“Au début et à la fin” (1996) for piano solo (OP.27)

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“Au début et à la fin” (“At the beginning and at the end”), composed in Düsseldorf in 1996, is conceived as a cycle of short movements linked by shared musical material and by a prevailing atmosphere of pessimism, disillusionment with material ideals, and a search for transcendent revelation. Across the work, gestures and harmonies recur like troubled memories, casting each movement as a different facet of the same spiritual unease.​ A recurring semi-quotation from Olivier Messiaen’s “Quatuor pour la fin du temps” (“Quartet for the End of Time”) appears at both the opening and the close of the cycle, and this framing device gives the work its title.

As an epigraph, the piece invokes verses from Ecclesiastes (1:3–4, 1:9–10), with their stark reminder that human striving is “vanity” and that “there is nothing new under the sun.” In this light, the cycle can be heard as a musical reflection on the futility of earthly pursuits and the desire to break through that cycle toward a more enduring truth.

Transcription for two pianos was made and performed in 1999 in Israel.

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Publications: IMC (Manuscript)

Music sheets samples: