Passages

Commissioned by the Nomos cello ensemble and inspired by Cluny Abbey, where it will be premiered, this piece is intended to be a catalogue of the
different ways in which sound circulates, in the image of architectural modes of circulation: corridors, passageways, staircases, galleries, antechambers,
fora, patios… so many places of passage, of transition, where, just as light reflects and diffracts, sound bounces around and multiplies, creating
so many variants of itself, of timbres, of arrangements. Like a dialogue with several voices, the sound will circulate in various forms: sometimes
scattered in space, sometimes in blocks, bouncing from one instrument to another, or even in canon.
Developed further, this theme of passage joins that of temporality. In the Abbey of Cluny, several temporalities are mixed together: the fixed and
historical temporality of a fantasized, grandiose institution; the suspended, achronic temporality of the ruin; and finally, the temporality of the
passing visitor.
Thinking about the temporal today also means thinking about the rapid, the ephemeral, the reduction of time. At Cluny, these new relationships to
time and space are in contrast to the centuries-old heritage sites, marked by an immutable, historical time and by a different conception of collective
space.
Tomás Bordalejo