This piece is a modest offering in the response to the death of a great musical and spiritual presence. Messiaen was a protospectralist, fascinated by the colours of the harmonic series and its distortions in which he found a prismatic play of light.

The tape part of the work is composed of piano sounds entirely tuned to the harmonic series - 12 of them, one for each class of pitch. The 'tempered' live piano joins and distorts these series, never entirely belonging, never entirely separate. The associations of the word tombeau (tomber) suggested a falling motive for the work; at the end the piano extends this motive, flinging itself into a downwards vortex into the abyss.

© J. H. 1999