The two later orchestral works on Serendib et al. are compellingly elusive; Julian Anderson notes that in these larger-scale compositions, Murail has traded a “radically extreme continuity of evolution and a devotion to smoothly unfolding processes” for a more disconnected, fragmented sensibility, what he calls “broken continuity.” That’s certainly the case for the seeming-episodic Serendib, which seems repeatedly to disrupt its own sense of self. It’s not exactly an ‘outlier’ in Murail’s composition corpus, though it is true that it relies little on the harmonic spectra that’s so fundamental to many of his works. It’s well worth hearing to get a sense of the breadth of interests that drives Murail. The instruments-and-tape work Désintegrations is a delirious composition that’s repeatedly punctuated by silence.
