Somnambule - Writing About Music

Sylvain Chauveau ~ Un Autre Decembre

Short pieces of acoustic piano, tracks and traces of other sounds left as marks of dust and scratches upon the instrument’s case, like a persistent emotional residue.

Reflective, peaceful, each note contemplated with care; each chord tied just so.

Fragments of melody articulated as musical thoughts.

Composition on a small scale as though viewing a map so close that the very fibre of the paper intrudes upon the lines of the hills your eye traces.
Penumbra of a distant town in the darkness of a country night.

Recollections which refuse to quite cohere and are therefore forgotten before they’re ever within reach.

Voices heard as if from a distance, through an apartment window from the street below.

A simplicity prepared to co-exist in peace with the life around it.

A gift of a certain humility, the listener given the space to apprehend each moment of sound as it is heard.
Colin Buttimer
January 2003
Published by the BBC