Creation : 8 October 2003, at Musica (Strasbourg, France)
State command for Les Percussions de Strasbourg
Musicians : 6 percussionists
Duration : 12′
This piece is dedicated to the memory of Gérard Grisey. The piece is inspired by the sound coming from a steam well of a geothermal power plant in Iceland. This noise, and the force it represents, had greatly impressed Gérard Grisey during a visit to Iceland. Indeed, at the time it was the most powerful light in Iceland (around 55 MW). He asked me to record it but I didn’t manage to do it before his death. In 2001 I finally made a recording of this sound. The intention was not to imitate this sound, of the dominant “white” character, but its different components influenced different sections of the work, which thus became a reflection around this subject in its sound, physical, energetic aspect. Since if it is true that white noise contains all the pitches, it is all the more true that it contains all the rhythms, and can be observed from a rhythmic point of view, as well as from the point of view of timbre.
Atli Ingolfsson