Although Rythmaginaires was published before Côté Sud, it is actually my second ensemble piece, and is genuinely written for eight guitars. Having whetted my appetite on Côté Sud a few years earlier, I was ready to strike out more aggressively, taking pleasure in structuring this work so as to include a pastiche tango with Stravinsky-like accents, where rhythm rules sovereign over all. Nor is the realm of timbre forgotten a variety of tone-colour is assigned to chords that constantly alternate harsh dissonance with bright, even calm, consonance. This work, the fruit born of the union of the words "rhythm" and the "imaginary" in the closing years of the 1980s, resonated within me as the stylistic and chronological precursor of my first concerto composed a few months later.
Roland Dyens
