#ina-grm

[zef-zef]

Album art for:

François Bayle - Les Couleurs de la Nuit (INA-GRM,1985)

[dustedmagazine]

Bernard Parmegiani — Stries (Mode Records)

Stries (mode328) by Bernard Parmegiani

Early analog synthesizers were notoriously finicky instruments. The oscillators constantly went out of tune due to fluctuations in ambient temperature, and the primitive electronics introduced undesired artifacts such as ring modulator leakage. Also, most synths built before the digital age were modular and required complicated patches to be connected and dialed in with knobs and sliders so that they would produce a specific timbral quality. Not surprisingly only the most adventurous composers kept the analog synth in their arsenals; most others didn’t consider it a serious instrument capable of consistent live performance of traditionally scored music.

Those who composed for synthesizers in the pre-digital era typically wrote for specific models of synths and specific performers. Each instrument’s unique electronics caused it to generate and shape tone in a singular fashion, and the limitations in the components meant that no model of synth sounded like another. No two synths, even those of the same model, sounded the same. To aim at consistency, the performers also kept detailed patch notes, because a slight tweak of a knob could cause a major change in the sound. Composing and performing electronic music in the analog world was a major undertaking. 

Despite the complexity of early electronic music generation, a small number of groups such as the Paris-based TM+ (Yann Geslin, Laurent Cuniot and Denis Dufour, all synthesists) did focus on playing live electronic and electroacoustic music. It was for the INA/GRM-associated trio of synthesists that Bernard Parmegiani (1927-2013) originally composed Stries in 1980. Parmegiani had an extensive tenure at INA/GRM at the time and consistently strove to push the boundaries of music creation through technology. He also didn’t compose much work for live composers, so he must have felt a kinship with the musicians to have created a piece of work specifically for them. 

Back in the present, the Berlin-based trio of Colette Broeckaert, Martin Lorenz and Sebastian Berweck noticed a dearth of live-played electronic compositions and decided to correct that. They both recreate electronic scores of the past and work with contemporary composers to create new pieces. Working with Geslin of TM+, the trio focused their efforts on the monumental task of recreating Stries. Parmegiani wrote the piece for tape accompanied by a trio of synthesizers, and thankfully Geslin had archived the original score and the reel-to-reel tape, as well as the patch notes and other important details for performing it. Finding the rare synthesizers that were originally used and then setting up the patches was no small undertaking. The team then mapped the original analog units to digital synths for the sake of performability. The recording that graces this compact disc is certainly a labor of love. 

Stries comprises three distinct movements, each with its own technical setup. Opening movement “Strilento” is for solo tape. Parmegiani sourced the pre-recorded sounds from the tape he used for Violostries (1965), another of his compositions that featured tape and live instrumentation. Made up of violin sounds that Parmegiani then manipulated and spliced, this movement alternates between gentle swaying and punctuated stabs of tone. It’s the absence of sound that is most striking, as none of the synthesists are accompanying the mutant violin. The emptiness makes the more abrupt elements all the more thrilling to hear. 

“Strio” is the shortest movement at just over seven minutes in length. Two of the synthesizers are manipulating the two channels of the stereo tape while the third accompanies the proceedings. One gets the sense of floating through outer space, as sci-fi sound effects play against a drone. This leads into the eponymous third movement, in which the three performers accompany the pre-recorded sounds on the tape. The group establishes a flow of tension and release, as moments of suspense are followed by sudden bursts of tone. At times, the players work up a frenzied cacophony that they eventually allow to dissipate. The synths bounce around the stereo field like comets, creating a dizzying sensation. 

Stries lied dormant for thirty years, which is a shame. Perhaps it was biding its time, waiting for this specific trio of musicians, who were willing to put in the blood, sweat and tears to realize it in the most effective way possible. Now that Colette Broeckaert, Martin Lorenz and Sebastian Berweck have opened the door, perhaps other likeminded musicians will try their hand at Stries. Best of luck to them, as this recording is the pinnacle, the closest we’ll ever get — in the absence of time travel — to the original. 

Bryon Hayes

[bandcampotheque]

Listen/purchase: Tautologos and Other Early Electronic Works by Luc Ferrari

[musicmakesyousmart]

Michel Chion - Requiem

INA-GRM

1978

[zef-zef]

François Bayle - Les Couleurs de la Nuit (INA-GRM,1985)

[zef-zef]

Beatriz Ferreyra - Un fil invisible (2009) from: Beatriz Ferreyra -  GRM Works (Editions Mego, 2015)

Un fil invisible, 2009 (17'00) For Christine Groult

This piece was inspired by the various stages of Medieval Alchemy. The alchemical process is one of transformation, whose actual subject is the alchemist himself. Here, the process is inextricably tangled with the transformation of sounds and the very structure of the piece. (BF)

original released on Beatriz Ferreyra - Beatriz Ferreyra (INA-GRM, 2012)

[zef-zef]

Okkyung Lee talks about her music, how she got into music and how she discovered electronic music.

[dustedmagazine]

Bernard Parmegiani—Violostries (Recollection GRM)

Violostries by Bernard Parmegiani

Bernard Parmegiani (1927-2013) comes from a couple generations of pianists, so he grew up listening. His early adulthood did not point him directly at a life in music. He learned sound engineering in the French Army’s cinema service, and also trained to be a mime, before working as a sound technician for television. But when he started working at Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM) as a sound technician, he began a life-long involvement with electro-acoustic composition. While Parmegiani’s involvement with music lasted beyond formal retirement into the last years of his life, the compilation Violostries focuses on early work. The LP collects three pieces, all of which date from the time when Parmegiani worked with audio tape and razorblade, which was a far more time and labor-intensive process than audio collaging and processing would become in the computer age.

The title track was his first major work. In 1963, the violinist Devy Erlih commissioned Parmegiani to make some music to accompany a dance performance; it took him over a year to realize the taped elements of the 16:39 minute-long piece. All of his contributions were sourced from violin sounds, which he sped up, slowed down, filtered, diced and stitched together into an alien accompanist to Erlih’s virtuoso fiddling, whose dramatic plucks and bowed slashes inhabit a realm of high flickers, low expulsions and warped re-shapings of the violin’s familiar sounds. At the time, it represented a challenge to listeners to give up their preconceived notions of any instrument’s limitations; over a half century later, it remains an amazingly detailed sequence of sound events.  

Two shorter pieces occupy the other side. “Capture Éphémère” (“Ephemeral Capture”) is an early effort to deal with the spatial aspect of listening experience. Originally composed in 1967, its mainly unrecognizable sounds loudly rocket, quietly crinkle and shudder like a cartoon character being smacked in the face by a giant tape leader. One suspects that to hear it in its original state would be somewhat like sitting in the middle of an airfield, hearing planes roar past and overhead, and then hearing those sounds be masticated by some monstrous insect. But since quadrophonic sound never really took off at a popular level, in 1988 Parmegiani remixed it for stereo, and that’s the mix heard here. “La Roue Ferris” (“The Ferris Wheel”) debuted in 1971 at a festival celebrating the shipyard of Menton, a port town on France’s Mediterranean coast. One wonders what the fest’s attendants made of its constantly morphing swarms and whirls, which sound more electronic in origin than the other two pieces included here. But once more, the music holds up quite well across the decades as an expression of motion and density through sound.  

Bill Meyer