Creation : 02 October 2004, Abbaye de Royaumont, France
Commissioner : Les Percussions de Strasbourg
Percussions de Strasbourg, Jacques Dudon : disque photosonique, Michel Moglia : orgue à feu
Musicians: 6 percussionists, orgue à feu
Duration: 50′
Since 1993, I have composed a series of pieces especially for large-scale stage spaces across Europe and America, Music for Concert Halls, which explores the relationship between sound and architectural space, where music becomes a function of the building and the building is incorporated into the compositional modus operandi. The musical activity is perceived in three dimensions, interacting with the acoustic phenomenon of the concert hall, and extending beyond the stage, beyond the auditorium, and into the sound space. The works are conceived as concert installations, except that the audience takes its usual place and the art “object” is live and acoustic. There is really no specific site (in the sense of the 1960s artistic term), the pieces can be performed in any concert hall. But these pieces are special for each venue in each concert, in the sense that each chosen venue deserves to be used and celebrated for its own idiosyncrasy and specificity. The hall is as important as the performers and the composition. Here, in the magnificent surroundings of Royaumont and in the extraordinary Refectory, this is one of the rare and exciting occasions when I can write for a space that was not originally intended to be a concert hall. Presence and Penumbrae is at once an installation, an exhibition, an artistic performance, a play and a concert. I am grateful to Les Percussions de Strasbourg for their collaboration and enthusiasm in exploring this idiosyncratic instrumentarium of instruments outside “my own culture”, unusual instruments and experimental instruments newly invented and designed or proposed by me to other instrument makers and inventors. However, there is nothing new under the sun. Every instrumentarium is always dependent on the laws of acoustics … and economics. However, economy has forced me to reduce sound materials to the simplest and most effective sound objects in order to explore the purest and most basic acoustic phenomenon. For example, vibrational longitude, Helmholtz resonators (or instruments built to be resonators), long vibrating strings, all kinds of harmonics, vibrating tubes, beats, doppler, first reflection of ancient sounds, reverberation time, speed of sound and many other things. There is also a lot of subjectivity, but for me, the most poetic phenomena come from these instruments, such as presence and silence. A sound that is born beyond silence can exist in the imagination, or in reality in a hesitant border between the inside and outside of the imagined silence, and the real or imagined sound. The moment it ceases to be imagined and begins to be identified as sound is crucial – opening up a concentration of perpetual space by giving the listener more freedom to imagine – to penetrate the poetry of sound. That said, the composition must always be the initial inspiration rather than the instruments themselves: I have always approached composition and the search for meaning in order to achieve the perceptible acoustic musical result. There is of course a duty as a composer (a duty since time immemorial) to write practically for instruments that work well, older instruments dictating too many constraints or inspiring other musical considerations by the virtues of their charm or whims. I always find that the simplest things are the most difficult. Beautiful things are not fully accomplished without effort. Things have to be prepared carefully and patiently, in pre-rehearsal, rehearsal and performance.
Then shadow and light, lines and angles start to speak and the music, too, starts to be heard, that hidden music that cannot be heard. In terms of the instruments of the world, my interest is that of a composer, but with no desire to borrow and intertwine cultural crossings. I am interested in timbre and pure acoustics – the emotionless material quality of a tube, a string, a resonator and many others. Wherever it comes from, the purest effect will be unique. I also think my approach differs somewhat from Kagel’s in Acustica. Another reason for exploring unusual traditional instruments is that today we have the whole world at our fingertips, which is ironic since at the same time so much seems to be carelessly lost or forgotten. Musical cultures and their extraordinary instruments vary in unimaginable ways. Their survival is uncertain and random – everything seems doomed to a chaos of conflicting variables, sometimes at the whim of global inattention. An instrument may go extinct, its practitioners die and it is condemned to decay in a glass box, and the more it decays, the more it becomes “untouchable”, condemned by curators to become an artifact, rather than a living thing that can be restored and brought back to life. At the other extreme, if this instrument is “lucky”, it can be recovered by Hollywood and become a New Age star. The durability of an instrument can be solved by making copies of it. Although the contemporary methods of manufacturers in the sector are rarely documented conscientiously and with great accuracy by ethnomusicologists, they are surely an essential part of the cultural equation and a necessary part of an ethnological work, if not a duty. Finally, I am particularly happy to welcome Jacques Dudon and Michel Moglia who have become virtuosos of the instruments they invented, thus admirably demonstrating how great is the field of instruments and acoustics that man can explore. I would like to thank Robert Hébrard for his support and investment (many instruments were designed by him), Marie Picard and Danielle Laurent for their clay instruments, Jeff Barbe for the reeds and the whistle flutes, the CRA site (Compagnie Roland Auzet) for the loan of the vibrazwang, Makoto Yabuki (of the Bamboo Orchestra) for the Bowed Boos, Jacques Dudon for the idea of the resonator bottle, Fred Gramman and The American Church in Paris for the loan of the hand bells. Finally, the piece can also be considered a concerto for stage managers, another virtuoso role. Laurent Fournaise and his team also gave an incredible performance!
Benedict Mason