I have been very familiar with the flute since my earliest pieces. I like the sound in which breathing is ever present and with timbral possibilities that befit my musical language: the instrument's body makes it possible to write phrases that go through grinding textures coloured with phonemes whispered by the flautist which gradually go towards pure and smooth sounds. The concerto's title and the general mood of the piece derive from Saint-John Perse's collection of poems Oiseaux: "Aile falquée du songe, vous nous retrouverez ce soir sur d'autres rives !". This is not the first time I combine my music with Saint-John Perse's verses. In Laconisme de l'aile, composed in 1981, I already used some sentences from Oiseaux. In these poems, Saint-John Perse does not describe the singing of the birds. He rather speaks of their flight and uses the rich metaphor of the birds to describe life's mysteries through an abstract and multidimensional language: "Ignorants de leur ombre, et ne sachant de mort que ce qui s'en consume d'immortel au bruit lointain des grandes eaux, ils passent, nous laissant, et nous ne sommes plus les mêmes. Ils sont l'espace traversé d'une seule pensée". The concerto is composed of two main parts: Aérienne and Terrestre. These two
Aile du songe is dedicated to Camilla Hoitenga with whom I worked on numerous details in the soloist's part of this piece.