Commissioned by: Ralph van Raat and November Music Festival
First Performance: May 23 2024, 20:15 Muziekgebouw aan ’t IJ, Amsterdam
Instrumentation: solo piano and sinewaves
Duration: 18’30
Special Features:

Score samples

Info/Program note:
La Chute (2023) is an 18’ piano work, with or without optional sinewaves, which changes its course twice over its development. In each of these changes an element of the former section is redefined and subjected to a form which adds up to a maximum of four separate elements before extinguishing the first two. The course in this way proceeds from a simple, even innocent one-part melody which is initially joined by its mirror and is then transformed into a harmonic section where the entire first section is compressed into chords. Three new elements are then added against these chords, including a harmonic mirror and the emergence of glissandi. The glissandi are then redefined as scales and the same procedure unfolds again until the piece ends with the extinguishing of two elements. As a whole the work is a kind of ‘motor’ which starts innocently and then step by step increases in complexity, occasionally shifting a gear back, but generally accelerating over its full duration. In this adding and accelerating the pianist is not spared, with sections requiring contrapuntal interaction over the entire keyboard while durations are consistently and continually being chipped away in minute increments. In this way La Chute explores the joy of playing, the joy even of sheer pianistic virtuosity and the joy of an entire keyboard resounding. The undertone, especially in combination with the sinewaves, is however more ominous, with the title heralding back to Camus’ novel of the same name and thereby contemplating the nature of ‘The Drop’, as the work eventually cascades down - and emerges again.