Gruau d’agrumes

This small quartet with flute explores some of the associations between harmonicity and duration of sound, with an emphasis on paradoxical relationships. By way of example, the piece features material that oscillates between noisy sounds on long values and the use of unmaintained, quasi-harmonic sounds (such as the surprising multiphonic pizzicato on the flute). Cadential quotations from the second movement of Mozart’s flute quartet, re-orchestrated on the same principle, punctuate the discourse in the manner of a transition that will lead the strings into bowless playing. The coda, made up of inharmonic sounds on short values, represents the idea of gruel in terms of the somewhat polysemous definition in the Petit Robert, “a grain of oats deprived of its bran”.