Email discussion with the performer

This work is a modest offering in response to the death of a great musical and spiritual presence.( There is in fact something of a tradition in French music to write such works on the death of great composers.)

Messiaen was a protospectralist, that is to say, he was fascinated by the colours of the harmonic series and its distortions, and found therein a prismatic play of light.

The associations of the word 'Tombeau' suggest a fall (as in death) and Harvey uses a falling motive throughout the work. At the end the piano extends this motive "flinging itself into a downwards vortex to the abyss" as Harvey remarks.

The work is an interplay between the equally tempered (tuned) piano and a tape part consisting of piano sounds which are part of natural harmonic series. (Harvey describes the consequential micro-tuning as "being in spectral formation"). Therefore sometimes the tempered piano is unified with the sounds of the tape and sometimes it is in argument with the fused nature of the harmonic series. As the composer remarks:

"The tape part of my work is composed of piano sounds entirely tuned to harmonic series- twelve of them, one for each class of pitch. The 'tempered' live piano joins and distorts these series, never entirely belonging, never entirely separate"