solo horn
duration: minimum 8′
commissioned by Royaumont Foundation 
written for and premiered by Christine Chapman (from Ensemble Musikfabrik ) at Royaumont Abbey — 06.09.2020
work written within the framework of the Voix Nouvelles – Fondation Royaumont Academy
ABOUT
“A blind man advances the hand in the night”. That is how one of the most beautiful texts that Alberto Giacometti wrote. These ideas of the confusion, of the self-loss, of the own expression, and the frustration that ensue from them, are at the base of the project of this piece. The soliloquy —form and episode of the classic theatre— becomes a space of reflection where the silence, understood as ending of the sound, converse with the unexpected. The temporality is therefore broken, interrupted, failed.
The voice of the hornist appears, making the space almost dramatic, and come face to face with the instrument itself, simultaneously obstacle and filter. The vocal gestures —the saturated voice, the unstable air sounds and the worn-out consonants— are juxtaposed on mosaic in order to create a labyrinth, a deceptive horizon, from which the impediment of the expression, the limit of the gesture and the interruption of the words are detached.
MANUEL HIDALGO NAVAS 