Provence. A summer evening, the window open wide on the slowly darkening sky. Through this deep, blemishless blue, the flight of swallows: a strident, constantly changing feeding dance. The delicious night continues to fall. There are the sounds of the village preparing for the night festival; the echoes reach me. A jet begins its descent into Marignanne. How simple it all is!
It is a moment of pure, contemplative happiness, barely disturbed by a few familiar cares, which are quickly chased away. I think of Verlaine’s "The sky above the roof, so blue, so calm..."
This is music of memory: connotative, certainly, but not representational. It evokes and continues a previous work, Drôles d’oiseaux (1985-86), which provided some of the material for it.
The space, too, belongs to memory.
