In the publishing catalogues of the last thirty years, it is difficult to find works in quintet form, combining percussion with string quartet.
This is because the questions posed by this arrange- ment are numerous, relating as much to the nature of the project as to the type of formal structuring it induces and which is linked to it, as to the choice of the various writing strategies to be implemented.
The string quartet is an instrumental device that is both “cultural” and “symbolic”, where everyone can immediately situate themselves.
In comparison, percussion can then appear as a “monohedron”, an inverted world, offering an infinity of devices (here : phonoliths, wooden blades, balafon,
hi-hat pedal, bamboos, Tibetan bowls, wooden and metal drums…).
From the very beginning of the project’s conception, it seemed to me that the writing had to abdicate some of its power of control, ceding “control” to the anady- omenal ambiguities that the real-time transformation of percussive sounds could maintain with the quartet.
A bit like painting on wet paint in the process of drying, to better grasp the vitality and exalt the material in its insubstantial contingency, in the immediacy of its realization.
Henry Fourès
(translation: Hjördis Thébault)
Video
Henry Fourès – Un bel éclair qui durerait – Quatuor Béla / Réalisation Igor Juget & Olivier Taïeb from Noir Bleu Productions.
Nomenclature
quatuor à cordes, percussion augmentée et dispositif
All available forms
