Saturday, December 7, 2019, 21:00

AKUSMONAUTIKUM 4

Annette Vande Gorne: Tao: Métal

with Thomas Gorbach (sound direction)

[Annette Vande Gorne]

[Thomas Gorbach | photo: Markus Gradwohl]

 

Tao (Métal)

11’26”, Premiere: December 18, 1983, Café-théâtre Stalcker (Brussels, Belgium)

Abstraction: Perhaps it is here that we come closest to what is 'musical' in the sense of an abstract writing (fourth step of knowledge), a voluntaristic writing, pre-existing to sound. Also abstract is the écoute réduite [Schaefferian term, in French, for 'sound object perception'] of the allures [Schaefferian term, in French, for 'sound behaviour'] or vibrato, their amplitudes, their speeds.

Energies/vibrations: Percussions/decreasing free resonances (allures). Percussions/resonances kept constant (itérations [Schaefferian term, in French, for 'constant retriggering']). Percussions/penetration of resonance (vibrations). Smooth rubbing. Free bounces. Controlled bounces. Swaying. Rolling.
Form: Starting out in silence, contemplation of a still line on an asserted tonic axis — pipe 3: Chang —, the form moves towards the diversified and the complex. The first part of Métal deals with the sustain of resonances; the second deals with their spectral content, before gradually returning to the original line and ending with the same material already encountered in Eau (but transposed a fifth above the pipe 4: Yu).

Anecdote: As with fire, metal inverts the perceived object depending on whether sight or listening filters the stimuli. A solid matter, it becomes, after impact, pure vibration.

Spatialization: 'Ambiophonic' spatialization: let the public settle in an atmosphere of meditation, of inner contemplation, by an almost still diffusion on a set of 12 or 16 loudspeakers placed in a circle. Tésseral blocks of gold and enamels radiate a light that bathes the darkness of Byzantine domes; similarly, the loudspeakers here are "radiators" — term taken from French composer François Bayle — of vibrations coming from all over and from nowhere.

Métal was produced at the Métamorphoses d'Orphée studio (Ohain, Belgium) and premiered at the Café-théâtre Stalcker in Brussels (Belgium) on December 18, 1983. Under the title Énergie / Matière, Feu and Métal were awarded the 1985 SABAM Special Prize of the Year of Music. Many thanks to Violette Beaujeant, instigator and performer of the zheng version of Métal, and to André Van Belle who so generously allowed me to explore his vast collection of extra-European percussions.

[https://electrotheque.com/oeuvre/14150]


Annette Vande Gorne

Annette Vande Gorne was born in Charleroi, Belgium. She initially studied music at the conservatories of Mons and Brussels, and privately with Jean Absil. After discovering the acousmatic music developed by Pierre Schaeffer, she became interested in the music of Schaeffer as well as François Bayle and Pierre Henry. She moved to Paris in order to study at the conservatoire with Schaeffer and Reibel. On returning to Belgium she founded the Association de Musiques et Recherches and the Métamorphoses d'Orphée studio. She also launched a series of concerts and an acousmatics festival called L’Espace du son in Brussels in 1984. Since 1986 she has taught in Liège, Brussels, Mons.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annette_Vande_Gorne]


Thomas Gorbach

Born 1966 in West Austria under the sonic influence by the enigmatic sounds of his brother‘s accordion, naturally sounds from his environment and the variable sounds of a synthesizer. He undertook traditional classical music studies in Switzerland. In 1996 he moved to Vienna to study at the Electronic Music Department of the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. In 2007 he started to develop Austria‘s first multi-loudspeaker environment for acousmatic music—The Vienna Acousmonium—and since then has given more then 70 concerts on it. He developed the ephemeral dynamic-motion soundsculptures technique for the interpretation of acousmatic music on the acousmonium.

https://theacousmaticproject.at/thomas-gorbach/