Tristan Murail

Born in 1947 in Le Havre, France, Tristan Murail received degrees in classical and North African Arabic and in economics before turning to composition. A student of Olivier Messiaen, he won the Prix de Rome in 1971 and spent two years at the Villa Médicis. Upon his return to Paris in 1973, he founded the Itinéraire ensemble with a group of young composers and performers, which became widely renowned. In the eighties, Tristan Murail began using computer technology to further his research into acoustic phenomena. This led him to years of collaboration with the Ircam, where he taught composition from 1991 to 1997 and helped develop the Patchwork composition software. Tristan Murail has also taught at numerous schools and festivals worldwide, including the Darmstadt Ferienkurse, the Abbaye de Royaumont, and the Centre Acanthes. He currently is a professor of composition at Columbia University, New York.

La Barque mystique 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 reference to this "symbolist" artist is not fortuitous. As they found sensual delight in lacerations and delectable gloominess, painters and poets of the end of the 19th century knew how to sublimate their crises and uncertainties into eternal artistic values. That is without doubt a lesson for us: the pure transposition of the world's sorrows into the aggressiveness of material or the "complexity" of forms does not suffice to create a work of art. In spite of its limited instrumentation, La Barque mystique is truly "orchestrated". It is a miniaturized orchestration that functions like clockwork. The instruments continually change roles and the groupings vary unceasingly. The totality contributes to the edification of global forms. The final effect, as in all clock-like movement, depends upon extreme precision in the execution of the microtonal pitches, the rhythms with their fluctuating tempi, and the timbres.

Tristan Murail (Translation by Mary Dibbern)