STALACTITE - The Silent Witness
for String Orchestra

In this piece Aaron Fazakas creates a type of polymorphous expression which aims to suggest by subtle means, the burst of some extremely volumetric imaginary flows. First of all, they are spaces of interiority, hidden places of the imaginary "exhumed" by the composer in a seductive impudicity which justifies the structural stake of this tripartite piece.

Part I - Entry (Tears of the Stalactite)
From the very beginning, the symmetry of the "vaulted" figurations is extremely intriguing; the impression is amplified by the "thriller" effect of the pizzicato: a "pierced", sharp sonority, a suggestion of the water drops which "bite" the silent stone of the cave, while falling. The "vaulting" of repetitive figuration turns smoothly, inflexibly, into a gliding towards, deeper, progressive darkening, the effect of which is the terror and the thrill of revealed mystery. The suggestion of the crystalline drops falling is enhanced by flageolet of a sidereal and also a mineral calling. Built towards amplification, in an alert pulsation, the first part becomes a scheme of a voyage to the core of the mystery.

Part II - Inside (In the Spell's Arms)
Its articulation is small but extremely focused on contemplation. Settling a topos of the natural "gothic", in the midst of vaults and arches revealing a mystery of beauty, the imaginary flow leads towards the idea of the Protestant chorale surrounded by an invasive mildness, towards the sacred revealed in a cave as a cathedral of nature. This music holds the enchanting amazement, the burst of an almost religious feeling of wonder before the sublime which has been concealed and hidden in the depths.

Part III - Exit (A Revelation's Consequence)
To a certain extent, the music of the third part is a "castaway from Paradise", a banishment caused and conditioned by the "mementos" of reason and lucidity, which bring about the intuitive return of fear and unbearable claustrophobia. The rush to the surface, the panicked retire in front of the dark getting nearer the frightened being, the idea of evil dwelling in the unknown, the stumbling and the confusion, the fall and then the return towards the way to the light. The reprise of the piece and of the whole cycle is synthetic, reenacting the suggestive figurations of the pizzicato and the sharp drops. Very dynamic, this last articulation of the piece is ended in a "Picardian" cadence, in a major of certitude and light.

The synthetic language of the piece takes over the jazz intonations, but also those of the Protestant chorale, in a loose, unbound and nonreferential melodicity, which is in the end ludic (as an expression of curiosity, spontaneity, freshness and clarity) and miniature.