KHNOUM

Comment

This work is presented as an imaginary ceremony, related in this respect to several other earlier titles, also variously marked by the same global model: Les mangeurs d’ombre, Maraé, Cassiopée. In all cultures, a ceremony passes through comparable phases: preparation, convocation, inauguration, central action, return to ordinary time. In Khnoum, the preparatory phase and the convocation have been imagined with the particular ringing of Greek country churches in mind, where sets of small bells are rhythmically animated by the two hands of a single ringer. In Khnoum, the calling phase uses fine sonorities, some of which have been sampled on a microtonal scale, allowing for quasi-glissandi, but with stable resonances for each note. The start of the ceremony itself is linked to the appearance of the beautiful sampled sounds of a set of flower pots. These were large terracotta pots that I’d hung from the beams of a shed at home. On seeing and hearing them, Xenakis asked me for permission to use them live in his piece Oophaa, for harpsichord and percussion, which he was beginning to compose. Personally, I judged them too fragile, heavy, cumbersome and above all impossible to tune, to take the risk of making them sound other than on a Midi keyboard, even if it meant losing the pleasure of the performance.