Jean Dubuffet, "Prospère, prolifère"

-- Liner Notes Continued --

I am, however well aware of the gap between my intentions and the actual results. The experiments which are available in the small collection of records should be considered as outlines for a programme which, if it were to be finalized, would require a lot of improvements such as enhanced recording techniques and better use of each of the instruments. It might also be necessary to modify the instruments or make better adapted ones.

In the meantime, there is still a lot of room for experiment with what is already available. With any instrument one comes across one can get such a great variety of sound effects that it may not be worth looking for others. Instrumental technique and a thorough knowledge of how to get the most from the instruments are clearly sorely lacking; I am very aware that they would be of great use to me.

It might be, however that this would lead to the loss of the benefit of certain unexpected windfalls which can come of improvising on an instrument one doesn't really know how to use. Having said this, the tracks included on this record were not intended as finished works but as the initial experiments of someone venturing into what is for him, largely unfamiliar territory. I would very much hope that musicians accept to treat them as such.

Jean DUBUFFET, April 1961
Translation by Matthew Daillie

Jean Dubuffet, "Terre foisonnante"

-- Liner Notes Continued --

The first tape produced in these circumstances is rather unusual as it is a poem, La fleur de barbe, which is declaimed, chanted and vaguely sung by several voices mixed together (which are all in fact mine) with occasional instrumental accompaniment. The subsequent recordings are the result of two diverging approaches which I hesitated between and which are probably both apparent in at least some pieces. The first was an attempt to produce music with, a very human touch, in other words, which expressed people's moods and their drives as well as the sounds, the general hubbub and the sonorous backdrop of our everyday lives, the noises to which we are so closely connected and, although we don't realize it, have probably endeared themselves to us and which we would be hard put to do without. There is an osmosis between this permanent music which carries us along and the music we ourselves express; they go together to form the specific music which can be considered as a human beings. Deep down I like to think of this music as music we make, in contrast to another very different music, which greatly stimulates my thoughts and which I call music we listen to. The latter is completely foreign to us and our natural tendencies; it is not human at all and could lead us to hear (or imagine) sounds which would be produced by the elements themselves, independent of human intervention. They would be as strange as what we might hear if we were to put our ear to some opening leading to a world other than our own or if we were to suddenly develop a new form of hearing with which we would become aware of a strange tumult that our senses had been unable to pick up and which might come from elements which were supposedly involved in silent action, such as humus decomposing, grass growing or minerals undergoing transformation. I should point out that in both these categories of music and even when I blend them into one and the same (never mind if this seems illogical), there is a clear preference for very composite sounds which appear to be formed by a great number of voices calling to mind distant murmurs, communities, hustle and bustle and hives of activity. I also have a preference for music without variations, not structured according to a particular system but unchanging, almost formless, as though the pieces had no beginning and no end but were simply extracts taken haphazardly from a ceaseless and ever-flowing score. I must admit that I find this idea very pleasing.

Jean Dubuffet, "Longue peine"

-- Liner Notes Continued --

As for the tape recorder, I was a complete novice. It was only later on that I was to realise that my recordings, done on amateur equipment, left a lot to be desired compared to those carried out by professionals. Strangely enough, however I am not convinced that the latter are really superior. Similarly, I often prefer photographs taken by poorly equipped amateurs than those of specialists. In my subsequent dealings with technicians, I felt that the downside to certain benefits of the care they took in setting-up their equipment, was an inhibiting effect; even if the resulting recordings were very clear and free of flaws and hiccups, they weren't necessarily any more evocative. I believe that all spheres of the arts could benefit from using simpler techniques. I also believe in getting down to basics, I am all for rugged and unaffected charms rather than frills and furbelows. There is another more important reason for my attitude. We consider that a good recording provides precise and distinct sound which seems to be coming from a close source; in our daily lives, however our hearing is submitted to all sorts of other sounds which, more often than not, are unclear muddled, far from pure, distant and only partially audible. To ignore them is to give birth to a specious artform, exclusively concerned with a single category of sounds which, when it comes down to it, are pretty uncommon in everyday life. I was aiming to produce music based not on a selection of sounds but on sounds that can be heard anywhere on any day and especially those that one hears without really being aware of them. My rudimentary equipment was better suited to this than the most sophisticated machines. Having decided to collect and use whatever kinds of sounds I came across, the sometimes unexpected sounds which in I, tape recorder played back to me were at least as interesting (and sometimes more so) than those I had actually intended to record. When the surprises were in my opinion uninteresting, I rubbed them off, but sometimes they were incredibly good. I transformed a room in my house into a music workshop and in the periods between our get-togethers with Asger Jorn I became a one-man band, playing each of my fifty-odd instruments in turn. Thanks to my tape recorder I was able to play each part successively on the same tape and have the machine play everything back simultaneously. I went about it step by step, recording over the bad sections and using scissors and sticky tape to cut, join and put everything together Such a method entails a lot of trial and error: as it was impossible to hear what I had already recorded when playing a new part, it was very tricky to synchronize them and, struggling to get exactly what I wanted, I had to start over and over again. Nevertheless, the fact that it was so difficult to keep things under control and that I had to trust to luck meant that the risks of failure were offset by the possibility of unexpected surprises. I later added a second tape recorder which enabled me to transfer material from one machine to the other, to play whilst listening to what had already been recorded and to make as many changes as I liked without spoiling the initial recording when the new elements proved disappointing.

Jean Dubuffet, "Coq a l'oeil"

-- Liner Notes Continued --

At the time, neither Asger Jorn nor myself were au fait with the output of contemporary composers and weren't even familiar with the instigators of serialism, dodecaphony, electronic music and musique concrète. Indeed I only learned these terms recently. My own musical experience was limited to fairly cursory study of classical music on the piano, which I played a lot as a child and teenager and gave up when about 20. Later when I was 35, I took up the accordion and its traditional music (with only moderate success) and went back to the piano for a year when I was about 40 to play music by Duke Ellington, interspersed with improvisations on the harmonium. There followed a period when I took a violent dislike to European music and only enjoyed listening to Eastern and Oriental music (I had become fond of the former during my trips to the Sahara).

Jean Dubuffet, "Temps radieux"

MUSICAL EXPERIMENTS -- by Jean Dubuffet

Towards the end of 1960, around Christmas time, my friend Asger Jorn, the Danish painter, invited me round to improvise music with him. I bought a Grundig TK35 tape recorder to capture the spirit of our get-togethers and the first recording of our recreations, done on 27th December was entitled Nez cassé (Broken nose). Many more were soon to follow as we were both so enthralled by these musical experiments that our improvisation sessions were very frequent over the succeeding months. Asger Jorn had a fair bit of experience with the violin and the trumpet; I had a singular experience of the piano which I had made much use of in former times. However the sort of music we had in mind hardly required virtuoso technique as we intended to use our instruments to obtain unconventional effects. In addition to a pretty bad piano, we started off with a violin, a cello, a trumpet, a recorder a Saharan flute, a guitar and a tambourine. We gradually added all sorts of other instruments, some of them out-dated (old-fashioned flutes, a hurdy gurdy), some exotic (of Asian, African or Tzigane origin), some more common -such as the oboe, saxophone, bassoon, xylophone, zither - and some of folk origin, such as the cabrette and the bombarde - basically, whatever we discovered as we went along. The musician Alain Vian, who has a shop rue Grégoire-de-Tours in Paris selling strange and rare collector's instruments, was of great assistance; he not only took part once or twice in our little concerts but also managed to find, and sometimes even make, suitable instruments for us.

Jean Dubuffet, "La fleur de barbe"

From the CD Jean DUBUFFET Expériences Musicales / Musical Experiments (via www.ubu.com)

PRODUCER'S NOTE

Jean DUBUFFET'S "musical experiments" form a set of 20 pieces, 9 of which have been chosen for this disc.

This selection was made with regard to the "historical" interest of certain works (La fleur de barbe, 1st publicly performed piece - Gai savoir, 1st work using 2 tape recorders - Terre foisonnante, and Prospère, prolifère, his last musical works which were mixed in the recording studio) and with the aim of providing the listener with the widest possible range of the various "instruments" used.

As the different elements which combined to make up these works were recorded using monophonic techniques, they were all produced in mono during DUBUFFET'S lifetime.

We were lucky enough to be able to use the master tapes for Terre foisonnante and Prospère, prolifere, which were mixed in the recording studio; the elements for the final mix were on two distinct tracks and we have decided to keep them separate so that the listener can better appreciate the procedure employed by the composer.

Similarly, we have not tried to artificially "enhance" the sound quality of these recordings (by adding reverberation, for example) as Jean DUBUFFET who was fully aware of his own (and his equipment's) technical shortcomings, considered the imperfect quality as a random but significant aspect of the end product. Admittedly some of the endings, especially, will appear particularly sudden. To conclude these technical considerations we should point out that one of the tracks in Terre foisonnante fades out before the end; it continues in mono and this is not a sign of a defect in your listening system.

Jean Dubuffet, "Gai Savoir"

-- Liner Notes from Finnadar 9002 --

4. GAI SAVOIR
Joyful Wisdom (3:30)

1) The eight selections on the present release were culled from a total of twenty pieces that were issued on six 10" LPs in a limited edition of fifty copies, each numbered and signed by Dubuffet. A book on the subject has been written by Beniamino dal Fabbro under the title of Esperienze musicali di Jean Dubuffet, published by Edizioni del Cavallino, Venice, 1962. Eleven other pieces, realized by Dubuffet with Asger Jorn, between December 1960 and March 1961, were issued on four 10" LPs in a limited edition of fifty numbered copies.

2) From an interview I conducted with Dubuffet, in Paris, July 1966. Translation mine.

3) Id.

Jean Dubuffet, "Diligences Futiles"

-- Liner Notes from Finnadar 9002 --

3. DILIGENCES FUTILES
Futile Diligences (4:17)

It remains to be indicated, while closing this brief commentary, that Dubuffet eventually abandoned his musical pursuits, not because they contrasted with his work as a painter, but because they claimed the same amount of time, dedication-and passion. -- Ilhan Mimaroglu

Jean Dubuffet, "Bateau Coule"

-- Liner Notes from Finnadar 9002 --

2. BATEAU COULE
Sunken Ship (9:03)

Let us note that his reference to a cutting stylus on the wax as the only possible means of writing music is made partially in a figurative sense. By this he also refers to all the other means of sound recording, including the magnetic imprints of a record head onto a tape a means that he himself used, not only to keep, but above all to construct his music. It is therefore futile to discuss whether this music can be recreated by performance and, if so, aptitudes of a special nature are required in other musicians who would want to play the instruments the way Dubuffet did. Our criteria are not those of the musical performance, but of musical creativity in all its vastness. It should suffice to note that his music is the product of a mature artistic mind which would not allow the hands to perform anything incongruous with it. In an incidental way, it marks historical change, although its importance lies primarily in the domain of intrinsic merit. It is among the purest products of imagination, unadulterated by conceptual thinking. The propulsive succession of its sound images may someday lead others to conceptualize about it, and only then perhaps, in an ironical way, it will begin to acquire universal recognition. Like all good modern music that drives bad listeners out of their minds, it cannot be expected to receive instant acceptance even if it ever gets to be widely distributed.

Jean Dubuffet, "Humeur Incertaine"

-- Liner Notes from Finnadar 9002 --

Side Two (24:33)
I. HUMEUR INCERTAINE
Uncertain Humor (7:43)

Dubuffet is even more radicat, and as logical, when he comments on the question of written music:

I find that true music should not be written, that all written music is a false music, that the musical notation which has been adopted in the west, with its notes on the staves and its twelve notes per octave, is a very poor notation which does not permit to notate the sounds and only allows the making of a totally specious music which has nothing to do with true music. It is impossible to write true music, except with a stylus on the wax, and this is what they do now in recordings. This is a way of writing and the only one that's proper to music.³

Jean Dubuffet, "Pleure et Applaudit"

-- Liner Notes from Finnadar SR 9002 --

4. PLEURE ET APPLAUDIT
Cry and Clap (11 :20)

His views on music ring the bell of a truth that many a wise thinker may have arrived at, but would refrain from voicing too loudly for fear of shaking an established order:

I believe that our western music is an avatar among all the possibilities that were offered to music. Now, by an optical error, one imagines that this is the only music possible, while, in reality, it is only a very specious music among millions of possibilities that were available and, without doubt, will be available tomorrow. . . In my music I wanted to place myself in the position of a man of fifty thousand years ago, a man who ignores everything about western music and invents a music for himself without any reference, without any discipline, without anything that would prevent him to express himself freely and for his own good pleasure. This is what I wanted to do in my painting too, only with this difference that painting, I know it-western painting of the last few centuries, I know it perfectly well-and I wanted to deliberately forget all about it . . . But I do not know music, and this gave me a certain advantage in my musical experiences. I did not have to make an effort to forget whatever I had to forget. . .

Jean Dubuffet, "Deliberants"

-- Liner Notes from Finnadar SR 9002 ---

3. DELIBERANTS
Deliberators (5:30)

I happened to first hear them in a blindfold-test situation. I was expecting in those days a recording of something new by a renowned composer. I mistook what I heard, which was totally unanticipated, as the work of that particular composer and thought that he had finally broken new ground and created music of surpassing significance. A fascinating surprise ensued. The composer turned out to be Jean Dubuffet.

It was music that, by its unequivocal quality, had urged me to accept it as the most original and revolutionary since Varese. And, if classifications are unavoidable, it readily gained access to the category of electronic music. His process consisted of improvising on various musical instruments, occidental as well as belonging to other cultures, and on other sound sources (i.e. piano alone on Diligences futiles; piano, chinese mouth organ, various flutes and bowed string instruments on Humeur incertaine; piano, trumpets, violoncello, tambur on Cai savoir; cimbalom, balafon, Geisha tambur in L'Eau; crumpled paper, voice and two bassoons on Deliberants . . . ) and, using a number of tape recorders and a mixing box, he would record the performances, superimpose them, edit out on tape unwanted sequences, hence finalize the musical creation on tape. These are all, of course, basic processes of electronic music. The fact that he used non-professional equipment and that his sound-engineering skills were empirical proved to be advantageous to the musical objectives at hand. Indeed, he believed that professional techniques, despite their obvious advantages, often prove to be inhibiting. After all, what is expected from an electronic music composer is not the exclusive application of known and properly instructed procedures, but the discovery of a music that belongs to himself. As to Dubuffet's use of the musical instruments, almost all of them he did not know how to play "correctly"-which offered the benefit of unforeseeable results.

Jean Dubuffet, "L'Eau"

-- Liner Notes from Finnadar SR 9002 --

2. L'EAU
Water (4:15)

Yet, like anyone familiar with his biography, I was aware that he was not a total stranger to music. Decades ago, in the days of my early interest in jazz, my first acquaintance with Dubuffet's art was through a reproduction of his Grand Jazz Band, which had urged me to know more about his musical side. He had studied the piano, played the classics, enjoyed Duke Ellington, but eventually closed the book on all "culture music". Later, I also came across a passing remark on Dubuffet in Pierre Schaeffer's book, A la recherche d'une musique concrete. I could have used all this as a starting point to further explore the matter, but having not done so, what's in the grooves of this record strikingly came my way.

Among my earlier efforts in electronic music was a set of Visual Studies, one of which, the third, was based on a Dubuffet drawing, a Bowery Bum. I sent him a recording of the piece, and he replied using kind words to the effect that my music reflected the spirit of his drawing. He also noted that he too, a few years before, had done certain musical experiments and that he was forwarding them to me.

Jean Dubuffet, "Aguichements"

-- Liner Notes from Finnadar SR 9002 --



JEAN DUBUFFET
MUSICAL EXPERIENCES

Side One (28:15)
1. AGUICHEMENTS
Enticements (7:lO)

All the music on this album was composed, performed, recorded and realized by Jean Dubuffet. Collation, editing, sequencing and processing supervision by Ilhan Mimaroglu. The lacquers for the present release were cut directly from the original single-track tapes without the intervening tape duplication for mastering purposes. Processing for stereophonic reproduction was done at the mastering stage and the amount of equalization for each channel was determined in a way not to "improve upon" or alter the original sound.

Mastering: George Piros.
Cover art & design: JEAN DUBUFFET
(Used by permission of the artist)
FINNADAR RECORDS
Distributed by
ATLANTIC RECORDING CORPORATION
1841 Broadway
New York, N.Y. 10023
(1973) Finnadar Records
Made & Printed in U.S.A.

"In my music I wanted to place myself in the position of a man of fifty thousand years ago, a man who ignores everything about western music and invents a music for himself without any reference, without any discipline, without anything that would prevent him to express himself freely and for his own good pleasure." -Jean Dubuffet

A few years ago when, quite possibly for the first time in the United States, I presented the music of Jean Dubuffet over radio station WBAI in New York City, the program folio stated: "The Music of Jean Dubuffet. Note: this is not a typographical error." This caption, in its own joyful way, had perfectly summed up the magnitude of the discovery.

After making my own acquaintance with Dubuffet's music under some unusual circumstances (never before had the existence of a highly significant bulk of music been brought to my attention by its composer himself, and I very much doubt that the future reserves for me a similar occasion) I set forth to share my enthusiasm with others, only to find that, even in the most erudite musical circles of the United States, there was no one who had heard about Dubuffet as a composer; and in Europe only a handful of persons knew.

Ilhan Mimaroglu, "Bal des Leurres"

Dubuffet concludes:

... The Hourloupe cycle began by drawings and paintings. After that I felt a need to associate reliefs with these paintings to give them more life and the result of it is painted and sculpted panels of which the Cabinet logologique is an example. Then I began to want, still in my thoughts, to augment the presence and action of these paintings, to abandon the plane of the panel and to run back to supports freely opened into space, sculpted on all faces, which is different. I was then taken by the desire to not only face these paintings while maintaining my feet on the shore of everyday life, but to abandon this shore, to enter into the images, to inhabit them. The result of it is a kind of allusive and figurative architecture, imaginary architecture is everything which is not real architecture, but rather images formed in a habitat. One sees oneself inside them, totally surrounded by one's mental productions, and one can make it one's only nourishment.

Ilhan Mimaroglu, "Double Mask & Deployment"

Dubuffet continues:

"...My work preceding this cycle creates sinuous graphics responding with immediacy to spontaneous and, so to speak, uncontrolled impulses of my hand which traces them. These graphics start uncertain, fleeting, ambiguous figures. Their movement unclenches in the spirit that finds itself in their presence a " suractivation " of the faculty of seeing in their tangles all sorts of objects which make and unmake themselves as the eye moves, thus aligning intimately the transitory and the permanent, the real and the deceptive. It results in (...) a grasp of conscience of the illusionary character of the world we believe to be real, to which we call the real world. These graphics with constantly ambiguous references have the virtue (...) to put into question the foundation of that which we have traditionally looked at as reality and that is only in truth an option collectively adopted to interprate the world which surrounds us amongst an infinate number of other options, others that would be neither more or less legitimate..."

Ilhan Mimaroglu, "The Window"

Dubuffet continues:

" One expects a painting to open new pathways to how we look at our everyday life (...) Now it is necessary to become conscious of what we take as real and that what strongly appears to us as such (as such alone) is nothing more than an arbritary interpretation of things to which can be as well substituted by another. The distinction that we make between real and imaginary is badly founded. The interpretation of real, which seems to us vercious, irrefutable, is only an invention of our spirit, or say rather, an antique invention collectively adopted and of which our spirit is persuaded of. Nothing other than convention. It is not forbidden to imagine the interpretation of a world deciphered differently, regulated differently, than those which we have held until now in full confidence. The cycle of works which has been given the name L'Hourloupe answers an undertaking of that sort... "

L'Hourloupe was the title of an art book that featured line drawings with red and blue ball point pens. To Dubuffet, the title conjured up associations with "'hurler' (to roar), to 'hululer' (to hoot), to 'loup' (wolf), to 'Riquet à la Houppe' and the title of Maupassant's book 'Le Horla' inspired by mental instability."



Allées et venues, 1965

Ilhan Mimaroglu, "Traffic"

Dubuffet began l'Hourloupe in 1962, just before MoMA was to do a retrospective (back when MoMa actually meant something). He was already 61 years old, and the process of self-evaluation had begun:

" In all my work there are two different winds that blow, one carrying me to exaggerate the marks of intervention, and the other, the opposite, which leads me to eliminate all human presence... and to drink from the source of this absence. "

Ilhan Mimaroglu, "Canine"

A press guide to a 2003 exhibition of Dubuffet cites Coucou Bazar as the culmination of the artist's evolution during the writing of his massive Hourloupe cycle:

Hourloupe represents the transfer of the world experienced by Dubuffet into ciphers that he created. The basic module is a linear pattern of a cellular structure. Content is translated into this module and allows a homogenous parcelling adapted by the content.

The structure is varied through hatching of differing intensity and offers the observers optical clues within the principle of the infinite. The colouring is limited to red, blue and black. With the transposition of the Dubuffet perception in the system of Hourloupe, the artist yet again raises a claims on the universal and applies the system not only two-dimensionally, but also three--dimensionally.

Sculpture, architecture, décor and costume allow for the expansion of painting into a new dimension. Complicated, theoretical approaches give way to a “concept of clarity”, which is a logical result from the permanent change leading to the further development of his works and depicts the Trace of an Adventure– the adventure of painting, the adventure of the life of Jean Dubuffet.

Autoportrait II, 1966

Ilhan Mimaroglu, "Reflections"

The joint was so big that Dubuffet needed to drive himself around in this.

Ilhan Mimaroglu, "Hide & Seek"

Practicables (pictured above) were mainly mounted on wheels or operated by light machines, though some were small enough to be moved by animators. The materials are klégécell covered in resin and vinyl acrylic paint. Dubuffet intended somewhere on the order of 175 practicables to be involved in Coucou Bazar.

Ilhan Mimaroglu, "Motors"

Coucou Bazar lasts an hour, with various actors and dancers animating each painting, which Dubuffet designated as either a "practicable" or a "costume".

Ilhan Mimaroglu, "Fragmentation"

Coucou Bazar is an animated painting by Jacques Dubuffet that first appeared at his Guggenheim retrospective in 1973. The next 10 installments from Avant Garde Project contain the music that Mimaroglu wrote to score the painting. The original score was reprised in the Paris installation of Coucou Bazar , but the final showing of the painting in Turin used music by Dubuffet himself (some of which is available on Ubu).

Ilhan Mimaroglu, "Bowery Bum" (1964)

Bowery Bum (May 1964) is the piece that occasioned my association with Dubuffet and opened the way to my discovery of his own extraordinary music (of which I eventually made a first commercial edition on Finnadar SR 9002). The visual impetus of the Dubuffet drawing, one of his Bowery Bums, suggested the form, the content, and even the sound source--the sound of a sole rubber band used as a counterpart to the India ink of the drawing. The outer formal character of the piece corresponds to that of the drawing--a seemingly random maze of lines through which appears a human figure, pathetic and droll.



Jean Dubuffet, Bum (1952)