Composer's note:
... And the sonorities come up from the temple that once was
The basic project of this piece was to reflect the spectrum of some long resonant percussion instruments, such as the tam-tam and the gong, by shifting the components of these resonances in the instrumental writing or by giving them a precise function in the harmonic fields created.
A preliminary study was carried out in collaboration with the Centre Henri Pousseur.
In the particular case of the tam-tam, classified by the encyclopaedias as an instrument "with an indeterminate sound", the analysis showed the richness, the infra chromatic abundance, the complexity and the instability of its sound universe, of which tempered instruments can only give a distorted and incomplete reflection. However, the score is written to announce, comment and enhance the mysterious sounds of these instruments.
The title, referring to the one Claude Debussy gave to one of his Images pour piano (Et la lune descend sur le temple qui fut), but also to those given by Philippe Boesmans to two of his early compositions (Sonance I and Sonances II for two and three pianos respectively), announces the evocation of an antiquity without frontiers, neither in time nor place, and of imaginary rituals.
Work commissioned by the Musiques Nouvelles ensemble as part of the World Music Days 2012.
This work was written with the help of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation (General Directorate of Culture, Music Service).