In Advance of the Broken Time... is the provisional version of an as yet unfinished piece that should be one third longer. This piece, like all of the others by Marc-André Dalbavie, uses procedures of interpolation that consist of transforming, within a clearly directional sonic continuum, a given object into another, according to a determined number of procedures. However, it stands apart from the composer's other work because it is the first that he has written for a chamber music ensemble.
With the intent of obtaining a transparent texture, he multiplied orchestration procedures usually reserved for larger ensembles, allowing him to produce "composite timbres" somewhat unusual for such an ensemble. Since, for Marc-André Dalbavie, orchestration is merely "the notation of artificial acoustics", the piece integrates virtual reverberations and echo or reinsertion effects as it progresses. These time-lag phenomena are able to emerge due to parallel work done with tempi (slow, rapid, accelerando, rallentando...) that in the chamber music context, a priori suited to virtuosity, are encouraging to explore.