Listening to Grisey's Quatre Chants two decades after its composition, it is clear that he was on a threshold into a new approach to dramatic vocal music.
The London Philharmonic Orchestra’s latest “only connect” programme was inspired by its allocated date – 12/12/12. An equivalent numerical repetition will not recur for another century. Furthermore the reversal of the first figure to 21 coincides with the day signalled by the Mayan calendar as a day of ending.
