As a presentation to the work, premiered on 15 April and broadcast on 17 May 2021 on France Musique, please find below an excerpt from the composer’s (fascinating) notes:
We know today that life on earth, including the human race, comes from a common ancestor, itself the result of a long evolutionary process. But the crucial question is: what happened before? Long ago, something began to evolve, to build technology, to transform matter into machines in order to survive. Once created, the same process could easily have been transformed by its own effects, much like the sound materials in a musical work...
In Mineral Life II, for viola, I worked on the idea of creating a musical structure inspired by a biological process on a large scale, and more specifically how life could have started on our planet. I found particularly interesting the theory of the Genetic Takeover developed by the Scottish biologist Graham Cairns-Smith, a theory that suggests an origin by mineral replication: life could have begun in the form of replicating inorganic crystals, constantly evolving and adapting to the environment. There is, however, no doubt that organic molecular life was ultimately the most efficient option: the first genes consisted of the replication of "defects" in crystal lattices. The defect would not be eliminated but rather reproduced: in the same way, the musical motifs (sort of musical genes) in Mineral Life II contain small errors, expressed in the form of interrupted pauses, of exchanges in the order in which the gestures are executed, and accents that create a sense of fracturing the symmetrical elements.
Another aspect of Cairns-Smith’s theory inspired me to imagine the most fundamental aspect of the musical structure of Mineral Life II. Once the musical phrases (or genes) have become richer, more varied, as well as the discourse and interrelationships of more complex sound materials, thanks to a style of playing shared between the legno and the crini of the bow, a new musical architecture emerges: what was linear, monodic, inert and discreet becomes multiformal, polyphonic, organic and continuous. The great speed at which the instrumentalist varies the styles of interpretation, the great variety of timbres that interact in but a fraction of a second, end up creating a sense of a true continuum, of a timbral-rhythmic frame with multiple voices and an almost animalistic connotation.
Mineral Life II (2016/2021)
for viola
World premiere: 15 April 2021 as part of the Ile de Créations competition of ONDIF
Ieva Sruogyte, viola
See the video recording of the premiere on the YouTube channel of the Orchester national d'Île-de-France: