Opens with long, breathy flute tones and moves slowly into loud, clattering, ringing, droning sounds. Nothing is abrupt in this piece. A couple of flipped flute sounds (attack at the end) are abrupt enough, I guess, but muted enough to not seem so. Muted is probably wrong. But even the loud sounds in this piece have a soft quality to them. Subdued is the word. Yes.

L’heure alors s’incline… moves through two long crescendos and decrescendos, the first decresc punctuated by high, quick metallic glissandos, and some very soft tam tam schlags whose “pitch” is ever so slightly bent. After the second, slightly faster crescendo, the piece declines (or inclines) into the long, breathy flute tones from the opening. It’s not a piece that grabs you by the throat, to be sure, but it will never let you go for all that.