DESCRIPTION:
Reve Lisse, for 2 synthesizers and violin

The T M + Electroacoustic Instrumental Trio

However a composition for violin and two synthesizers --like Denis Dufour's Reve Lisse (Smooth Dream)-- may at times baffle the listener. There seems to be something incongruous about associating a "noble" instrument gradually perfected over the centuries, like the violin, with an iconoclastic object like a synthesizer, which few musicians even dare to call an instrument, let alone play.

And so one looks for a logical explanation.

The one that comes to mind --surely the only one-- is that the evolution of musical idioms creates a need for new instruments (and these in turn inspire new musical experiments, in what is by now a classic cycle). The composer is a writer rather than a painter. Before even considering the color of his sounds (though they are a vital element of instrumentation), he concerns himself with his musical "language" --a language that renders even the most unusual instrumental combinations self-evident and natural.

Reve Lisse is based on morphologies (sound forms) which are almost all derived from slides, from sounds evolving continuously as they rise in pitch. There are few notes (tempered high-pitch sounds), except where easily memorizable reference points are called for. The main emphasis is on rhythmic fluidity, on the way high-pitched sounds evolve and change.

The construction is obvious and based on simple, easily recognizable figures and on repetitions, distortions, and developments closely related to certain classical forms.

As for the emotional, poetic dimension of the composition, that is for the listener to experience...
--Laurent Cuniot

Art by Gustave Le Gray