Michael Jarrell

Paysages avec figures absentes - Nachlese IV “...Paysages avec figures absentes... was written for the violinist Isabelle Faust and dedicated to her. In this piece, I wanted to approach writing for violin and ensemble differently, and not reproduce the same relationship present in “...prisme-incidences...”. Here, it is more a question of a sort of antiphony, of responses. Often while writing the piece, in order to remain within this framework, I restrained myself from developing the solo violin figures in the ensemble. As a result, during these moments, I often had the impression of “absent figures”. Once the pièce was completed, I remembered the Philippe Jaccottet’s text and I decided to quote his title, thus giving homage to a writer whom I had initially discovered, quite a while ago, as the translator of Musil and of Góngora, and who for me, counts as among the greats of this marvellous world of
words.” - Michael Jarrell

Nachlese Vb (Liederzyklus) “I had already discovered texts from Gongora for some time in the bilingual edition of the Dogana, beautifully translated by Philippe Jaccotet. I found those poems were really rich, impossible to reduce to a single meaning. This is what drove me to use one of this author’s sonnets at the time, in its original language, and to compose Eco for voice and piano. Recently, I discovered a German translation of that same sonnet and was struck by its entirely different interpretation. It gave me the idea to get back to the original text (and Eco) and add three other movements to it. Two of them using the French and German translations, and another one exclusively instrumental. Four different points of view of the same “object”, kind of like a spectator turning around a sculpture and discovering new aspects, new readings.” - Michael Jarrell