Francois Bayle, "Vibrations Composees"

Vibrations Composees
35'58 -- 1973

First series rosace 1 -- respiration -- rosace 2 -- texture -- rosace 3
Second series rosace 4 -- polyrythmy -- small polyphony -- rosace 5



Some motions of vibrations can be organically linked to produce compositions of forces, morphodynamic singularities beneath the threshold of the audible. There results from this a special, intense type of audition which attends carefully to the palpitations of the material, its emotivity, its "respiration", its "texture", the movement of its patterns. This is the basis of the progression, an increasing step by step richness, of the short compositions called "rosaces". In effect it is a matter of attaining, through successive stages of auditive adaptation, the central experience of the last "rosace" -- the fifth -- which presents itself as the core of the composition, the heart of the organism. Meanwhile various interjected digressions and departures offer us imaginary breathings, textures, polyrhythms, small polyphonies.
One gets a sense of perspective: the trajectory is temporarily suspended at the center of its spiral (rosace 5).
Beyond, for a later time, a larger polyphony...
(There is now a distance between the two separate pieces, which were formerly joined: they must be visited separately).
The listener is urged to pick out the vocabulary of "dynams".
* The two pieces share a repertory consisting of:
isolated instrumental notes or sound objects linear extensions of thin sounds -- lines deployed in fanlike or whiplike formations
* as opposed to more elaborate formations:
colored masses of rustlings -- muted or scanning rhythms -- veiled songs - chaotic fragments that gradually become organized or, on the contrary, stuck regularities that dissolve into drifting smoke - streams of points that wrap themselves around motifs.

First series premiered on February 12, 1974 at the Espace Cardin in Paris. The full composition
premiered on october 15, 1974 in the main amphitheatre of the Sorbonne in Paris.

Francois Bayle, "Grande Polyphonie"

Grande Polyphonie
36'22 -- 1974

appel 0'46

polyphonies:

1...aux lignes actives 4'20

2...aux notes repetees 2'51

3...au jardin 5'13

4...figures doubles 5'14

5 ou grande polyphonie: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 16'20

rappel 1'42

Call...
Polyphony: 1...with active lines
The simplest concrete element, the line, thin and melodic arrives fastest at an abstraction of qualities. Active, passive, or intermediate, the true line is, according to Klee, the line subjected to a strong tension.
2...with repeated notes
Brief, equal, clear values scrabled by the patter of bells emitting call signals. Rigid, transposed, very tense repetition. Followed by a third, deep, abbreviated repetition. Transition, interrupted rubato.
3...with garden
A polyphony of space and colors. Contrast between very brief, delicate fragments--dry versus fluid - and ample quivering sheets having harmonic colors - static versus moving.
4...double figures
Combination of symmetries. Two contrasting parts - like male and female - organized in series of paired cells. These are varied up to the eighth repetition, where the first element is then brought to a completion. The mirror-repeats are enriched with successive transformations through added harmonics.
Then a new, very dynamic element appears - a man's mask bringing tidings...
5...large polyphony
A brief moment in the guise of a preface prepares the final "recall". Seven interconnected sections - though it is not immediately clear how they are related. Various sound signals are heard at frequent intervals, making it manifest that the role of the previous polyphonies was to lead up to the final combination. This makes it possible to listen in a musical way with a great deal of freedom, independence, superposing different voices. All the sound spaces used here resemble each other, from the more artificial and abstract ones to the totally concrete ones, which range from bird calls and songs to human calls and songs.
And finally, the initial call signal dissolves in a long breath,
recall...

Premiered on Radio France in Paris on April 7, 1975
Concert for the 18 Nations of the European Broadcasting Union

The Medium Is The Form

The Francois Bayle installment of the Avant Garde Project called to mind Heather Frasch's installation from ARTSaha! 2007:

Heather Frasch's Speaker Objects are a way of bringing one of her favorite mediums for sound generation into plain sight. As an electronic music composer, she spends a great deal of time in the studio generating sounds with found objects like metal and glass, then sculpting those recorded sounds into finished pieces.

By recasting them as Speaker Objects, Heather is sharing the musical potential of these objects with the public for the first time in a way that they are invited to see and touch. The objects replace the vibrating component of a speaker. Sounds are projected through them and transmuted by their physical properties.

Francois Bayle, "Tremblement de Terre Tres Doux"

-- Liner Notes from INA-GRM 9108ba --

Acousmatic projection or Performance, Interactions
1 Using the work-model (prepared on one or more magnetic supports) as a basis, a reinforced image is projected, blown-up to the dimensions of a collective listening space. This public act requires:
.someone to be in charge
.someone to objectify a work that up until now has been developed to the limits of .subjectivity. someone to distribute an activity among a professional team in charge
of the equipment
.someone to satisfy the acoustic requirements
.someone to enable a musical concept to emerge from these criteria.

2 In the final stages of composing in the studio, a mixing/dosing of the elements was obtained on a limited number of channels. With the installation of the equipment and the actual rehearsals the elements are distributed over two, four or eight modulation channels which are in turn distributed over eight, sixteen, twenty, thirty or more projection tracks.

3 The sound-projectors (more or less specialized loudspeakers) are placed according to their character - bass, large, medium, clear, sharp, oversharp - their output, their caliber and their direction - converging, diverging, direct, reflected, indirect...

4 Break-down of the projection space (stage, periphery, ceiling, audience areas):
.a couple of speakers are placed in each "screen" area to provide a phase center. Care should be taken to balance the centers in relation to the different listening areas.
.the phase screens are distributed over at least three levels of depth: close, middle and distant.
.the sound-projectors are arranged by size: very large , medium and very small.
.the stereophonic couples are paired on the control panel in a convenient right-left arrangement, keeping in mind that this will control the acoustic mixing of the phase screens and the projector levels.

5 Break-down of the work:
During the preparation of the sequences for the acoustic and musical performance (identifying and numbering them), establish the duration of the passages that are to be executed freely and locate the fixed positions determined by the overall structure of the work. Using your memory, a timer and the score, work out the exact sequence of the gestures. . .
Once the installation has been checked, an acousmatic composition obviously requires as many partial and general rehearsals as an orchestral work.

-- Liner Notes from INA-GRM G101ba --

Francois Bayle, "Eros Noir"

-- Liner Notes from INA-GRM 9108ba --

Eros noir
BLACK EROS
(1980)
2'45

I associate the notion of temperature with the harmonic climate produced by a cloud. Temperature, in this sense, is the general case announced by the terms tempered and temperament in traditional music.

I stumble across this idea in Claude Levi-Strauss: "...fish, like so in any aesthetes, distinguish between light and dark perfumes, and bees classify intensities of light in terms of weight - perceiving darkness as heavy and brightness as bouyant - ..." etc.

Strange as they sound, these speculations suit my purpose. They generalize familiar experiences of quality and situate them along a continuum.

Distance. Speed. Pressure. Density. Temperature. Color. Intensity. I attach more importance to these qualitative categories than to the quantifiable categories of frequency and duration.

The title "Toy top (toupie) in the sky" is a reminiscence of . . . the Beatles' "Lucy in the Sky".

FRANCOIS BAYLE
Born in Madagascar, 1932. "Non-occidental" childhood and education
First compositions in the sixties.
Participates from the very beginning in the experiment of GRM 1958 in the Service de la Recherche, and now in the INA (Institut National de la Communication Audio-visuelle) where he is the director of INA.GRM department since 1975.

Acousmatic production or Composition, Procedure and creation
1 The ear is one's guide. One selects the outline of a contour, the imprint of an energy, from the material -sound- the essentially ephemeral story of the irregular oscillations of matter caught more or less by surprise, disturbed, caressed or agressed.

2 Thus the instrument is no longer a sound object or scene, but a faithful or deformable electroacoustic mold of their form or image.

3 The sensitive terminal points of the body (the ear, the fingers) come in contact -they enter into conversation- with various sensitive points along the energy circuit: keys, cursors, buttons, tuning and/or untuning devices on the electric acoustic converter.

The human hand on the dials, etc, is part of the machine. The system is open.

It is the hand-machine hybrid that acts (becomes active, articulates).

4 The physio-psychological levels of awareness participate in making the decisions, the skillful or feverish choices of the hand-machine: pleasure, nervousness, emotion, capriciousness, controlled or uncontrolled madness (action - audition).
But also: reasoning, organizing, efficiency, the elegant and fruitful solution (operation-audition).

5 Gestures can be directed, or even replaced, by their outline or by an equivalent number-suite (a line consists of points which are close together. Each point represents a value that can be translated into, a number. The series of values represents the analogy of the gesture's trajectory). The computer calculates them and assists in forming sounds.
Or, if one wishes, in creating sounds from particular models.

6 Owing to the high degree of precision attained by these operations, an extremely large number of which can be stored (and made ultrarapid by the processers), new evolutionary properties of the materials can be made to emerge.

Metamorphoses. We are moving towards a music that is increasingly virtual with respect to physical causes and increasingly close to imaginary models.

7 But at the same time we are able to approach closer to the secret properties of the car. Even in infancy our listening apparatus reveals as yet unknown aptitudes, and these can be developed considerably. Dormant faculties of feecing, apprehending, divining and dreaming are waiting to be released. The deep laws of the world from which we came forth have to be fathomed!

We learn to read, write and count. We must learn to hear and see as well, to listen and understand. In order to realize our "second nature", the faculty to grasp signs instead of things.
----------------------------------------------------
Acousmatic: from the Greek akousma: auditory perception

Four definitions by Francois Bayle:
1) PYTHAGORAS, 6th century BC, created an ingenious listening situation by placing himself behind a curtain; there, in the dark and in total silence, he would speak to his disciples, thus ennabling them to develop their faculties of concentration. Acousmatic 1s the word he uses to designate both the situation and the disciples themselves.

A philosopher, mathematician and musician, Pythagoras left no writings.

2) In our times, with the development of radio broadcasting in the 50's and the birth of "noise music" (with its main methodological Vestures first outlined by P-Schaeffer), the poet and writer Jerome Peignot once stated on a radio program: "What words do we have to designate the distance separating sounds from their source? ... Acousmatic noise is used in the dictionary to designate the sound one hears without being able to determine what has produced it. Well, there you have the definition of the sound object, that building block of Concrete music, the most general music there is, the music

" ... whose head is heaven's neighbor
and whose feet rest in the kingdom of the dead ... ".
("Musique animee". a Groupe de musique concrete program, 1955).

3) In his Traite des Objets Musicaux (1966), Pierre Shaeffer associates the term acousmatic with "reduced audition": " . . .the tape-recorder has the same function as Pythagoras' curtain: it creates new phenomena to observe, but mainly it creates new conditions of observation...".

4) More recently-in 1974-Francols Bayle emlpoyed the term to designate a type of music "that is 'filmed', developed in the studio and projected in a theatre like a movie". He proposed using it instead of the cumbersome and ungainly word "electroacoustic", rendered obsolete by the appearance of electroacoustic stage instruments (onde Martenot, electric guitar, synthesizers, microprocessors...).

"For him (ie. F-Bayle), the terms acousmatic music and electroacoustic Concert are more suited to the aesthetics and the listening and production conditions of this invisible music...". -- Michel Chion, Larousse de la Musique - 1982 edition

Francois Bayle, "Toupie dans le ciel" (Excerpt)

-- Liner Notes from INA-GRM 9108ba --

Toupie dans le ciel
TOY TOP IN THE SKY 1979 22'30

A bundle of lines bent by the force of the very rapid rotations are derived from the sounds made by an antique toy top-its breezy siren's whisper. Various figures of this type emerge during this piece.

A wave oscillates over two descending minor thirds. This low-pitched oscillation, always unchanging but at the same time always varying, revolves amid a multitude of high-pitched designs in sheets of increasing density and mobility.

The monotonous unity of this movement is organized into a suite whose 27 parts connect imperceptibly in variations of speed, depth, acceleration and orchestration. Skies dotted with little comets punctuate the sound texture at intervals.

In the middle, a slow sliding motion picks up distant harmonics from the basic chord. Towards the end this sliding dissolves in flames.

Return to Black Eros. Chromatic scrolls.... noise...Sheaves, Silver ashes...

break-down of the 27 variations:

    0'00 top siren, theme a, theme b
    1'56 large top
1.  2'13 1st fairly rapid exposition
2.  3'19 sweeping, crescendo
3.  4'01 transposition and
    4'16 inversion
4.  4'45 sweeping, decrescendo
5.  5'34 agitated repetition against a
         sweeping, crescendo
6.  6'02 decrescendo in space
7.  6'55 counter-melody
8.  7'44 (top theme) insert 1
9.  7'50 crescendo repetition
    8'45 space
10. 9'09 ratata 10.01
11. 10'47 counter-melody
12. 11'22 rapid high, slow low
13. 12'16 (large nonharmonic top) 2
14. 13'15 very melodic and nimble
15. 13'45 released
16. 14'30 slow, two voices
17. 15'22 (top theme) 3
18. 15'40 slow repetition, for three voice:
19. 16'27 (top theme) 4
20. 16'38 repetition and anticipation
21. 17'50 transposition, see n03 -a
22. 18'09 very melodic and vibrational 3
23. 18'48 higher, sweeping base 
24. 19'37 transposition to the 3rd
25. 19'48 (large top) 5
26. 20'20 eros
27. 20'32 release 
          and octave ending c
    21'07 theme a, theme b see beginning

F.B.

Francois Bayle, "L'Oiseau-Chanteur" (2nd Version)

Continued Notes From Candide CE 31025:

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.