Three Preludes New York City

Three Preludes New York City                                                                                                Vibrant strings.                                                                                                                        Here horizontal; extreme tension at the heart of the concert grand piano.                              The first machine for making music, and therefore an instrument of sensitivity and the most inson-dable emotion, mass-produced in the industrial age.                                            And here, vertical strings, rubbed, plucked, unstable, in direct contact with the hand, and the horsehair attached to the bow, of the artist who plays. The cello. A musical instrument of perfection achieved over 260 years ago, in the heart of the 18th century, at a time when New York was just being built.                                                                                                Vertical. Horizontal. New York City.                                                                             Philippe Muller and I met again in July 2018. The work came spontaneously, naturally, as soon as Philippe told me about New York, where he had been living for 5 years. 2018; centenary of the Manhattan School. The project was obvious. To speak to the future, through the present, with these two complementary instruments. This paradox: New York, the city on a scale beyond human proportions, but where living beings are swept up in a generosity of energy that has no comparison with the cities of our old Europe.                      Three portraits of this paradoxical dimension of a machine-man: NYC. And a man, a painter, who was always present in my heart, in my mind, in my sensibility – a distant brother – during the writing of this score: Cy Twombly.                                                            First Prelude: dance, rhythm, Piet Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie-Woogie, like the sonic vertigo of the metro, like spatial vertigo, like buildings. A vertical ocean-city. RHYTHMS.      Second Prelude: fluid, unstable, like the ocean wind filtering through the hallucinating cadastre of arteries in this city of fire and blood. PRESENCE.                                                Third Prelude: the madness of men, a wisdom also to “keep up with the pace gained”, as Arthur Rimbaud said of what we still call: the Modern. The living body under threat, too. ENERGY.                                                                                                                  Inventing memory is a prelude to permanent transition. Movement. Beyond the modern. Impermanence always. Cities have always been, and always will be, the stuff of dreams.    Like the art of Chamber Music.                                                                                                On a human scale. Music                                                                                                        Philippe Schœller