Génuflexions

The three Génuflexions were composed in 2007.

While the first one seems like an obvious tribute to Satie in retrospect, it was not intended as such. The earliest version featured a tiny baroque minuet as an introduction and the rest was composed while trying to emulate the sadness of a piece by Moussorgski that I had learned a few years before.

It is only when I looked at the finished product that I thought "Well, this is an interesting blend of Gymnopédie and Gnossienne, with a dash of Debussy irony in the middle!"

The day I started composing Génuflexion n°2, I clearly remember sitting at the piano, thinking "Today I will write something good in E minor." A very odd method if you ask me, clearly bound to fail, but it worked, I guess. The only idea I had was to try to stick to minor arpeggios for as long as I could (there are six of them) and then switch to major ones to end each of the two main parts. As a consequence, the piece is not really in the key of E minor, but instead can be seen as atonal, or at least as switching to a new key every few measures.

The third Génuflexion is probably more ambient than impressionist for once. For a long time I thought I would discard this piece in the end: too long, too slow, too sparse at times... But I guess its hauting quality finally won me over, and I decided it deserved a place here.

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