Pliens jeux (2008) in four movements: Croissance, Expérience, Pressentiment, Plénitude
Kyldex (1973) in five movements: Ouverture/sirène, Danse électromatic, Erotica II, Crescendo, Continuum
The run time on this disc is 73:20. The editors are both clearly trying to present Henry's work in reverse chronological order, but also fit the maximum amount onto each disc. Like disc 2, the works jump around by a few decades.
Listening to Liens jeux (Game links?), I'm reminded how important the piano is in Henry's musical world. It is rarely played in a traditional manner, or at least that's what I've heard so far. I'm going to have to study more of these recordings to conclusively state both of those things.
At least, I think it's the piano. It could be a number of other string and percussive sound sources, but I think I'm right. Maybe I'm being lazy by not relying on the notes provided; maybe I don't want to know anything about a particular work when it comes up on the disc. As they say a little of column A, a little of column B.
Croissance (Growth) is at times a dense assemblage of percussive and string sounds. There's not so much the sort of audio manipulation going on here that one might associate with musique concrète (which I will henceforth on this blog refer to as MC), though there is filtering, panning, blending and balancing. This movement is built more through the layering of tracks, of which there are probably many here.
Expèrience is noticeably less dense, with recognizable bell sounds mixed with the possibly altered piano sounds. The works in general, with the exception (so far) of Gymkhana from disc 2, have an improvisational feel to them.
Once again, not relying on the notes (which I will read some time in the future), I'm envisioning this: there's Pierre Henry, alone or with an assistant in his home studio. He has an idea for a piece, or a set of pieces. There's his long-suffering piano, which has been scratched, strummed, hit, pounded, and prepared many times over the years. He's surrounded by various bells, percussion, beaters, mallets, glasses, string bows, iron rods. Pierre starts to record, with a general sense of what he wants to capture, without worrying too much about the individual events. He's capturing a texture. And then layers in more, and more still. Some things are manipulated through processing and editing, some things brought forward, other ideas left behind as the piece develops. Improvisational in source, compositional in development.
There's a good chance that I'm completely wrong about all of that.
Real time comment as I listen to the final two movements. I'm seriously sleep deprived as I listen to them. Once or twice I found myself drifting off, not because I find the pieces boring but because they're hypnotic in a way. There are some short repeated figures that peak in and out, but mostly they're two pieces of escalating and de-escalating densities with little in the way of traditional musical content.
The Ouverture to Kyldex starts up, and we're in a different category. Electronically generated sounds!
I shouldn't be that surprised. I think it was Pierre Schaeffer, who coined the very term MC, who tended to be more the purist on these matters. All sounds captured by microphone, manipulated through recording technologies. Henry was perhaps less dogmatic in these matters.
It is a little startling to hear this work pop up in this collection however, when everything has been so clearly acoustically-based sound sources.
The electronics are not "pleasant" in the traditional sense; I'd even go so far as to say, maybe intentionally annoying. I find the history of such things interesting, in that he's working with. sound palette similar to maybe some of the Buchla noisemakers of the later 70s, but creating it earlier on.
I found this listing when searching for the title online: http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/kyldex/
I noted the name of Nicolas Schöffer. I have an LP of Schöffer's electronic music, and I remember not liking it. Could he be the reason the work took this direction? He's not co-credited on the disc.
Also: https://vimeo.com/467484882
Erotica II brings in a female voice (or voices), further removing it from the piano-based works on this collection so far. The second half of this movement clearly brings some pre-composed elements into the mix, similar to Gymkhana.
Crescendo is just that, a crescendo MC-style, and Continuum is purely pointillist sounds.
No comments:
Post a Comment