Taken from a French nursery rhyme, the title Trois fois passera is undoubtedly a reference to my childhood and adolescence in Sherbrooke. However, there is no trace of this joyful refrain in my music.
I used the title simply because it illustrates the idea that inhabited me from the outset: I wanted to compose in the same way that we would trace a path in the snow or in the forest, going back again and again retracing our tracks. Consequently, certain motifs, rhythms and melodic contours are repeated, expanded and reinvested and the beginning of each new phrase often builds on an element of the previous one. The first measure of each movement offers noticeable examples. The multiple reworkings nourish the polyphony, creating a dense texture in the first and third movements and an airier texture in the second, which is more meditative.
On another level, I must highlight that the string section, with their possibility to indefinitely hold notes, offered an effective tool for an in-depth exploration of an essential aspect of my musical language: harmonic progressions like a spider web. The chords are always linked to each other through common notes, and the structure of each movement rests on a network of tonal centers.
My objective is to characterize the harmonic framework to ensure the continuity of its evolution using the persistence of certain chords; the new notes that are progressively added bring varying degrees of vibrancy whether they are consonant or dissonant. This process establishes a sort of hierarchy that allows for relationships of tension and release that nourish the horizontal momentum of the music. In other words, in Trois fois passera, as well as in the musical scores that followed, I developed the idea that the relationship between the sounds themselves elicits a sense of movement.
Trois fois passera was commissioned by the Orchestre de chambre de l'Estrie with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts. It was premiered on May 11, 1991 at St. Andrew’s Church in Sherbrooke with Marc David conducting.
The work is dedicated to my parents, Suzanne Telmosse (1923-2013) and Jean Panneton (1919-2017)
Translation: Colleen Mason (March 2020)
1 When writing about my piece A la légère (voice and instrumental ensemble), that premiered at the Festival de Wallonie in September 1985, Belgian critic Fernand Leclerc honed in on this aspect of my work explaining that the voice floats on spider web-like harmonies (“la voix [y] plane sur d’arachnéennes harmonies.”) I have been borrowing his metaphor ever since.