Program note
LEURS SAUVAGES ÉCHOS is a companion piece to ANGES NUS. Commissioned by the Chœur de Radio France, it deploys three choirs, placed at progressively greater distances from the audience, whose voices generate shifting layers of echoes and superimpositions throughout the performance space.
From a deliberately sparse material — neighboring motions, brief scalar figures — a continuously evolving texture emerges. Subtle variations of meter and harmony generate increasingly animated layers of sound, leading to a first climax. At this point, the process resumes, with different colors and in a more compact form. This leads to two climactic waves, the second of which, upon dissolving, opens onto a radically different harmonic horizon, where time seems momentarily suspended. The initial material then returns, enriched by new resonances and movements in the lower voices, before gradually fading away.
The voices carry no text, only vowels, although consonants occasionally emerge to underline accents.
The title is an anagram of vagues (waves), houle (swell), and ressac (surf).
Computer rendering
Details
Instrumentation
Three spatialized choirs
Duration
13'
Date
2020
Commissioned by
Commissioned by Radio France
Sheet music
Available upon request
First performance
Premiere forthcoming