Omoï – 想い

This work was written as a tribute to the victims of the Japanese disaster of March 11, 2011. Originally written for solo organ, I decided to orchestrate it, as the relationship between organ and orchestra is increasingly central to my work as a composer.
Omoï (which means “memory, remembrance” in Japanese) is based on a traditional Japanese song, Furusato, which is very well known in Japan. This song expresses the memory of our native village, and the whole life we leave behind when we decide to leave. It also expresses the idea that our dream is fully realized the day we return to our village. Finally, there’s a real emphasis in this song on not losing the memory of those we’ve known, of not forgetting our roots.
I used the first phrase of the song, cutting it up and modifying it into several motifs, always based on the same intervals (seconds, thirds). These intervals then offer us diatonic harmonies, generally consonant. The sense of suspension created by the repetition of the various elements that make up this work is obviously justified by the notion of “remembrance”: the vision of an individual immersed in his memory, unaware of the passage of time, and in his own temporality.