Schoenberg ensemble
Reinbert de Leeuw, conductor

FOUCAULT'S PENDULUM was written in 2004 on a commission from the Dutch Schoenberg Ensemble. Its world premiere of the composition took place the same year at the Concertgebouw under the direction of Reinbert de Leuw.

I tried to construct my piece on the basis of juxtaposition of two contrasting types of music: the music of breath and the music of mechanism, as well as, correspondingly, two types of time – the continuous and the mechanically discreet. It was especially intriguing for me to examine the processes of the emergence and formation of each type of music, and also to trace the stages of the transition of one into the other. I was also greatly interested in the idea of the gradual modulation of the timbral beats of sound into rhythmic structures, as well as the transformation of instrumental sound-color into rhythm.

The pendulum-like development of the musical material of the piece (involving repetitions with gradual changes of the "trajectory" of the movement), as well as a few other constructive principles of the composition brought to my mind the famous pendulum built by Jacques Foucault in 1851 for a visual demonstration of the fact of the Earth's rotation. The title of the work also contains the allusion to the famous mystification novel by Umberto Eco, "Foucault's Pendulum."

Foucault's Pendulum for large ensemble

Vladimir Tarnopolski