Tristan Murail

It is at once a continuation of Murail's previous explorations and a radically new departure. Whereas most of his previous music relied essentially on continuous transformation of the material, Time a...

Sables returns to certain preoccupations addressed in Altitude 8000, and takes them further: an absence of punctual events (no percussive sounds), extreme continuity (no silence, aside from the beginn...

Contes cruels for two electric guitars and orchestra is not a double concerto per se: the guitars are stealthy intruders within the orchestra and give the cruel tales an unusual colour. The second gui...

Cloches d'Adieu, et un sourire... ('Bells of Farewell, and a Smile...')This unpretentious little piece was written at the request of the German Radio, Deutschlandfunk, in memory of Olivier Messiaen.It...

La Mandragore ('The Mandrake')'Under the gallows grows the mandrake. At midnight, when the moon is full, it is picked beneath the hanged man who swings...'The mandrake: a Mediterranean plant used in w...

Comme un oeil... carries the influence of Messiaen - the piece was written for the entrance exam of the Conservatoire National de Musique de Paris, therefore before my studies with Messiaen. An allusi...

Estuaire was an attempt at appropriating the serial aesthetic for my own benefit - I was trying to make it say something that it couldn't say: coloured images, gestures, moving shapes. The enterprise...

The title evokes the mythical name given by Sindbad the Sailor to the Island of Ceylon, which he discovers by pure accident on one of his voyages. This notion of accidental discovery is matched direct...

In 1970, strongly influenced by Ligeti in an orchestral piece baptized Altitude 8000, I experimented with a sound continuum that boldly reintroduced, and not without some provocation, fifths, fourths,...

Where does the title Winter Fragments come from? As a rule I don't like naming a piece before I've finished writing it, like counting your chickens before they're hatched. The completed piece may well...

As suggested by the explicit reference to the first piece of volume II of Debussy's Images for piano, Cloches à travers les feuilles, of which it inverts not only the title but also the musical intent...

La Barque mystique (The Mystical Boat) takes its title from a series of pastels by Odilon Redon. Apart from anecdotal reasons linked to the circumstances surrounding the composition of this piece, the...

Deserts have always had a particular attraction for Murail. He has visited several himself and images pertaining to them often crop up in his work, a notable previous example being the large orchestra...

Written for trombone, string trio, piano and synthesized sounds played live on a MIDI keyboard, the piece is a sequel to Le Partage des eaux (1995), for large orchestra.The title was suggested by a pi...

To the north of New York city is a vast region of parks and natural reserves, studded with lakes, hills and forests. I live in a house there, largely open to the outside world, composed of trees, a la...

This piece constitutes perhaps the most thorough and exhaustive work Murail has done to date on the examination of purely instrumental spectra. All the computer-generated spectra are directly modelled...

Allégories, completed in 1990, was commissioned by the French State for the Ensemble Musique Oblique, who first played it at the Ars Musica Festival in Belgium. It is scored for a small mixed ensemble...

Vues aériennes, commissioned by the Arts Council of Great Britain for the Nash Ensemble, and first performed by it in the Queen Elizabeth Hall in December 1986. The notion of 'process' common to so mu...