The series of my pieces “Intermezzi” is inspired by Roland Barthes’ thoughts on fragmentary discourse. Many of his books are written in this style, his reflections on various subjects succeeding one another without a pre-established argumentative link. This form of rhetoric allows him to translate the simultaneity of thoughts, the collision or condensation of ideas. The reader’s mind, forced into permanent rupture, is forced into a synthesis of a new kind. Perhaps an elegant way of identifying the elusive through the accumulation of its manifestations.

“Write in fragments: the fragments are then stones around the edge of the circle: I spread out in a circle: my whole little universe in pieces; in the center, what?“

“What, when we put fragments together, no organization is possible? If: the fragment is like the musical idea of ​​a cycle (Bonne Chanson, Dichterliebe): each piece is sufficient, and yet it is never more than the interstice of its neighbors: the work is only made of out of text. The man who best understood and practiced the aesthetics of the fragment (before Webern) was perhaps Schumann; he called the fragment ((intermezzo)); he multiplied intermezzi in his works: everything he produced was ultimately intercalated: but between what and what? What does a pure sequence of interruptions mean?“

“The fragment has its ideal: a high condensation, not of thought, or of wisdom, or of truth (as in the Maxim), but of music: to ((development)), would oppose the ((tone)), something articulated and sung, a diction: there the tone should reign. Short pieces by Webern: no cadence: what sovereignty he uses to turn short!“ (“roland BARTHES by roland barthes“)

 

In “Intermezzi 1“, the performers whisper a series of words borrowed from Roland Barthes: Incidents (mini-texts, folds, haikus, notations, games of meaning, everything that falls, like a leaf)

Misato Mochizuki (2002)