La quatrième mélodie
for violin and percussion
Luke Fitzpatrick, violin
Bonnie Whiting, percussion
The title La quatrième mélodie relates to Joël-François Durand’s 2004 article “Melody—Three Situations: Un Feu distinct, La Terre et le feu, Athanor.” In this article, the composer describes three unique situations where melodic lines assume different roles in shaping the music. Durand’s recent work appears to introduce a fourth situation, where the fundamental unity between pitch, rhythm, and timbre is emphasized. A hallmark of this “fourth melody” is the perceptual phenomenon of beating patterns arising from frequencies in close proximity.
Despite what the title might imply, a “fourth melody” never fully appears in this piece. Instead, we encounter only failed emulations—gestures that seem poised to form a fourth melody but always fall short. Even an excerpt from Durand’s Geister, schwebende Geister, repeated as a refrain, is prevented from becoming one. The irony is that, despite all the struggle in the musical narrative, the work ultimately stems from a process that generates musical materials via a mathematical representation of beating patterns.