In this laceration of posters, one can see very old, fraying figures reappear, to which we are linked by a profound tenderness, sometimes going back as far as childhood. One will recognise Bruckner, who himself often proceeded by successive panels, Messiaen and his cloisonné enamels, as well as Scarlatti (Junior) of whom Aggravations has taken, by reflex, this cutting-and-pasting of the thought, the febrile way, the cruel and delicate game - madness at work - whipping, tearing, aggregating the matter in a headlong flight, an almost disdainful way of harming the very idea and its integrity, as if, in fact, it were a matter of shaking off the pursuers.