At least 15, if not 20 years, that I promised at some point in my life to write a clarinet concerto for Kari Kriikku, who premiered the piece. ((Lou Harrison)) And then at some point after I had written my second opera, Adriana Mater, suddenly I realized that in that piece clarinet had grown out from the orchestra and had taken an important position. And so, I thought to myself that this might be the right moment to write that concerto. And I was thinking about it, and thinking about it a lot, and then one day I walked by the Medieval Museum in Paris, and I decided to go to see theses tapestries, which I knew very well, and which I had visited many times when I was preparing my first opera, L’amour de Loin, and focused on all these years, and then suddenly I went to the museum and it was closing earlier than I thought, but the lady knew me and she said “Well, why don’t you go there? You can go there still, you don’t need to pay the entrance fee.”

So, suddenly I was in this room by myself, which was very unusual because they are so famous. And I was walking there, and being happy to find them again, and then suddenly these two things came together. ((Magic Of Theater)) And so, again something was clarified in my mind when I was in that room. And then I decided to make the connection, but somewhere — but part of the music was there already.