...Un long fracas somptueux de rapide céleste...

Note

The basic idea for the opening of the work was to start with a short and powerful "primal explosion" that would reappear throughout the piece in different forms, more or less regularly. This "art of punctuation" is the foundation of all musical ideas, and I had been looking for a title that would express it for a long time. It was then that I discovered Julien Gracq's very beautiful book, Un Balcon en forêt. The text describes the beginning of a battle on the Meuse river, and the way the surrealist author described the din of the cannons struck me immediately - that way of describing something so brutal and terrifying with such poetry and such expressive strength is definitely remarkable: a long sumptuous din of celestial rapids.

Michael Jarrell