"Voyage Tzigane (‘Gypsy Journey’) is my third string quartet. The first, Les Heures défaites, is a night filled with images; the second, Le Clair, l’obscur..., is a dramatic, colourful meditation. This is an imaginary journey the whole length of the gypsy route that, starting in Northern India (1^st movement, 6’30), crosses Central Europe (2^nd movement, 3’30) before coming to an end in the land of flamenco (3^rd movement, 4’30).

The gypsy colour has imbued the music of all these far-off countries, and it is still possible nowadays to hear question-and-answer games imitating birdcalls in India as well as Southern Spain: this is the colour with which I begin and end my journey.

A few years ago, I began an ‘immobile journey’ taking me across strange, foreign countries and languages. In my composer’s study, I travel round the world (or worlds), in quest of a few invariants that I sense exist beneath the differences in all types of music. I isolate, then shape them as my imagination dictates.

In so doing, I am prolonging, it seems to me, a profound tradition in French music that encourages us to create our own imaginary folklore.

 

Denis Levaillant

6 February 2006