The landscape of Moustiers-Sainte-Marie in Haute-Provence, in the French Alps, where Coulombe Saint-Marcoux stayed for a while, suggested to her a suite “whose moments are drawn from the play of forms and of lines that emerged from such an imposing landscape, with its impressive masses of rock, strange sculptures, changing horizon, twinned peaks, desert-like aspect, and so on. The feeling is one of disorientation, vertigo, and fear, but also of contemplation in the face of so much beauty that music cannot completely describe.”

“The different, highly contrasting parts, and times where there is almost… silence. You know how it is when you’re high in the mountains and you perceive a silence coloured by an extremely high frequency. Well, I really felt that, I really experienced it.” (Coulombe Saint-Marcoux in interview with Richer 1984: 19)

— Micheline Coulombe Saint-Marcoux [English translation: Andra McCartney]

Moustières was realized in 1971 in the GRM studios (Paris, France) and premiered on June 17, 1971 at the Palais Jacques-Cœur during the festival “Dans Bourges ancien musiques d’aujourd’hui” in Bourges (France). Moustières was commissioned by the GMEB (now IMEB).

Composition

• 1971, Groupe de recherches musicales – Institut national de l’audiovisuel (Ina-GRM), Paris (France)

Premiere

• June 17, 1971, Dans Bourges ancien, musiques d’aujourd’hui — Synthèse 1971: Concert, Palais Jacques-Cœur, Bourges (Cher, France)