In 1957 Samuel Beckett has written a Radio play with the title Embers. [Cendres in French]. It represents a very special genre while – as Beckett told himself – ‘Embers rests on an ambiguity: is the person – [the protagonist, i. e. Henry] – having a hallucination or is this really happening ’ The play opens with sea sounds in the background, and Henry is walking along the strand, while recalling events of his life. He invokes his father, his wife and daughter, and other personalities and asks questions about the lived experiences. In 1972, working at his time in Germany, Peter Eötvös decided to create a ‘sound play’ on the basis of this enigmatic piece. But the composer himself used his personal filters, he operated with subjective choices: he selected fragments of the Beckettien play which could become the support of the five main ‘actions’ or scenes of his Sound Piece. The original version of his ‘Klangspiel’ is an ‘open work’, an ‘opera aperta’ which entrusted the construction of form to two interpreters: a violinist and an organist (and theirs sounds have been modified by Ringmodulation and other effects). In 2008, 2015 and in 2016, Peter Eötvös has created four other versions of the original work (which consisted of five ‘actions’, five monologues, five dialogues and one ‘parallel monologue’). The last versions belong to the genre of the so-called ‘absolute music’ (the Octet of 2008, or the Now Miss of 2016). But it is important to come back to the ‘sources’, and being able to understand the bases and the motivations for the ‘actions’ and for the enigmatic ‘dialogues’ or ‘monologues’ of the last instrumental versions.

Márta Grabócz est professeur émérite de l’Université de Strasbourg, membre de l’ACCRA et de l’ITI CREAA, membre honoraire de l’IUF, membre extérieur de HAS (Hungarian Academy of Sciences). Elle a publié quatorze livres (dont quatre monographies et autres (co-)directions d’ouvrages) dans les domaines de la signification, la narratologie musicale et de la musique contemporaine. Parmi les derniers ouvrages parus : Musique, narrativité, signification (L’Harmattan, 2009) ; Les Opéras de Peter Eötvös entre Orient et Occident (EAC, 2012) ; Les grands topoï du XIXe siècle et la musique de F. Liszt (Hermann, 2018) ; F.-B. Mâche. Le compositeur et le savant face à l’univers sonore (co-direction avec G. Mathon, Hermann, 2018) ; Modèles naturels et scénarios imaginaires dans les œuvres de P. Eötvös, F.-B. Mâche et J.-C. Risset (Hermann, 2020) ; Narratologie musicale. Topiques, théories, stratégies analytiques (Hermann, 2021) ; György Kurtág : les œuvres et leurs interprétation (co-direction avec Jean-Paul Olive, Álvaro Oviedo, Hermann, 2021). Elle s’occupe également de la publication des écrits de compositeurs contemporains (chez EAC, Hermann, L’Harmattan).

Colloque Peter Eötvös : jour 2. D'une dramaturgie musicale à l'autre