For principal flute and ensemble (or orchestra)

Principal flute/1(+picc.)/1/1bb/1ut-1/1/1/0-2 perc. [1° Tam tam deep - Fairly large and flexible sheet metal - 5 Toms - 3 cymbals (small/medium/large) - Gong asc. - Copper Shimes (or mark tree) – Mokubio - 2 rattlesnakes (mi/fa) // 2° Gc - C.cl. - 1 springs - 1 tubular bell (do#4) - 1 cowbell (do#4)]

hrp, string quintet [4/3/2/2/1 if orchestra version]

Duration: ca 21'. Coming soon to Editions Delatour (Soon to Editions Delatour)

The title is borrowed from the eponymous film by filmmaker Wim Wenders which poetically irrigates my symphony:

"At birth, an angel visits all the children and tells each of their life to come. When he leaves, he leaves a mark above the mouth, a sign of the amnesia of knowledge. To be born, you have to forget. But if every man forgets this secret, the angel remembers him and carries this burden, that of knowing the secret of life."

“The film is a poem, a metaphor for life, like the tale of humanity from childhood to old age, from birth to death. The world of men appears there in the form of a large polyphonic collection of thoughts, perceived and collected by the watchful eye of two angels, Damiel and Cassiel. These angels listen or rather are the witnesses of the secret, interior thoughts of the men who pass. But this humanity is only a juxtaposition of solitudes. The world resounds like a cacophony of monologues. Weird and oddly realistic view of the world”

“The film acts as a curious memento mori: nothing is more precious than being mortal. The pain of humanity reveals an unsuspected beauty, because it is ephemeral”.

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The angel of my birth left me to share the lightness and the burden of life in equal parts. It took me more than sixty years to remember and accept this tautology... without however becoming an angel except in the choice since childhood of the instrument that has accompanied me all my life: the flute transverse, so close to the other flute, called "beaker", the instrument of angels and children.

This double polarity, of lightness and burden, underlies the writing of this 6th chamber symphony where the solo flute is itself duplicated by another flute within the orchestra. In addition, this polarity is amplified by the choice of deep percussion (bass drum, toms) and/or metallic (deep tom tom, bell, cymbal, chimes, springs) in order to counterbalance the volubility, brilliance and softness of the flute. .

A work in the form of an autobiography, the multiple motifs that make it up reflect my areas of interest for some, and my own feelings for others: my love of nature (soothing or terrible), my passionate outbursts, my despair, my desires and my joys, my “on edge” sensitivity, a certain ingenuity and a wonder at the insignificant, the strange and the unusual of the manifestations of life (which translates into a very refined orchestration). Nothing really singular here because sensitivity is what makes our shared life, but for each of us, to varying degrees.

The dualities embodied/disembodied, light/heavy, gravity/weightlessness, flight/falling back, vehemence/depression, saturated/empty... musically translate into a dichotomy between raw sounds/refined sounds, sounds of nature (noises, songs birds and animal calls)/sounds

of human origin (repetitive signals).

Instrumentally, the soloist's writing opposes extreme virtuosity to large moments like a stop in the course of time. What would the flute be without ultra-fast detached and without the lyrical beauty of sustained sounds? However, a more intimate and personal third way is heard: that of the sounds played and sung at the same time as well as the fragile and sensitive sonorities produced by the artificial fingerings, real "alterations of the timbre", like the mark of time or use, on all living objects or organisms.

The formal construction is a vast polyphony of musical motifs/figures, modes of instrumental playing, groups of different chords, timbres... each having their own character and characteristic. These contribute to the elaboration of a form by extremely mobile sound planes unfolding in a 4-dimensional space, a real "architecture of moving sounds" of which all the constituent elements are in a relationship of tension/density beyond the unfolding. time.

I like the metaphor of a work as a living organism having its own autonomy (mutation of motifs, contamination of them among themselves, etc.) and its own “biological determinisms” which exceed the work of composition itself. If the auditor agrees to join this organization, it has the option of changing it.

The form of the work is a sort of progressive collapse into 4 linked parts:

A - Very Vivid: exposure of almost all the motifs: nature/culture opposition

B - (p. 69) Quite Slow: after a "1st meteoric collapse" return of natural sounds and new patterns (variants far from the previous ones)

C - (p. 95) Vif: cadenza of the solo flute: birdsong muffled by noises of human origin (signals)

D - (p. 110) Slow: after a “2nd meteoric collapse”, return of all the motifs but more scattered over time.

E - (p. 127): short conclusion, last “burst of life”.

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