Jean-Pierre Leguay: Etoilé - Trio - Azur

Three works, three worlds, three voyages: They are similar in their dimensions, their density, their winding paths and the urge for action and contemplation that all three have in common. They are rooted in their need for space, for duration, in a call to a long journey, a search, a conquest.

When listening, one could imagine them as a large triptych. However, the idiomatic scoring and specific compositional principles underscore the distinctiveness of each of the three approaches.

All three works belong – just like Le matin surement va venir (for Ondes Martenot, piano and percussion), Souffle (14 instrumentalists), Dawn (organ and chamber orchestra) – to a corpus of large-format compositions, without individual movements, but composed in a single great flight with many turns.

Star
for harpsichord or organ positive and five instrumentalists: flute and flute piccolo, oboe and cor anglais, clarinet in Bb and bass clarinet in Bb, violin and cello (1981)
Commissioned by Radio France for the 1984 Avignon Festival

This concertante work by Manuel de Falla is in the line-up of his instruments Concerto very close: composed for harpsichord and five instruments – flute, oboe, clarinet, violin and cello. Here, however, the piccolo, cor anglais and bass clarinet are also used without the need for additional players. This enlarged instrumentation multiplies the overall ambience, the extreme positions, the dynamic contrasts and the palette of timbres in equal measure. The keyboard instrument (harpsichord or organ), whose peculiarities have been integrated into the composition, fully fulfills its solo role. Sometimes it withdraws, sometimes it is integrated into the group of the other instruments, whose eight components are divided successively and in always different ways into five major phases that mark a long iridescent trajectory, sometimes voluptuous, sometimes light-footed, with two Cadenzas for a solo instrument: first the violin, later the keyboard.

The structure of Star is already laid out in the first two bars. This source subsequently generates a veritable network of germination, sprouting and branching. Sometimes one or the other drive displaces the others because – richer in potential – it produces new structures itself and so on.

As with several of my works (Flame, Seve, Souffle, Azur, etc.), this is also a symbol name: star, sparkling like the star-studded sky, iridescent like life.

trio
for violin, viola and cello (1978–1979)
First performance on July 20, 1984 by the Trio à Cordes de Paris, as part of the 19th Festival Estival de Paris

The basic axes of my Trios I took it from a sculpture by my friend Paul Bialais, who described it as follows: »It is an ensemble of three vertical oak blocks, which are of different heights and arranged in a triangular shape. The compositional process is the same for all three and is solved in different ways through the play of levels and bodies. This allows each of the elements to be read individually – vertically – but countless moments of diagonal movement also encourage viewing from an oblique perspective, in which the three parts merge into a whole.«

Inspired by this structure, I stage three courses, each of which further develops its own starting material. These diverse courses are intertwined; you get from one to the other in unexpectedly variable ways. They are also divided into segments of different lengths, with each segment being followed by a segment from one of the other two courses.

The rhapsodic dialogue of these abrupt changes is loosened up by frequent and sometimes extended breathing, to a certain extent differentiated punctuation. For greater smoothness, they appear during a segment rather than at the end.

I wasn't trying to emphasize the uniqueness of each instrument. Rather, I have focused on their family ties, on their tonal similarities, on the kind of asceticism that results from that large twelve-string body, an asceticism that is the stark opposite of the variegation with which more orchestral ensembles flatter us at first glance.

Azur
for piano (1990–1991)
Commissioned by the French state
First performed on January 21, 1993 at the Théâtre des Feuillants in Dijon

i love the piano I especially love his diverse voices, which are powerful like the taste of the sap in the trees: the voices of the imperial tribune, of blazing, of splashing, of flowing movement, of shuddering, of tenderness, of multicoloredness, of resonance, of the utmost Fragility.

With its initial summon is Azur a long, varied song; an odyssey that gradually develops a variety of bell sounds, of fleeting or decisive departures, of calm or firework-like masses of sound, of powerful gestures, brief moments, episodic reliefs, of reinforcements, repetitions, moments of breathing, of pausing, of recurring sound elements, which are either exchanged or – on the contrary – are further developed, by whole passages that are underpinned by an indefatigable basic impulse, by listening, by devotional moments.

I had imagined a pianistic way of writing that should be clear, sonorous, straightforward, progressive, jubilant, sometimes almost callous.

The final chimes, culminating in the score's most reduced page, are perhaps a call with  Silence, are a call to Silence.

Azur is dedicated to my friend Dominique Merlet, whose humility and thorough, fruitful thinking I admire.

Jean Pierre Leguay