La réponse est dans la pelote de laine

La réponse est dans la pelote de laine (“The answer is in the ball of wool”) evokes the image of a cat discovering a small world of movement and possibilities within a simple object. The title is not intended as programme music, but rather as a metaphor for the work's exploration of the volatility of musical energy: how it emerges, spreads, and gradually dissolves.

A cat playing with an object pushes it back and forth, clings to it, tries to give it life, and may spend a long time convinced that it has a living creature in front of it—even though every movement actually comes from the cat itself, and the toy is animated only from the outside.

Sometimes, however, the ball of wool can roll across an unstable surface and, for a moment, seem truly alive. A sudden movement can even frighten the cat and make it recoil: thus, the energy imparted to the object not only animates it, but also reverberates through the environment and back onto the one that set it in motion.

Yet that apparent vitality quickly fades, leaving behind only the silence of play.

Ultimately, the cat is a metaphor for an energetic creature transferring life and momentum into inert matter. The piece is not about the cat itself, but about its object—or perhaps, with a bit of imagination, about both.

Performed by Jérôme Comte (Ensemble InterContemporain), Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, York, November 22, 2022.