The project brought to its term around The Angel of Death is without precedent. Its originality does not reside in the specifically analytical aspects, but in the diversity of angles of approach and in its interdisciplinary nature. The composer's commitment to the enterprise profoundly alters the usual conditions for analytical work: the workbooks that he kept, the meticulous tracking of the stages of his work, from the first sketches all the way to the premiere of The Angel of Death, delivers to the whole team of researchers implicated in the project the near totality of the poietic of the work. There is, therefore, no need to research the conditions in which the piece was produced, nor to investigate beyond what the composer wishes to reveal. Nonetheless, because today's musics form a complex, even confused, set within which it is difficult to orient oneself, it was necessary to situate the piece within the evolution of the composer's artistic production, his aesthetic approach and his technical choices, as much as to examine through a broader lens the relations they entertain with the pianistic repertoire, with the History of musical forms, or even the structures of Tragedy. Reynolds' musical universe encompasses a vast panorama — experimentation and serial technique, language and voice, instrumental and electroacoustic composition, form and space, myth and science —all the elements of which can be linked to The Angel of Death project, and which were sources of reflection for us.
Retrospectively, and from a purely analytical viewpoint, the elements supplied by Reynolds provided three essential bases for our work: the system underlying his composing (number series, proportions, architectonic conceptions), the margin of play that he allows himself or not, and the chronology of the compositional procedures. The technical aspect of the analytic field is therefore largely cleared, and the first question posed to the musicologist can be summarized as follows: how does one take into account the elements generously provided without becoming a prisoner of the gaze that the composer has cast upon his own work? All musicologists and music analysts who have had occasion to study a work of a living composer know this problem well. It is a situation that is quite different from the analysis of works by composers from the past. It often provokes a certain degree of disquiet, because the musicologist must find the right distance, both respectful and disrespectful at the same time, that allows a different light to be cast upon an object that its conceiver has already perfectly deconstructed and reconstructed. It is thus necessary to find other paths of access to the work, open the doors onto perspectives that the composer had perhaps not foreseen but which are latent, or to find the distant roots concerning which, in modesty, he has remained discreet.
Seen from the outside, the analyzed object at times reveals aspects that are surprising or even unforeseen, even for the composer. Of course, the work arises from the production and activity of the artist, but also, as a totality, from beyond this production and activity. The piece, be it artistic, literary or musical, can be reduced neither to its material, nor to its form: its content always surpasses its "carnal" manifestation. The artist also communicates by metaphors, by analogies, even by enigmas or ironies. Analysis, without veering toward psychoanalysis, becomes interpretation: to analyze is to elucidate, to bring the implicit to the fore. Reynolds' work, although strongly anchored in the rationality of a scientific approach, calls upon a rich universe of images and metaphors in its poetics. The title of The Angel of Death, as well as the labels for its themes (Equilibrium in Extremis, Tremulous Uncertainty, etc.), for the computer images (Ghostly Expansion, Dematerialization, etc.), and for certain sections (Other), contain metaphors that open doors to interpretation. The Greek (Asklepios, Dionysus) and Etruscan myths shed light on certain aspects of the form and underlie the dramaturgy of the piece. An event unforeseen in the unfolding of the project, if it has effect on the conception of the piece, can itself harbour meanings and be interpreted as such. The musicologist serves as rhapsode, interpreter and messenger (angelos). He can take over the work and attempt to transmit its interpretation without betraying or submitting to the intentions of the composer. There is nevertheless a limit. Analytical considerations that would enter too violently into contradiction with the conceptions that governed the work of the composer would be suspect and would require very solid arguments to be acceptable. In The Angel of Death, the principles were clearly laid out by the composer. It remained to show the subtlety of their implementation and to explore the network of complex relations and meanings that emerge from and beyond the work. And because we are taking stock, another question surges to the fore: would we have analyzed The Angel of Death in this way if the work were not inscribed in the experimental perspective of perceptual research? Without a doubt, the answer is "no".
Our participation as subjects at the beginning of the project, then the interactions with the psychologists, irresistibly oriented our analytical investigations. We very quickly realized this, and the tendency to favor things in the score that were potentially relevant for the listener's ear, and even at times for the spectator's eye, was another consequence of this approach, that, while certainly criticizable, is also logical. Abstract principles concerning out-of-time structures were more quickly treated or the reader was referred to the composer's very complete explanations. If our attention was concentrated on the score, it was with constant concern for the perceptual result. In other words, the analytical work at the table, preceding the first complete listening to the piece, was accompanied by successive mental representations that evolved with our increasing familiarity with the composition. The confrontation between memories of these representations and real listening — firstly our personal listening, then that of the many listeners tested by the psychologists — was a decisive moment in the process. The esthesic of The Angel of Death thus appeared in all of its complexity, in the framework — inhabitual for a musical work — of a scientific project. Directly or indirectly, the mental representations of the composer, his perception of his work, the perception of the piece by experienced or naive listeners, the mental representations of the musicologists, their perception of the work, all emerge. These different aspects do not lend themselves equally to scientific investigation, and they cannot therefore lay claim to the same treatment.
If the experimental control was only exercised over perception, which legitimately occupies the greater position in the project, the fleeting appearance of representations in the composer's and musicologists' discourse gives rise to other questionings and represents a challenge that the cognitive sciences, one day perhaps, can take up.
In music analysis, exhaustivity does not exist. To want to say everything is to run the risk of, in the end, saying nothing at all. The chosen angles of attack did not allow a deep comparative study of the Sectional and Domain parts of the piece, for example. This analysis will require a certain distance, and it is indeed this distance that is lacking when one analyzes in the heat of the timescale imposed by the scientific project, as a surgeon operating in the emergency room. The Angel of Death will provide grist for the mill for musicologists in the coming years.