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string quartet and flute

Both the malleability of musical form and the possibility for the listener to perceive its ongoing transformations within a composition lie at the heart of Les Raisons de Forces Mouvantes (The reasons behind moving forces).

The title is taken from a seventeenth-century book of the same name which describes the manufacturing of fountains, mechanical organs and clocks.

This composition was commissioned through a grant from the Canada Council by the Purcell Quartet (Vancouver) and the flutist Kathryn Cernauskas. Its premiere took place in Vancouver, April 1985.

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