SOLSTICE

The solstice is the time of year when the sun appears to come to rest on the ecliptic. The music symbolically evokes this illusion.

Commentary

The two performers had just formed a duo, for which they created a repertoire that was as yet non-existent. Unfortunately, a tragic accident ended X. Darasse’s career two years later, and since then no permanent formation has taken over. The piece can now be played on a modern harpsichord with an organ part that I have recorded on a CD.
The unusual combination of a harpsichord and a positive organ was very appealing to a composer interested in the innumerable combinations of timbres offered by this combination. To focus the listener on this dimension of timbre, it was useful to opt for the framework of a fixed scale. This is why the score, for the first time as far as I’m concerned, includes a key signature: three flats, but on B, D and E, and not on B, E and A. This corresponds to the karnatic natakapriya mode (and not vachaspati as I had mistakenly written in the above notice).
Moreover, the piece, with its regular flow of sixteenth notes and the rhythmic irregularities produced by the unisons between the cycles of each hand, is broadly analogous to the spirit of Karnatic music, a fact confirmed to me by an Indian listener. The image of Shiva and his cyclical dance suggested the astronomical title to me. The work is very different in every respect from the previous one, since it uses only a set of fixed pitches on an octave scale. But these are changing colours, not melodies or modal hierarchies. Far from seeing it as the start of a new line of research, I originally saw it as nothing more than an entertainment, which was very well received. However, two years later, Aera was to revisit more or less consonant sonorities in a different way, and little by little they found their way back into my productions in a non-exclusive way.