ANAPHORES

The rhythm of the work is partly inspired by the ancient Greek poet Pindar. The Greek poem is used as a complex rhythmic model, without taking its meaning into consideration. The rhythmic effect produced by the combination of cycles between the left and right hands on the harpsichord is a technique I invented for Solstice in 1975: the coincidence of the two hands on two successive unisons between the two keyboards produces silences that create rhythmic effects.

Commentary
I’ve always thought of the harpsichord as a kind of percussion instrument. Combining it with percussion in its own right seemed to me to be an approach that I wanted to develop without antagonism between the two partners. However, the disparity in the dynamics available to the harpsichord and the percussion was the first problem to overcome. A large modern harpsichord with a 16-foot stop was essential, as was its amplification. Adjusting the amplification was difficult, as too often the microphones picked up the most intense sounds of the percussion, and if the two performers were too far apart, their coordination became more difficult. But the talent of the performers and the sound engineer managed to achieve a balanced result.
The title of the work is to be taken less as a rhetorical model than as an allusion to the particular use of an archetype, the canon. Whether between the two instruments or even between the two hands of the performer on the two keyboards, many passages play on the superimposition of the long ‘theme’ first heard alone as an introduction on the vibraphone. But instead of being like the traditional canons coordinated by a common pulse, the two levels combine two incommensurable tempi, and close to each other, a difficulty once again superbly mastered from the outset by Elisabeth Chojnacka and Sylvio Gualda.
The instrumentarium of the percussion part: vibraphone, marimba, low plate bells, low gong struck with a bass drum pedal, 4 pairs of hi-hat cymbals laid flat, 12 small tuned Thai gongs, and 9 staggered toms (or 9 congas and bongos) was designed to create unusual and shimmering hybrids with the various stops of the harpsichord.
As for Pindar’s rhythm, it is reputed to be the most complex of all those practised in ancient Greece. The division between the kola or rhythmic cells and the verses has been the subject of lengthy controversy, but the simple rhythmic skeleton, which is all that remains of his music, is still suggestive enough to serve as a model. In a few rare places, I have taken a few liberties with the scansion.