After a series of highly fragmented works, La joie ivre emerged as a continuous composition, inspired by J.S. Bach’s motet Jesu, meine Freude. Many of the sounds were derived by transforming a recording of the chorale’s opening line. In this piece, I sought to convey the deep sense of fulfillment and joy that I experience in Bach’s motet while also highlighting how this serenity and bliss can, at times, be threatened by chaos.
To further develop this contrast, I incorporated three recordings of children at play, captured during my travels in Jakarta and Lisbon. Each recording reflects a different expression of playfulness, interwoven with excerpts from the motet and traditional music from Africa, Indonesia, and Hungary.
I applied my familiar technique of mapping transpositions of pitched sources into a harmonic grid, a process that recurs in many of my compositions. However, in La joie ivre, this technique is rendered particularly transparent, making the transformations distinctly audible.