Lob der Ferne

Like Vom Blau, Kristall, Gegenlicht, Sommerbericht, written respectively for double bass, alto saxophone, bass clarinet and a percussion septuor, Lob der Ferne is a poem from Paul Celan’s cycle “Der Sand aus den Urnen”.

These poems, read over and over again for 20 years, are all unsurpassable and indispensable texts, stripped of any aestheticism, in a light strangely close to those of Attila József discovered at the same moment.

It will have taken me all those years for these familiar texts to become “pre-texts” to the writing of a music that does not illustrate nor comment the poem, but that has merely been awakened by it.

Created by viola player Hélène Desaint and percussionist Théo Mérigeau, this piece is dedicated to composers Bernard Cavanna and Robert Pascal, free-spirit inventors.

Henry Fourès