From Candide CE 31025:

Compositions realized in the studios of groupe de recherches musicales, o.r.t.f., paris, france

Anthology and Notes Compiled and Edited By ILHAN MIMAROGLU

Le Groupe de Recherches Musicales (The Group of Musical Research) of the O.R.T.F. (Office of the French Radio-Television) is known in the world principally as the promoter of an original technique of realization as well as reflection: Musique concrète .

As illustrated by the famous phrase of Picasso, "I find first, I search later," it is known that this attitude puts the identification of new musical parameters before all compositional will.

For more than fifteen years, the Groupe de Recherches Musicales has thus founded its experience, its methods of research and particular techniques upon a confrontation between the musical act, reflection upon its elements, experimentation on sound sources, and the electroacoustical means.

Grouped around Pierre Schaeffer and Francois Bayle, composers and researchers try to give new direction to musical activity through the conjugated action of a program of Fundamental Research on the languages of music (concrete, electronic, but also instrumental and oriental) and a program of Expression, resulting in original compositions as well as essays for the ballet, theater, cinema, or television.

FRANCOIS-BERNARD MACHE: Terre de feu (Second version).

The composer has given the following explanation about this work:

"Composed in 1963 and coming after several more rigorous compositions, Terre de feu (Earth of Fire) is an informal and contemplative work which escapes from all organizations of a language. It reflects my love for fire and water noises that sometimes, paradoxically enough, resemble each other so much. To tell the truth, these sounds have been purposefully excluded from the elaboration of the work, but the chosen sound materials have a life that obeys the same laws. The general form is inspired by natural phenomena, and the listener finds himself in the presence of a realm of sounds in which he is invited to take a walk, without someone having traced for him beforehand the path of a logic."

The work received a first performance in the Maison de la Culture de Grenoble, with the participation of ballet Kinesis, on February 6, 1965. Its first concert performance took place in Warsaw, September 22, 1966.

Francois-Bernard Mache (born in Clermont-Ferrand, 1935) first studied with E. Passani, and then at the Paris Conservatory with Messiaen. Starting in 1958, he worked for several years in the Groupe de Recherches Musicales. His compositions include Volumes for twelve magnetic tracks and orchestra (1960) ; Safous-mélé, a cantata (1963) ; Le Son d'une voix, linguistic paraphrase for chamber orchestra (1964) ; La Peau du Silence (1965-66), etc. He wrote several theoretical articles in Revue musicale and Mercure de France.

MICHEL PHILIPPOT: Etude III

Composed in 1962, this work is much less concise, austere, or rigorous than his two preceding studies (1953 and 56). It is tied neither to the materials nor their organization, but rather to certain mysterious relations that link this ensemble, on the one hand, to the one who conceives them, and, on the other, to those who listen to it. Music as easy as this was needed to approach such a difficult domain.

Michel Philippot (b. 1925) studied at the Conservatoire National de Paris after starting his scientific training. His music is primarily influenced by the works of Webern. Since 1949 he has worked as a sound engineer at the O.R.T.F. He has composed several works for chamber ensembles and many studies on musique concrete materials. His works include a Piano Sonata, Variations for Ten Instruments, an Overture for Orchestra, Ambiance I and Ambiance II (musique concrète studies).

FRANCOIS BAYLE: L'Oiseau-Chanteur (Second version)

L'Oiseau-Chanteur (The Songbird) is the third part of Portraits de I'Oiseau-Qui-N'existe-Pas (Portraits of the Bird-That-Does-Not-Exist), music realized (in 1963) for the images of the painter and film director Robert Lapoujade.

The technique employed uses and generalizes the notion of the musical instrument, the traditional writing taking into account the possibilities of the microphone and thereby becoming "experimental," while the concrete material, by its essence beyond the notation, assumes a voluntary quality.

The "chants" form brief phrases for the French horn, the oboe and the harpsichord, prolonged by tone clusters of concrete and electronic origin.

The imitation is of pure fantasy, having no recourse to any real melodic or rhythmic premise.

Francois Bayle (b. Tamatave, Madagascar, 1932), largely self-trained in music, received advice from Messiaen and Pousseur, and attended Stockhausen's composition courses while completing his technical training in experimental music under Pierre Schaeffer. Currently he is an executive director with Groupe de Recherches Musicales. He has composed several works for instruments as well as for magnetic tape, i.e., Archipel, Pluriel, Vapour, Espaces inhabitables, Ereignis.

IVO MALEC: Dahovi (Second version)

In its original form, Malec's Dahovi is music composed for Piotr Kamler's film, Structures, consisting of abstract images which determined the piece's fundamental architecture. In order to better circumscribe the musical content of the work, its architecture was later slightly modified in a way to make it free from its symbiotic role. The Serbo-Croatian word Dahovi means respiration, breathing. What is involved in the new condition of the work is to set into play, into counterpoint, into movement, small square surfaces (shaped in such a way that they remain within breathings that are almost white), then to color them either by changing their own rhythms, dimensions and intensities, or by bursts and scintillations of foreign sound objects which, now and then, project upon them different lights.

Ivo Malec (b. Zagreb, 1925), after having received a First Prize in composition in his native city, made several trips to Paris where he has resided since 1959, while remaining very much attached to the musical life of Yugoslavia. He collaborated with the Groupe de Recherches Musicales in the course of the past decade, and he is in charge of the group's musical manifestations. On his own behalf as a composer he has participated in several international festivals of contemporary music. His principal works include Sigma (for orchestra) , Oral (for orchestra and speaker), Tutti (for orchestra and tape), Miniatures for Lewis Carroll, Echos (for instrumental ensembles). Reflets, Mavena (for tape).

BERNARD PARMEGIANI: Danse

In composing this piece, which dates from 1962, the author resorted to the experience of using one single sound source: the voice, which is habitually treated with instrumental support.

The manipulations aim at making evident and underlining the natural inflections of the voice. In sum, a kind of endeavor analogous to the one that makes a transition from gesture to dance possible, and this is what these sound movements try to evoke.

Born in Paris, in 1927, Bernard Parmegiani joined the Groupe de Recherches Musicales in 1959, after having worked for five years as a sound engineer for television. He composed several works for films (Jeu des Anges, Brulure de 1000 soleils), radio and the television, as well as for concert performances (Violastries, Jazzex, L'Instant mobile). He is in charge of the Applied Music Section of the group


From Turnabout TV 34301:

(Selections are works by winners of the First International Electronic Music Composition - Dartmouth College, 1968)

BOHDAN MAZUREK (b. 1937) BOZZETTI (1967) * 5th Finalist *

(Realized in the Experimental Studio of the Polish Radio, Warsaw)

Bozzetti is composed of four short parts, or musical sketches, which together form an integral entity. Each of the sketches has a different character from the point of view of both its sonorous and emotional climate. However, all the sketches are based on the same method of composing; the use of contrasts. The quiet musical narration developing in accordance with the linear principles, collides with very crude, and sometimes even brutal, sound material.

In the first part of the composition, the high-pitched, shrill sounds obtained from the transformed harp sounds, and the gradual crescendo of noise intrude upon the delicate sonorous texture composed of electronic sounds, and eventually makes the original sonorous material hardly audible. A similar procedure is apparent in other parts of the composition, too.

In the second sketch, strong and violent strokes of noise dominate over the original sound texture, while in the third part the calm and lyrical two-voiced canon is twice interfered with by long sequences of musical structures of percussion character.

The final sketch is the culminating point of expression. Though the method of approach to the sonorous material remains the same, the relations of sounds and dynamic proportions are changed. In order to achieve a specific dramatic expression in accordance with the leading idea of the whole work, the "interfering" sound layer-which in this part consists of a combination of viola sounds-dominates over the remaining sonorous material no more. On the contrary, it has to break through it and struggle against it. The composition ends with a separate, isolated viola chord.

While working on my composition I tried to avoid any aesthetic ornaments. Following the example of plastic artists, I attempted to outline my musical vision in form of a simple but expressive design. Hence, the title of the composition "Bozzetti" which means "Sketches".

By Bohdan Mazurek

JOZEF MALOVEC (b. 1933) ORTHOGENESIS (1966-67) * 2nd Finalist *

(Realized in the Experimental Studio of the Czechoslovak Radio, Bratislava)

The title Orthogenesis is derived from the vocabulary of the French philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and its form as well as content is my subjective interpretation of this notion.

In the composition only electronic sound sources are used. Resulting sounds were modified and filtered before as well as after the detailed decoupage, small sound structures being prepared from a random selection of high frequencies. With an "infinite" tape they were reproduced by an effect tape recorder with four magnetic heads, where the audio signal of every head was modified by a special adjustment of band pass filters or by various types of feedback. This elementary microstructural material underwent a further transformation through various degrees of reverberation, or by a continually changing reverberation. The composition has no definitive score; there exist only sketches of some of its parts, serving as an orientation at the process of montage and mixing. There exists also some schematic figures of the connecting of instruments for the producing of some of the microstructural material. The expanding and compressing of the time process in microstructures is incorporated in the whole. At some places it was produced by the effect tape recorder. By this device the musical form received dynamic pulsation and inner evolution.

While working on Orthogenesis I tried mainly to form a musically continuous process, whereby the means of new sound elements results in a counterpoint of various microstructures as well as various kinds of space. The stereophonic mixing gives the definitive form of the composition in the space of the audition.

By Jozef Malovec


EUGENIUSZ RUDNIK (b. 1933) DIXI (1967) *3rd Finalist*

(Realized in the Experimental Studio of the Polish Radio, Warsaw)

The material used for this etude consists of electronic sounds of the type of "sonorous mixtures" varying in density and intensiveness. They appear in blocks of different pitches which either diffuse into each other, or are used to create sharp collisions of complex sonority. The latter technique dominates the middle part of the composition. In principle, the entire sound material is of continuous quality. The sequences and pitch relations inside the diffusing blocks depend on the aleatoric events resulting from the accepted technology. I did not intend to compose melodic structures. My idea was to create the impression of the continuity of events of different tone color and intensiveness, as well as to show the refereces of these "qualities" to each other.

These are the assumptions on which the composition's form is based. The entire work is constructed by the sonorous material itself, depending on its movement and development in time. The intended simplicity and ostensible meagerness of sound material, as well as the alleged scarcity of musical events are to attract the listener's attention to the development of form, rather than to relations between particular events. This also enables the listener to predict forthcoming events, if only to reveal that no such events follow.

The composition has the form of a continuum of the structural type a-b-a, its three parts differing from each other in their emotional impact. It is a kind of triptych in which the third part is a variation of part one. The variation was achieved through a combination of microstructures from which the first part is constructed. This was done by means of known technical operations, such as: musical "crabs", transposition in reverse, transmutation, etc.

The work's dynamics are subservient to its formal structure and therefore it is symmetric in relation to the body of the composition. The body is, at the same time, a dynamic, emotional and sonorous apogee of the whole work. It is also the middle part of the composition as far as performance time is concerned.

By Eugeniusz Rudnik


From Deutsche Grammophon 2543 006:

Roland Kayn (born 1933 in Reutlingen, Germany) studied from 1952 to 1955 in Stuttgart at the "Hochschule fur Musik", and at the "Technische Hochschule" with Max Bense. He was a pupil of Boris Blacher at the "Hochschule fur Musik" in Berlin from 1956 to 1958. He later worked in various electronic music studios-In Cologne, Munich, Warsaw and Utrecht.

"In my work the compositorial redactional methods are determined by acoustic-physical considerations. Important stimulation resulted from experience and knowledge of information theory and cybernetics. His development took a path outside the serial-aleatoric tendencies of the fifties, a path which can be described by the term 'cybernetic music'.

Since 1962, working on my scores of 'Galaxis' and 'Allotropie', I have been increasingly interested in the problem of the extent to which processes of automatically cybernetic origins can be reduced to the organic-sensory realm. In 'Cybernetics III' (1969) the main object was to control several independent sound sources in such a way that density of information corresponds to certain entropy values.

In the version produced in the Studio di Fonologia in Milan, ten sound sources are placed in relation to one another according to a particular selection principle. The entire basic material consists of sound spectra of vocal origin.

In contrast to purely electronic sound production, in which various oscillators provide the basic material, vocal spectra seemed to be more flexible in their inner structure for purposes of further transformation. Six basic categories of sound material are used, including animal noises too.

The material is modulated by means of electro-acoustic equipment and transformed by stages into new sound qualities."

Roland Kayn