Written between July and October 2019, the piece "Le Tao de Pierrot", for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano and percussion, is a commissioned work from the Paramirabo Ensemble, in collaboration with Le Vivier and the Centre d'Expérimentation Musicale.
The work could be described as an imaginary pantomime, inspired by the character of Pierrot, a jester valet of the Italian popular theater (Commedia dell’arte).
Each of the ten short movements explores and illustrates in music the relationship between this imaginary Pierrot and a poetic element of fictional biography:
- L’origine lunaire de Pierrot (Pierrot’s lunar origin)
- Le côté obscur de Pierrot (The dark side of Pierrot)
- La forêt intérieure de Pierrot (Pierrot's interior forest)
- L’époque de guerre de Pierrot (Pierrot’s war era)
- La dernière campagne de Pierrot (Pierrot's latest campaign)
- Le pardon de Pierrot (The forgiveness of Pierrot)
- Le Chariot de Pierrot (Pierrot's Chariot)
- Les études chevaleresques de Pierrot (Pierrot's chivalrous studies)
- Le rêve de l’attention seconde de Pierrot (Pierrot's dream of second attention)
- La bonne étoile de Pierrot (Pierrot's lucky star)
Referring to the Taoist tradition and the character of Pierrot, the title could evoke:
- The Tao, the principle which generates all that exists, the fundamental force which flows in all things of the universe, and, in the context of the piece, the idea of a musical microcosm proposing a cosmological vision at the centre of which finds himself…… our friend Pierrot.
- The concept of Yin and Yang, binary system of categorization. The first five movements can be associated with Yin, darkness and the moon, while the last five are more the expression of Yang, light and sun. The result is a conceptual, formal and aesthetic balance.
- The idea of an initiatory narrative in which Pierrot, according to an internal alchemy process, transforms his initial (and traditional) dispositions of sadness and achieves a form of awakening.
- Finally, it is a nod and a humble tribute to Arnold Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire (Opus 21), an absolute masterpiece of twentieth century music and whose profound originality is notably in origin of the popularity of flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano (and here percussion) instrumentation, the so-called “Pierrot Ensemble” and basic geometry of the Paramirabo Ensemble.
The work is freely inspired by the symbolism and the numerology of the Tarot of Marseilles, whereas the programmatic "action" takes place in an imaginary and mystical Europe, era late middle ages, beginning renaissance.
