In Time Like Air (2023)

Commissioned by the Ensemble intercontemporain and Radio France for the 2024 Présences Festival, In Time Like Air is Josephine Stephenson's first work for large ensemble. The work received its world premiere on 6 February 2024 at the Maison de la Radio et de la Musique in Paris.

The title is drawn from a poem by the American writer May Sarton, which uses salt as a metaphor for the human condition: dissolved in water, it remains invisible, yet crystallises on contact with air to reveal its form. Sarton contrasts the dissolving power of love with the action of time, which gradually shapes identity. Josephine Stephenson translates this poetic progression into a work of around sixteen minutes in four movements, whose trajectory follows that of the poem without attempting a literal musical illustration.

The score explores a wide range of instrumental textures and colours inspired by the poem's imagery (sea, salt and crystals), while exploiting the possibilities of the large ensemble as a space for transformation. Musical materials gradually evolve, repeat, thicken and dissolve in a musical language whose development arises through subtle transformation rather than sharp contrast.