| Le temps l'horloge | |
|---|---|
| Song cycle by Henri Dutilleux | |
 Renée Fleming whose voice inspired the composition, in 2009 | |
| English | Time and the Clock |
| Language | French |
| Based on | poems by Jean Tardieu and Robert Desnos, later Baudelaire |
| Composed | 2006–2007 |
| Movements | three, later five |
| Scoring |
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| Premiere | |
| Date | 6 September 2007 |
| Location | Saito Kinen Festival Matsumoto |
| Conductor | Seiji Ozawa |
| Performers | |
Le temps l'horloge (Time and the Clock) is a song cycle for soprano and orchestra, by the French composer Henri Dutilleux.
He wrote the original three-movement version between 2006 and 2007 based on two poems by Jean Tardieu ("Le temps l'horloge" and "Le masque"), and one by Robert Desnos ("Le dernier poème"'). He later added a fourth purely instrumental movement, "Interlude", inspired by another Tardieu poem ("Le futur antérieur"), and a fifth based on Charles Baudelaire's prose poem, "Enivrez-vous".
The work was composed for American soprano Renée Fleming, whom Dutilleux called "a great artist". The composer said, "I constantly thought of her voice's character, of her power of lyrical expression" while writing the piece.[1]