Le Lac

This Le Lac, for ensemble, composed in 2001 by Tristan Murail, is certainly a beautiful piece, but, in my opinion, it is so typical of his work that it borders on mannerism. Translation: for me, it is less emotional than other pieces, but it is very well written.

The sounds follow one another and melt into one another so perfectly that, at times, they don't even seem to originate from instruments, but rather the result of expert mixing and studio editing.

The piece hints at Lamartine's poem of the same name, but it is above all music inspired by natural models: the acoustic analysis of the sound of rain on the lake, a stylized version of thunder, the cry of an unidentified bird, the electronic texture of frogs in spring...
And behind all this, the lake. A surface that's always the same and always changing, a play of permanence and ephemerality, movement and mood, the logic of the unexpected, order and simplicity nestled within the chaotic and complex.

Update: Of course, rereading what I wrote and listening to the piece for the third time, I realize it's pointless to say it's not as beautiful as the others. Perhaps in some places it's a bit overtly reminiscent of Ligeti, Messiaen, and even Debussy, but it's damned beautiful. The point (and the problem) is that it contains almost all of them—and here I could say both the expressive modes (positive) and the mannerisms (negative)—from the end of the last century. A nice way to greet the new millennium.

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