Un Fragment de Rimbaud

I have strung ropes from steeple to steeple; garlands from window to window; golden chains from star to star, and I dance.
In the first edition of Illuminations, the reader would find under the title Phrases all of folios 11 and 12, i.e. eight micro-texts or sections. These few words, taken from the fragments of folio 12, jumped out at me as I read them. So, to honor a commission from the CRR de Versailles to write a piece for violin and percussion, I thought of writing four fragments corresponding to these four snippets.

The first, working around the violin’s pizzicati and wood-block triangles; the second, in which “garlands” are given to the violin and ornamented with colors on the vibraphone; the third, ethereal, interlacing colors; and the last, a wobbly dance imagining the young Rimbaud dancing on an imaginary rope.

Benoît Menut