Sommeil Paradoxal

In 1937, through the recent invention of the electroencephalography (EEG), A. L. Loomis detected the dissimilar behavioral states of sleep during an entire night, categorizing and defining each one: Wakefulness, N1-N2 (“light non-rapid eye movement”, or “non-REM sleep”), N3-N4 (“deep non-REM sleep”) and the REM stage known as Sommeil paradoxal in French.

These sleep stages act as metaphors for the formal, structural, harmonic, rhythmic, motivic and overall orchestrational shaping of the piece.