Metamorphosis

Influenced by the tutelary figures of Mozart’s String Quartet in D (K. 421) and Schubert’s String Quartet in D (D. 810), as well as Ligeti’s Métamorphoses nocturnes, it was while exploring this poetic theme, between Ovidian transformation and the cyclical dimension of life, that I came to read Metamorphosis by American poet Charles Bukowski (1920-1994).
In this poem, published in 1979 in Jouer du piano ivre comme d’un instrument à percussion jusqu’à ce que les doigts bleignent un peu, the narrator sees himself metamorphosed from his original “filth” to a situation of order and perfection that soon wrings from him this cry:
I felt better when everything was a mess.
He then seems to gradually decompose, “losing his rhythm”, until he can regain his disorder.
It is these transformations, the ascent to a false perfection, then the whirlwind of the fall, that I wanted to evoke in this quartet, carried by the poet’s rhythm.
Pierre Chépélov