Composed in 2009, the piece was premiered on 22 June 2010 by Sébastien Vichard, at Studio de l’Ermitage in Paris. It draws on a verse of Dylan Thomas’ Poem on His Birthday, “Dark is a way and light is a place”: in order to find the light, it is very often necessary to cross the darkness – this is also a metaphor for creative work, wherein wounds provide the source of inspiration. Dedicated by the composer to the memory of his father, who had just passed away, L’Obscur est un chemin contains veiled references to Serge Gainsbourg’s song Je suis venu te dire que je m’en vais (I just came to tell you that I’m leaving). It is certainly in this piece that Rodolphe Bruneau-Boulmier’s feeling of musical space asserts itself the most.
“Très lointain”, a central G – a recurring note for the composer, like an epicentre of his sound-space – echoes as a tolling bell. Around it, different patterns criss-cross before a low E imposes itself momentarily as the pole of the musical discourse, now more animated. The section Le plus vite possible remains today as the most virtuosic section of Bruneau-Boulmier’s output. Once the calm is restored, a melodic fragment is randomly superimposed in a continuous loop when the G returns, which now provokes a feeling of striking oddness. At the end, a kind of very high-pitched music box at the border of silence wears itself out on the initial motif, until almost only the mechanism of the hammers is left audible.
