‘A la recherche du temps perdue’
‘Chambres d’èclats’ is commissioned by Athelas Sinfonietta Copenhagen and I had the task to realize a composition which investigates the ‘Proustian’ perspective on ‘time’ and the catalytic aspect of reminiscence.
The piece
The oeuvre is not on my part thought of as ‘program music’, but more like the changing of perspectives, sensations, inner reflections, chambers and fragmentations. Chambres d’éclats (Chambers of Refractions) - it is the time that refracts, our time, our inner chambers, which constantly transforms and re-finds us throughout our lives.
Calling time
The composition is actually performed by the calling/dialing time itself - both the present time, my involuntary memory’s time at my childhood address: Maglehøjvej 16 i Rågeleje in December 1983, also calling Proust’s time in 1909, on boulevard Haussmann.The tone material is constructed by using the specific dates and years, addresses, my mobil phone number combined with the danish and French International code (0045,0033). I find it delightfully illogical to use a phone to call a specific time and year in history, by just dialing the numbers 22.12.1983. ( 22nd of December, 1983).
So every time you hear a phone entering digits throughout the piece, a connection to the lost time and reminiscences are being dialed.
The piece
The oeuvre is not on my part thought of as ‘program music’, but more like the changing of perspectives, sensations, inner reflections, chambers and fragmentations. Chambres d’éclats (Chambers of Refractions) - it is the time that refracts, our time, our inner chambers, which constantly transforms and re-finds us throughout our lives.
The composition is actually performed by the calling/dialing time itself - both the present time, my involuntary memory’s time at my childhood address: Maglehøjvej 16 i Rågeleje in December 1983, also calling Proust’s time in 1909, on boulevard Haussmann.
The tone material is constructed by using the specific dates and years, addresses, my mobil phone number combined with the danish and French International code (0045,0033). I find it delightfully illogical to use a phone to call a specific time and year in history, by just dialing the numbers 22.12.1983. ( 22nd of December, 1983). So every time you hear a phone entering digits throughout the piece, a connection to the lost time and reminiscences are being dialed.
A lovely micro tonal play on dissonance appear between the phones ‘dialing DTMF tones’ and the timbre of the ensembles instrumentation, when calling the lost time. This creates an also illogical feedback-loop when simultaneous trying in music to describe the very same memory which is on the other end of the phone call.
<-------- ‘Telephone 2010’ – David Dellagi
Description of my ‘involuntary memory’ - December 1983
It is after midnight.
In front of me is a child, over there playing quietly in the snow - it is me.
The whole area, the neighborhood, the garden, the small roads in between the now empty summer houses, the birch trees - all of it like it was casting a silent spell, calling, luring my attention to step into and discover this landscape, which is especially luring for the so easily enthralled and easily exited mind of a small child.
Most of all I remember, I sense the silence, the quietness of it all, just look at it, this white landscape.
The roads almost seems lid up and in connection with the lunar light. Everywhere I look, there is something vaguely shimmering and glistening.
These high soundless trees stood witness to this transformation of the neighborhood into its new quality: A silent oneness, the opposite of a lucid dream, a magically real fantasy.
I hear my own breath.
Around me, slowly descending fall of silent snowflakes.
I am sitting on my knees making snow lanterns - you know, one by one you make five to seven snowballs and place them on top of each other, just like a little igloo.
I place a little candle inside - with great care, then placing the last snowball on top. Finished. The dumb beauty of it is immense.
It is as close to experiencing life as being real and present as I ever have felt.
The light flickers. Yellow light rays leeks out from the the tiny wholes between the snowballs and lay itself in front of my knees.
Such a blissful sight. Again I notice the sound of my breath and the temperature. I can feel I’m cold underneath my clothes.
To this day, when I place myself in this moment I feel the cold again, and I know I am real because of this.
The snow is complaining like an old wooden floor when I get up.
I love this quirky sound.
The snow is getting more intense again, and the sizes of the flakes are almost double now.
They seem to fall in formation from an eternal agreement, downwards in vertical lines, like a rake; I tilt my head back and a skew, looking up and in between the white grooves.
