Good Morning

I Thought So ...

Novars

The weather is changing again. After a few days of nonchalant mildness, the day is cloudy and drizzly with potentiation of ugly storms over the horizon the next few days. These could bring some snow as temperatures drop again. Today is 12C!

Alas, with lockdown at its highest it means a fig to us. Only food shops, newsagents and chemists are open. Life is dull but at least there is music via the internet and CDs to calm the savage breast.

Such music is that from the electroacoustic fraternity -

And hence there is one I have on order direct from the label empreintes DIGITALes, Canada -


Francis Dhomont - Cycle du son Mov. 3 "Novars" (1989)

Novars — 3rd of the 4 works in the Cycle du son — was realized at Studio 123 of the Ina-GRM (Paris, France) and at the composer's studio and premiered on May 29th, 1989, as part of the 11th GRM Acousmatic Concert Series at the Grand Auditorium of Rthe Maison Radio France (Paris). This piece was selected by the 1990 International Computer Music Conference (ICMC '90) in Glasgow (Scotland), and by the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) for the 1991 World Music Days in Zürich (Switzerland). The jury of the 1991 Stockholm Electronic Arts Award also selected it for performance at its award concert in Stockholm (Sweden). Special thanks to Pierre Schaeffer who has kindly allowed the quotation of a few sound propositions, now historic; and to Bénédict Mailliard, Yann Geslin and Daniel Teruggi without whose patience it would have been impossible to domesticate Studio 123 and the Syter real-time sound synthesis system of the Ina-GRM (Paris, France). Novars was commissioned by the Ina-GRM}.

Novars salutes the birth of musique concrète, the Ars Nova of our century, by calling upon the resources of the computer. The intention is not to create a pastiche but, on the contrary, to testify that by the most advanced means a language has been passed on. It may also be possible to suggest, without establishing a simplistic symmetry, that there exists a link between these two theorists of a new art:Vitry and Schaeffer.
The 'classical' ear will perhaps recognize fragments from Schaeffer's Étude aux objets (1959) and Guillaume de Machaut's Messe de Nostre Dame (1364). These quotations, along with a third sound element — a sort of homage to Pierre Henry and his infamous door — are the sole materials giving birth to multiple variations.
A sign of change: 'spectromorphologic' (Denis Smalley) mutations give to sonorities of the Ars Nova and to 'new music' (as Schaeffernamed it in 1950) the sound of our time. A sign of continuity: something from the original works (their color, their structure...) remains present, indestructible.

Jigsaw - Sky High

In the late 1950s I started a band called The Toreadors with Tony Campbell, a grammar school mate. (My brother davesmusictank was knee-high to a grasshopper at the time so probably doesn't recall this!) We didn't get far and disbanded (silly me). Jigsaw came to life through Tony Campbell, who assembled a six piece band named after a Manchester hotspot known as "The Jigsaw Club". Original members Dave Beech, Clive Scott, Barrie Bernard, Tony Britnell and Kevin Mahon along with Campbell scored a number of hit singles in the mid sixties with their Beatlesque arrangements. This is their best known track, a massive hit both sides of the Atlantic...

Strange New Acoustic Worlds

Mire spectralist electroacoustic music -

Tristan Murail - Désintégrations (1982-83)

Murail is associated with the "spectral" technique of composition, which involves the use of the fundamental properties of sound as a basis for harmony, as well as the use of spectral analysis, FM, RM, and AM synthesis as a method of deriving polyphony.

Major pieces by Murail include large orchestral pieces such as Gondwana, Time and Again and, more recently, Serendib and L'esprit des dunes. Other pieces include his Désintégrations for 17 instruments and tape, Mémoire/Erosion for French horn and nine instruments Ethers for flute and ensemble, Winter Fragments, for flute, clarinet, piano, violin, cello and electronics as well as Vampyr! for electric guitar.

Murail also composed a set of solo pieces for various instruments in his cycle Random Access Memory, of which the sixth, Vampyr!, is a rare classical piece for electric guitar. Vampyr! is one of several works in Murail's catalogue that do not employ spectral techniques. Rather, in the performance notes, the composer asks the performer to play the piece in the manner of guitarists in the popular and rock traditions, such as Carlos Santana and Eric Clapton.

Among Murail's awards are the Prix de Rome (presented by the French Académie des beaux-arts in 1971), the Grand Prix du Disque (1990), and the Grand Prix du Président de la République, Académie Charles Cros (1992).

Murail's works are published by Éditions Transatlantiques and Éditions Henry Lemoine. His music has been recorded on the Una Corda, Metier, Adés, and MFA-Radio France labels.

video created with vokoscreen and Sonic Visualizer on a Kubuntu 14.04 LTS Linux System.


Bernard Parmegiani ‎– L'Œil écoute / Dedans-Dehors

L'Œil écoute (1970)
"From the very first moment, caught by the musical tone heard from inside a train, the trip offered by this piece, woven with different materials, triggers in us various climates able to give our imagination power over sounds: the power to guide them through our secret mazes rather than to blindly follow them like Panurge. This form of (auditory) contemplation thus attempts to enable us to lose ourselves outside our far too familiar and usual territories. Perhaps, in looking too hard, man eventually stops listening. And, as I said when creating the piece in 1970, the eye, now a "solitary wanderer" only has ears for what assaults it." (B.P.)

Dedans-Dehors (1977)
“When listening to the sound material, we metamorphose the inside into an outside. This notion of metamorphosis is one of the principles that leads the course of the musical suite, reflecting changes (fluid-solid passages: water/ice/fire) or movements (ebb/flow/wave, inspiration/expiration) or inside-outside passages (door/individual/crowd). Thus, the perceived object is not entirely what we would have liked it to be. Our music brings us closer to some whilst it takes us away from others: each with their own inside.” (B.P.)

ENJOY.