CLEPSYDRA

In 1904, in the temple of Karnak, archaeologist Georges Legrain discovered an alabaster vessel three thousand years old: the oldest water clock ever found. On its inner wall, engraved in intaglio, the twelve months of the Egyptian year.

Clepsydra does not recount time as it is measured, but time as it is experienced: time that never flows at the same speed, at times suspended, at times rushed, and which, in Egyptian thought, did not end at death. The very title of the Book of the Dead, in its original language, does not mean the end, but the passage: the Book of Coming Forth by Day. The trio is divided into three movements:

Akhet, a lyrical and mysterious movement, that of the threshold one approaches without knowing what lies on the other side.

Peret, a slow and suspended movement, that of the still expectation of judgment.

Chemou, that of urgency, as if time, too long contained, suddenly broke free in a tempestuous movement where everything must be accomplished before the threshold closes again.

The flute carries the breath, the viola gravity, the harp the flow of time itself, note by note, just as the vessel of Karnak, three thousand years earlier, measured out its drops into the night.