Le Balcon

Gérard Grisey (1946-1998)
Jour, contre-jour (1978)
for electric organ, thirteen musicians and four-track tape

"A secret echo of an unforgettable reading, that of the Book of the Dead, Jour, Contre-jour was born of my wonder at ancient Egypt. Intrigued by the analogy between the phenomena of cast shadows on the one hand, and so-called differential sounds on the other, I composed a piece in which everything is generated by the course of an imaginary sun: an inharmonic spectrum in constant mutation towards a harmonic spectrum. 
Endless morning wait.
First luminous vibration.
Low-angled light: high-pitched sound generating very low “shadows”.
Zenith: “shadowless” sound (harmonic spectrum).
Dimming light: spectral inversion.
Twilight.
The interminable wait for night.
With no real beginning or end, this kind of clepsydra aims at a particular experience of time. Each duration and sound, whether instrumental or electronic, is part of a single, fluid, continuous process, with no rough edges to feed our memory.
Like Ra's bark, and its race from Day to Night."

Gérard Grisey

First performance by Le Balcon on October 31, 2012 at Église Saint-Merry. Recorded on June 2, 2022 as part of the Singer-Polignac Festival. Directed by Guillaume Klein.