Sonatine d’automne

As a rule, I am not one for titles, motifs, or circumstances in music. The less one suggests to the listener, the more that listener finds his own bearings and points of reference: for example, in the course of a Bach sarabande or a Mozart Adagio, the leisure to attach a place, a face, or a memory to it. At best, imposing them enriches literature; at worst, it impoverishes music. Impromptus, chansons, preludes, soliloquies: such terms I usually employ which do not encumber the mind, but let everyone give himself up to the notes alone or, should he so wish, slip his own experience into the music, or even his dreams.

Debussy, who had no trouble coming up with titles, assigned them only at the end of each ‘prélude’, in brackets, as if to apologize in advance for having forced the vision of moonlight or a sunken cathedral on what should only be themes, harmonies and rhythms.

These four Sonatines revive my fears and scruples. Scattered throughout my works and my days, they are not born of a ‘four seasons’ project à la Vivaldi. When I was writing the first, ‘Sonatine de printemps’, in 1989, I had in mind and under my fingers, only the celebration, private and solitary, of a sunny April morning. Above all, I did not plan the next one, five years later, would be a ‘Sonatine d’hiver’, and that the ‘cycle’ (this word makes me smile) would come to completion at the end of the decade.

In conclusion, I do not disavow these titles. Nor do I forbid one from hearing falling rain in a given movement or, in another, the rising heat of the sun or the blooming of a young tree or flower. Personally, however, I am sure of having yielded, not to images in these pieces but to simple or even naive feelings: the euphoria of a daybreak that a god suddenly grants you, fervour shared beyond words and gestures, sovereign and helpful melancholy—yes, the veil of regret that overlays our joys as well as our sorrows…

Guy Sacre
(translation: John Tyler Tuttle)