Meitar-toronto-2

marchons, marchons

For flute clarinet, violin cello and piano.

For Sentiari Selvaggi, Feeding the music Festival, Expo, Milano. 
Revision and new performance – Meitar ensemble, conducted by Pierre-André Valade, Manifeste Festival, IRCAM/Centre Pompidou, Paris 
Montreal 2016, 11’ Ca

Initially marchons, marchons was written for Expo Milano 2015, whose theme was “Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life”. It was while thinking of this notion of “nourishing the planet” that the thought of the disturbing words in La Marseillaise (1792) arose: “qu’un sang impur abreuve nos sillons!” [Let an impure blood soak our fields!], thereby re-interpreting the theme of the festival and giving it a critical turnaround, both social and political. In addition to the French national anthem, I chose an Israeli national song, in which there is a sentence similar to that of La Marseillaise – “the blood that springs/nourishes the soil.” The piece is divided into two sections which correspond to each of these two quotations. It is their Morse code translation which serves as a musical foundation for the work. In each section, text and Morse code are treated differently, both rhythmically and conceptually; in the first, the rhythm of the code is used at a very slow tempo to mark the attack of a gesture of the entire ensemble. These gestures are repeated in a loop and their superpositions make the repetition particularly irregular. The second section is in perpetual movement played in quasi unison, in which the rhythmic morse code determines the groupings of the musical gestures. The piece was completely revised for the Meitar Ensemble which premiered the piece at IRCAM Manifeste 2016 and in Salle Bourgie, Montreal in 2017.