The Inner Light

...prisme / incidences... (1998)

The notion of prism applied to a whole instrumental ensemble, which Jarrell makes explicit in the title of his work, condenses and crystallises the hidden side of the solo violin. "I frequently like to use an extra-musical concept," Jarrell points out, "whether from the visuel or literary sphere." It was with the fullness of drawing that an artist such as Giacometti sought "this incredible means [...] of seeing clearly like no one else." Similarly, it is again with the fullness of the melodic pattern that Jarrell seeks contradictory or complementary angulations, the moment when the instrumental ensemble falls back on the violin, for example, like a facetted crystal, a prism that transforms the score into an object. As for the notion of incidence, it must be understood in the architectonic sense of the term. With Jarrell, there is a dialectical desire that consists of working sound masses by line and inversely so that the instrumental ensemble refracts the attributions of the solo violin, creating singular, independent volumes. One of the decisive effects of incidence lies in the transformation of instrumental colour by instrumental colour. The magical paradox of the prism: in splitting up the sounds of the violin, by distributing them in "crystal" fashion, Jarrell manages to modify the recognisable quality of the instrumental attacks. More than complex interpolations of timbres, it is a matter of acoustic "beams", rendering a homogeneous perception of sonority null and void, whereas the work's formal development meets a transparent norm. The plurality of incidence or incidences answers the singularity of the prism. The shock provoked by the refracted wave is limitless or, at least, the limits of notation, which, with Jarrell, often looks infinitesimal and does not imply a limited promulgation of colours and volumes. Here, the rhetoric of the concerto reaches a threshold of its own destabilisation or even dissolution. The prism infers the incidences as form and no longer only as grammar.

Sillages (2008)

Sillage (Wakes): "the trace that a ship leaves behind it on the surface of waters," says the dictionary. But also: "Part of a fluid (liquid, air) left behind a body in motion - perturbations that occur therein." As a child, Michael Jarrell was as keen on drawing as he was on music. and although the latter eventually won out, visuel, graphie or geometric inspiration have never completely left the Geneva-born composer. In his sound universe, sillages become undulations, waves, backwash or eddies whilst also suggesting the idea of passage or widening. Moreover, he uses an image far removed from the dryness of a dictionary definition: that of a "quill pen drawing a line on a blotter". The ink then takes on a lite of its own as it impregnates the paper unevenly. "With me, titles serve as a clue, a track for grasping the poetic idea of a work." As will have been understood, Michael Jarrell's plural Sillages open up a wide range of meanings, expressing the composer's concerns, whether musical, formal or simply human. With the first sillage, ita eddies indicate a continuity in the composer's catalogue. This creation also marks the complicity that links him to clarinettist Paul Meyer, to whom Jarrell has already dedicated a concerto. "Through Paul, I got to know the flautist Emmanuel Pahud, then the oboist François Leleux... I greatly appreciate this young generatlon of musicians, capable of playing the classics perfectly as well as remaining attuned to their era." Second sillage: affective. As for the third, it can be heard in the work's very matter, right from the outset. Flute, oboe and clarinet play an A, the same note that musicians use for tuning up before a concert. Two notes follow this A, then others, taken up by the orchestra. which acts as a sort of reflection or distorting mirror. The sound field broadens, and these figures, born from the breath of the wind soloists, take on their own life in the symphonic ensemble surrounding them. We again find this idea throughout the piece, particularly in a great oboe solo two-thirds of the way through the score. "I like to write within more or less rigid rules and fetters, always with the aim of channelling energy and expression," Michael Jarrell points out. "Like a stream with numerous twists but which would never overflow its banks."

Trois Etudes de Debussy (1992)

The harmonic language of Michael Jarrell's works is marked by a subtle sounding out of intervallic relationships: chords derive their characteristics from the specific arrangement of their intervals. Among the most important historical forerunners of compositions exploiting intervallic relationships are the late piano works of Claude Debussy. In his Douze Etudes for piano (1915), Debussy frees himself from tonal relations by concentrating the examination of individual intervals. 

Jarrell scored three of the twelve etudes for a fairly small orchestra, avoiding instruments which would not have been available to Debussy himself. In his orchestration of the etudes Pour les notes répétées, Pour les sonorités opposées and Pour les accords, his aim was to prolong the style of Debussy's somewhat austere late orchestral music with the greatest possible authenticity. Jarrell treated Debussy's etudes as previously existing materiel. 

Jarrell sees his compositional output as constituting an arborescent system in which similar forms can blossom in various fashions on different branches. This results in unusually close interconnections between his works - and even between his original compositions and his orchestrations. For, in fact, the titles of the three etudes (which are Debussy's) can be read as summing up three central creative resources of Jarrell's own musical language: repeated notes, contrasted timbres, and chords. Although it is probably no more than chance, this coincidence nevertheless fits neatly and naturally into the overall picture of an oeuvre which is determined by richly interrelated ramifications: "I believe in a network in the mind."

Abschied (2001)

The piano concerto Abschied was a commission of the Salzburg Festival and had its premiere there on the 8th of august 2001. The initial idea was that of a spiral developing almost infinitely. A chain of notes, beginning in the highest register, undergoes a constant filtering process to reach a momentarily stable form before undergoing a new filtering process. These mutations occur rapidly and have direct consequences on the music which is fast and of an energetic virtuosity. This is net only limited to the soloist but spreads also to the orchestra. This "playful" section was nearly finished when my father died. This event had a decisive influence on the score. The swirling energies deployed in the upper register change direction. The piece slows down, seeking the depths, acting more with resonances, turns into a music that disappears, that "bids farewell". The initial narration is interrupted and opens up to areas of reflection, silence and memory.

Enlaces:

Parte 1

Parte 2

Parte 3