Compulsory figures

1. Impetus Inspiration is often the result of an interaction between the outside world and the composer's inner experience. It may be unexpected and ephemeral, but it can also be the result of a gradual growth, one that reveals itself progressively or by twists and turns. The source of inspiration may lie in sensory phenomena (looking at an object, a landscape, a work of art, hearing sound or music, etc). It may be the result of a psychological state (a feeling, an atmosphere). It may be the result of an intellectual approach (the desire to explore a given aspect or technique in music) or perhaps it may arise out of experiences that the composer has undergone. Sometimes the initial cause remains a secret, buried deep in memory or in the unconscious of the creative person. At other times the initial cause will be revealed by the composer, or by other witnesses. There are famous historic examples such as Tartini's dream, which preceded the composition of the "Devil's Trill" Sonata, or the "Resurrection" chorus that was sung at von Bülow's funeral, and which inspired Mahler when he composed his Second Symphony. Reynolds gives the name of "impetus" to this kind of jumping-off point "out of which the whole can spring and to which, once composition has begun, the evolving whole is continuously made responsive, even responsible". The impetus acts as a guide, a stimulus that helps the composer throughout the creative process. Etienne Souriau identifies "the questioning power of the work to be created", calling it the "angel of the work", in the way that the latent composition asks questions of its creator, questions that guide and inspire him or her. In the case of The Angel of Death, the main impetus lay in the opportunity to carry out a new musical experiment, as well as to take part in a human and scientific adventure. The Angel of Death, in addition to its specifically artistic goals, was designed to lend itself to a set of laboratory and concert experiments in order to test various hypotheses regarding the way we perceive music. The study most notably focused upon the classification and recognition of thematic material, the effects of instrumentation, the perception of the internal structure of themes, emotional response to large-scale forms, etc. It represents a unique event in the history of music as well as that of the cognitive sciences, one that was closely observed by psychologists and musicologists, almost on a step-by-step basis. They were provided with the opportunity to closely follow the process of composition, starting from the initial ideas sketched out on paper in 1998 all the way through to the work's premier on June 6 and 7, 2001 at the Georges Pompidou Center in Paris. The sketches, the formal plans and diagrams, the interviews with the composer, the stimulus sources that were specially constituted for the experiments, the experimental data, together make up a body of source material that can be consulted, analyzed and commented upon