Le Temps, mode d’emploi is a large musical fresco about different expression modes of time. Contemplative or active time, postponed or real, continuous or discontinuous, heterogeneous or homogeneous, smooth or ribbed, pulsated, suspended, redone, circular, diffracted… Physical time, musical but also psychic. Time isn’t just a receptacle which surrounds our life, actions and perceptions, it can have its own structure, a kind of envelop which leaves its mark on us. Music has always known how to express that better than any other medium. That’s on the base of those temporal organizations that I decided to work, way before having written any note. The two pianos are surrounded by four virtual ones and a very complex device of synthesis, processing and spatialization of sound. Made of eight sections which follow and answer each other, in a big format, the piece lasts more than forty minutes.

 Philippe Manoury

Commissioned by the city of Witten for Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik 2014 , the SWR Experimentalstudio (Freiburg), the Wiener Konzerthaus, the Wigmore Hall (London) with the help of Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung and the Franco-German Foundation for the contemporary music  « Impuls neue Musik »

Dedicated for the duo Grau-Schumacher

World premiere
11 May 2014, GrauSchumacher Piano Duo, Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik,Germany

Upcoming dates
27 August 2018, GrauSchumacher Piano Duo, Jose-Miguel Fernandez & Philippe Manoury (electronics), Suntory Hall, Tokyo, Japan

Website of the composer ➡️ http://www.philippemanoury.com/?page_id=13