Falaises
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19/10/2003 - Saint-Paul-de-Vence - E. Bertrand (cello), Quatuor Elysée
Continuing my collaboration with Emmanuelle Bertrand, I decided to write a quintet for string quartet and principal cello, thus avoiding all reference to Schubert's quintet with two cellos. The idea of a cliff (falaise) conjures up images of the abyss, vertigo, the horizontal and vertical, brusque and breaking, all important ideas when I was developing this piece which plays with tessitura, high-low opposition, ascending and descending movements, abrupt interruptions and flowing speech, as well as what I call "motionless movement", opposing the soaring flight of the seagull to the flashing fall of the gannet. All these contrary movements are rendered by written music, thus continuing my work on the extreme mobility of an argument that opens on this far-off perspective, where the cliff is at once the limit and the edge.
Edith Canat de Chizy
