Year of composition: 2018
Instrumentation: orchestra
Duration: 18′

Commissioned by Esprit Orchestra with financial support from the Koerner Foundation

Premiere: Esprit Orchestra, Alex Pauk, cond.
Koerner Hall, Toronto
January 20, 2019

PROGRAMME NOTE

The opening scene of the second act of Carmen describes the ‘dazzling din’ and ‘metallic lustre’ of a ‘strange music’; in his score Bizet expresses its exotic allusions to ‘Basque tambourines’, ‘exaggerated guitars’ and ‘tinkling sistrums’ with a strikingly abundant use of string pizzicati, harp, and tambourine. The most imaginative aspect of this number is, however, its disorienting evocation of the ‘tourbillon’ [“whirlwind”], which Bizet ingeniously achieves by pitting a constantly intensifying tempo against a steadily downshifting harmonic pattern. The spinning, circular nature of this music – always perpetuating forward yet always returning to the same material – is something I have sought to capture in my own work, therefore I saw Bizet’s setting as source material ripe with the potential to be reimagined in some way. Tempo (and tempo fluctuation, more specifically) became the focus of Les tringles des sistres tintaient: instead of a linear escalation the tempi are here cast in a complex matrix of accelerandi and ritardandi, the effect of which is amplified by keeping much of the original music’s harmonic, instrumental and metric elements fixed. My rendering of the source material thus takes place along both vertical and horizontal planes: it is not only the musical content itself, but also its realization in time that receives elaboration.

Score excerpt