Gérard Grisey is one of the pioneers of spectralism, a musical current that focusses on meticulously composed sound colours. He referred to it as ‘liminal music’: music on the border, where thresholds are surpassed and where slow transformations and imperceptible transitions occur. When exactly does day turn into night?

In Quatre chants pour franchir le seuil, the last piece he wrote before his unexpected passing, the central theme is the crossing of the boundary between life and death. The four songs stem from as many different cultures: Christianity, Ancient Egypt, Greece and Mesopotamia.