Jean Guillou

Colloque No. 5 op. 19

Colloque, colloquy or symposium, is a term used in reference to Erasmus, but of course also to Plato and, closer to us, Paul Valéry. In this piece, instead of characters who speak to each other, there are instruments that confront each other. Because of this reason the six colloques written until today are using quite unhabitual instruments. Four of them use instruments as diverse as the piano, the organ and percussion: so many contradictory personages, each with its own character, firmly setting forth their ideas, though having some influence on each other as well. The piano for example communicates its percussive force to the organ and the organ lends the piano its penetrating and pliable gentleness, as well as its breadth of sound.In this Colloque no. 5 the piano and organ, almost on tiptoes, enter together but unbeknown to each other, hesitantly, softly, like two people looking for each other and at the same time avoiding each other and commenting on each other's propositions or assertions, the whole interspersed with vigorous and sometimes contradictory episodes. FInally, a brilliant, lively pantomine brings them together before the opening figure suddenly returns. The pantomime reappears to form the conclusion to these confrontations and rhetorical jousts.