Threnody by Ensemble Modern

Threnody -as the name suggests- is about a farewell. It originally started as a tribute to Saariaho who was for me an important example as a leading lady composer and a piece of hers was also featuring on the program of the world premiere concert. When I set out my composition, she was already very ill, so I realized this unfortunately would be an obituary. She passed away when I was drafting my first bars. 

The piece thus inscribes itself is in a long tradition of Déplorations like the very famous “Nymphes des bois” (Déploration sur la mort d’Ockeghem) by Josquin Desprez. I used for the material of the piece several quotes from this Déploration and on some places in the piece you will hear them shimmering through like a distant and fragile echo of the past. While writing the piece, I got confronted with another, much closer loss, my father passed away, which reflects in the echo of the quote “vous avez perdu votre bon père”.

Although conceived as one movement, the piece contains different sections. It starts of with an aery high sound-field and moves toward places of more and more distortion, a chorale like passage, played with uttermost tenderness, underlines the fragility of beauty. Then, rather sudden, this gives way to a more grim, fast part interrupted by a memory of the chorale and then finishes in total gloom... The work is also a tribute to Saariaho’s axis from pure sound to noise. It is a piece about hope and despair, about light and darkness.