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Ars Electronica 1986
Festival-Program 1986
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Festival 1979-2007
 

 

Studio GRAME




I. CONCERT:

Pierre Alain Jaffrennou:
"SUITE FOR VIOLONCELLO", movements 1 and 2. Music piece for violoncello and tape
Christophe Roy, violoncello
James Giroudon and Jérôme Dôrival:

"DOUBLES", mixed music for tape and clarinet
Jérôme Dôrival, clarinet
Jean-François Estager:

"AIGU FORTE", music piece for tape and piano
Jean-François Estager, piano
Pierre Jaubert and Françoise Monneret:

"PARADOXE", music piece for voice and tape
Françoise Monneret, voice

James Giroudon:
"BRIBES D'HIVER", tape music
Jean-François Estager and James Giroudon:

"SERENIT…", for tape, violoncello, piano, and clarinet
Dominique Brunier, violoncello
Jérôme Dôrival, clarinet
Jean-François Estager, piano

II. MUSIC THEATER:

Françoise Monneret: "MOTS À MAUX"

Production:
Jeanne Carre

Actress/singer:
Françoise Monneret

Soloist:
Dominique Brunier, violoncello

Composers:
Jean-François Estager, James Giroudon, Pierre Jaubert

Sculptures:
Dominique Blaise

Lighting:
Jena Tartaroli

Promotion and PR:
Marie Quinon

GRAME
The "Groupe de recherche appliquée en musique électroacoustique" is engaged in activities in the field of composition, research, and teaching of contemporary music. GRAME: a meeting place for musicians and composers of different sensibilities and background. These meetings—confrontation and cooperation in the investigation and realization of new instruments of creation and improved social communication are characteristic of the project GRAME: addressing a new audience with the confrontation of art, innovation, and technology and the propagation of the idea of a concert in situations and of scenic music.

Most of the studio's creations are in the sphere of electronic music, mixed music, and music theatre. The research carried out in the fields of musical data processing and of vocal expansion promotes composition and is widely applied in teaching.

The studio arranges public performances, concerts, presentations and encourages different pedagogic and educational activities.

LE SOLITAIRE BULGARE
Music piece for instruments, tape and data processing equipment by Pierre-Alain Jaffrennou and Jérôme Dôrival.

Starting from a mathematical object the solitaire investigates its treelike structure by musical transposition of the formal consistency of the object. The unity of form is increased by the sonic proximity of the double-reed instruments. The tape—made from recordings of the instruments used that have been selected and cut according to their sonic quality—joins the instrumental ensemble on its way along the branches of the tree. At the intersections, that is when two branches meet, the tape is released and plays a sustaining role—like a pedal—waiting for the next meeting.

In this piece the computer is used to analyse the instrumental timbres and to assist in the composition via harmonic transpositions by processing and synthesizing natural and artificial sounds.

"BRIBES D'HIVER"
tape music by James Giroudon

"Everywhere the cold is beating with its fingers of rain. But that's not it. It precedes every description, every winter.
It is rather the fragility of what remains when the cold spell has passed, when the banners that have been frozen for so long can flutter before the wind.
As if the traces of the freezing cold would start playing in the attentive silence of memory: the brittle sound of crackling frostpaintings on the windows, the transparent wind, the failing of what hardly clung to the stems. And the frozen voices…"
Agnès Bressy

Elaboration: The essential elements of the piece of acoustic, electronic, or numeric origin can be found in different melodic or rhythmic figures. Five movements and their modifications thus define a path and a musical space assisted by techniques of assembling.

"PARADOXE"
piece for voice and tape, 7 minutes, with Françoise Monneret, voice and a tape by Pierre Jaubert.

The piece is based on the paradox coherence of contrasts: "Traditional sound / sounds of rock music, continuo / syncope, taped voice / live voice, singer / tape, improvised voice / fixed tape."
The tape is transmitted from two mounted loudspeakers, the voice from changing positions.

"SILENCES ET MÉMOIRES"
by Jean-François Estager assisted by James Giroudon

"Silence et mémoires" is concerned with silent mental processes: thinking about the sound, the silence, the (musical) memory. Not inventing anything but trying to comprehend the familiarity of music and to impart it or to make into music what is inside ourselves and belongs to the sphere of the unspeakable.
Every time the attempt must be made to realize the perfect sound (the music), proceeding from the notes, to the perfect chord, to melody, to monotony, poliphony, combination, unification.
What is new is not the material but the way we relieve ourselves of it.

MUSIQUE POUR UNE GRAPHIE (SILENCES ET MÉMOIRES)
"The bell of heaven with the clapper of the sun beats motionless noon the hour when grass and heaven eliminate time."
Jacques Estager

AIGU FORTE
Resonances, clear and delicate, returned, from the dark, music…in Aigu Forte an inner piano, provoked by the storm of the music and the darkness; loud in the apparent silence.
Jacques Estager

"MOTS À MAUX"
by Françoise Monneret

A comedy about dialectology, etymology, lexicology, morphology, onomastics, phonetics, phonology, semantics, stylistics, and toponymy. And finally about the pathology of all the diseases caused by above -ologies.

Computer languages, medical, musical, cinematographic, administrative languages… thousands of new words emerge, the "Mots à Maux", polluting the cerebral convolutions of all outsiders.

What happens if someone who does not attend seminars or conferences, who does not read learned books, loses interest in life because of this embarrassing lack of knowledge?

In the course of 75 minutes, "Mots à Maux" suggests solutions and tries them out. The audience can observe the research work in progress accompanied by a singer and a cellist, assisted by three composers and a computer.