Piece for String Instrument n°3 (1958)
Philip Corner (transcription for double bass by Pierre-Antoine Badaroux)
Sébastien Beliah : double bass

In 2011 the Ensemble Hodos (co-directed by Pierre-Antoine Badaroux and I) started a series of five concerts, each of them dedicated to a period of Philip’s Corner work. After finishing this cycle the ensemble started to record and release this music (this process is not finished yet). The present recording of the Piece for String Instrument n° is part of this whole process, but was at first chosen to stay unreleased, since we decided to privileged chamber music work (the record of the first period Lifework : A Unity 1. Culture (Tradition, Assimilation) 1950-59 is available on Umlaut Records).
I found myself listening back to this recording recently, and decided that this material deserves a chance to be released as it is. One should note that this piece was originally designed for the violin, but we thought with Pierre-Antoine that a version for double bass would be suitable for the instrument - though quiet challenging for the player.

About this period of his work, Philip Corner says :

"I think i can safely say that even from the very beginning of my writings, there was something personal (and as time has demonstrated, innovative) in the traditional traces. This got me in trouble from the first! My teachers thought it was just from ignorance-----and to some extent they were right. But what is really to know? How shocked i was at the suggestion that i choose a composer to imitate!
Until the end of my studies at age 26 i was moving into total chromaticism and the example of Messiaen was crucial. However the dogmatic serial attitudes i found in France alienated me and so i was very happy to find John Cage when i came back to New York......and so i moved into some chance and indeterminacy, but as usual in my own way. I still like very much some of those pieces.....and you can certainly see in retrospect where i was going to go."

As a matter of fact, although the score of Piece for String Instrument n°3 use a rather conventional notation, the so called innovative approach of this piece can be found in the form. The score is build around a system of corresponding pitches, rhythms and dynamics which strongly refers to the common serial system used by composers of the 50’s such as Messiaen or Boulez, but the player encounter numbers of moments throughout the piece where the musical material at disposition can be combined in the moment in a sometimes very free way. The overall results makes this piece a genuine maze for the listener (and for the player as well!) where it is sometimes very hard to define what is previously composed and what is spontaneously chosen.