In Naluan, the voices and sounds of birds, insects and amphibians are assigned to a string and woodwind combination, reinforced by percussion instruments and piano, and merged into a single unit. The composer himself believes that by recording the animal voices, realising them musically and orchestrating them, he has fused the three layers together. Assuming this is the case, it is indeed possible to understand how the work follows this intention and conveys a strong impression of originality with its rendition.

            Ra.  Badische neueste Nachrichten Karlsruhe 6 mars 1974

The conductor Peter Burwik also helped the second premiere, Naluan - with recorded noises and voices of all kinds of animals - to a friendly reception, especially as, in addition to the tape, the pianist Käte Wittlich imitated dogs barking, with the string section birds, insects and amphibians, sometimes astonishingly, but also stylised them. One sees the composer following in the footsteps of his master Olivier Messiaen.

                              Fr. Baser, Schwarzwälder Bote 13 mars 1974

The most demanding piece on the programme was Naluan by the French Messiaen pupil François-Bernard Mâche. Among other things, he is concerned with "the deep identity between human and animal music" and with an almost mystical synthesis of naturalistic reproduction, imitation and differentiated instrumental music. The imitation of bird calls has been part of European art music since the 16th century (e.g. in the work of Clement Janequin). It plays a prominent role in Couperin, Beethoven (" Pastorale "), Wagner and Ravel - and in Messiaen it even becomes the carrier of an emphatically differentiated, pantheistic-catholic praise of nature and God as a developed system of musical ornithology. Strangely enough, the transference of nature into the cuckoo clock emerged early on. Rameau's "Rappel des oiseaux" is strikingly mechanical; and the bird calls of the "Pastorale" sound like automated signals on demand. In 1924, Ottorino Respighi fully integrated nature into his score in his " Pini di Roma " : the nightingale's voice sounds from the record.
Mâche was not only a pupil of Messiaen, but was also influenced by the Parisian musique concrète school of the early sixties. In 1960 he devoted himself to "phonographies", unedited or barely edited tape recordings of real sounds. A counterpart to this can be found in Luc Ferrari's electronic chronicle of a sunrise by the sea " Presque rien Nr.1 ". Both Mâche and Ferrari tend to transform Parisian concretism into the abstract musical naturalism of John Cage, according to which everything is full of music (which even includes silence), but which one must first learn to receive. In Naluan (the word comes from the South Sea Islands), Mâche has voices and sounds of birds, insects (Scriabin, to whom Messiaen owes much, about his tenth piano sonata : " My tenth sonata is an insect sonata. Insects are born from the sun. They are the kisses of the sun. ") and amphibians on tape. This material, which provides one layer of the composition, appears on a second level electronically transformed and on a third in instrumental imitation and processing, with a virtuoso piano part (Käte Wittlich) playing a central role. The nineteen-minute piece is complexly organised and dense in its structure - even if Messiaen's example seems almost overpowering at times.

Gerhard R.Koch, Frankfurter Allgemeine 21 mars 1974

In Naluan, François-Bernard Mâche continues the highly original research of Korwar and Temes Nevinbür, which caused a sensation last year in Royan, music in which the instrumental score is embedded in sounds recorded in the wild in Oceania, in this case animal calls from the New Hebrides. The instruments are "tightly plastered onto the recorded sounds", imitating them, enriching them, annexing them, prolonging them, concerting with them, in an extraordinary complex that is both living and artificial, in which it is hard to tell who is being magnified, the animal or man. The name Naluan designates "a dummy for initiation rites", and thus the means of taking possession of nature: "the instruments thus prolong the primitive gesture that created man when he determined his relationship to the world by outlining the outline of the rock to decipher his dream". We couldn't have said it better ourselves, and we couldn't have done it better ourselves, as the excellent Ensemble de l'Itinéraire (especially Gérard Frémy), conducted...had to harmonise to the quarter-second with these animal cries transmitted by loudspeakers.

                        Jacques Longchampt, Le Monde 30 November 1974

...name to remember...François Mâche for his voices from the Malaysian jungle called Naluan...
                                   Jean Cotte, France-Soir 30 November 1974

François-Bernard Mâche's score for Naluan is a little lengthy, but shows a lovely sensitivity and an obvious poetic sense. It superimposes on real animal cries recorded on tape a whole world of murmurs, whispers, giggles and cackles produced by a small group of traditional instruments. In a deliberately precise and limited setting, Naluan is a success.

                                        Claude Pascal, Le Figaro 2 December 1974

François-Bernard Mâche's Naluan, a sort of concerto for small birds and a small ensemble, first surprises, then fascinates. It gives off an impression of primitive, slightly bestial creativity, without shocks or shattering clashes, like the sound of animal life in the heart of a jungle, or the stammering of a child trying to speak.

                        Gérard Mannoni, Le Quotidien de Paris, 3 December 1974

After the intermission, the wind suddenly changes, the music is there, fresh, original, mobile. It opens up the space. True, precise, chiselled sounds. Music that is visible, perfectly written, serene, captured by the available man. François-Bernard Mâche brought back these animal cries from Oceania. Music," he writes, "is a biological function common to man and several other species. The instruments - the beautiful piano exalted by Gérard Frémy - combine, like the sand and the sea in the uncertain wave, with these cries, these birdsongs, these brief, gently high-pitched stridencies. This immediate alliance between the instruments and the natural soundtrack undoubtedly also demands instantaneous listening, and in so doing, renews us and makes us become Mâche's music, Naluan's music. In the lower registers - double bass as a solid colour - a certain anxiety seems to emerge, but the marriage of light and shadow will overcome the abyss. The space is abstract, well designed and uncluttered. Boris de Vinogradov conducts with clarity this work dedicated to the 20th century ensemble, which premiered it in Baden-Baden.

                     Martine Cadieu, Nouvelles littéraires 16 December 1974
A very interesting Naluan by Bernard Mâche was heard, in which the performers had the task of imitating various bird sounds as accurately as possible.

                        Het laatste Nieuws (Belgique) 16 décembre 1974

Naluan by Mâche was actually reminiscent of a Catalogue d'Oiseaux, with reference to the title of the well-known piano piece by Messiaen. The accompanying tape is full of bird sounds, which are synchronised by the musicians with the help of a strictly elaborated score. Is this not an apt analogy to the attempts of the hyperrealists in the field of painting in recent years?

                                  Het Volk (Belgium) 16 décembre 1974

Messiaen's pupil François-Bernard Mâche was represented in this concert with Naluan. Since his break with the Groupe de Recherche Musicale of the ORTF, Mâche has endeavoured above all to imitate concrete sound models. Mostly by means of electronic deformation. But in Naluan he uses instruments. Apparently he had Messiaen's title Catalogue d'oiseaux in mind, because Naluan is based on a tape with bird sounds. The imitation by the instruments is excellent. The French have always had a penchant for such programmatic tricks. The degree of hyperrealism that Mâche achieves is astonishing.

                                      De Gentenaar (Belgium) 16 décembre 1974

Francis Bernard Mache seems to take pleasure in complicating the task of his performers in Naluan for magnetic tape, piano and small ensemble.

                 Benoît Gousseau, Le guide musical February 1975

François-Bernard Mâche is convinced that "music is a biological function common to man and several other species". Naluan, for piano (Martine Joste), eight instruments and magnetic tape, illustrates this certainty.

                              Y.L. Le Quotidien de Paris, 14 March 1977

François-Bernard Mâche, from whom we heard Naluan (1974), reveres the winged gentry. He makes heavenly music from its song. The trills of a bird recorded on tape form a kind of 'basso continuo' which he adorns, in a counterpoint that is as effective as it is subtle, with a thousand garlands entrusted to eight instruments, including a piano admirably played by Martine Joste. The miracle of the magnetophone creates a fascinating play of mirrors between natural and instrumental sounds, where dream and reality intertwine in spellbinding poetry.

                               Jacques Doucelin, Le Figaro 16 March 1977

The two 'benchmark' pieces were Charisma by Iannis Xenakis and Naluan by François-Bernard Mâche, both equally accomplished in very different styles. The simplicity of the cello-clarinet instrumental group in Xenakis's work, the more complex alliance of magnetic tape and eight instruments in Mâche's, but the same wealth of ideas and invention.

                Gérard Mannoni, Le Quotidien de Paris 16 March 1977

As for François-Bernard Mâche's Naluan, premiered in Baden-Baden three years ago, it was a kind of reference work for the new movement that has emerged, in part from Xenakis, and which makes much of a certain lyricism, in turn impressionistic or baroque. With its birdcalls and insect rustles recorded or recreated by the orchestra's instruments, it fitted in perfectly with the greenery and foliage of Ibsen's Lady of the Sea, which Silvia Monfort plays on the other evenings of the week at her theatre!

                                Pierre Julien, L'Aurore 17 March 1977

François-Bernard Mâche's Naluan revels in a lack of perceptible structure and sound.

                                G.H. Le nouvel Alsacien 27 March 1983

The lovely warbling of the magnetic tape with which the musicians practised a lively and direct counterpoint was by François-Bernard Mâche. The piano is favoured in the group of nine solo instruments and provides the conclusion in a well-crafted diminuendo. Naluan is not at all gratuitous music, but it is pleasant and well-crafted.

M.M. Dernières nouvelles d'Alsace 27 September 1983

NOCTURNE (1981) is based on an ancient musical form: the canon, used as a starting point and reincarnated in a contemporary manner. These canons, applied to the contours of the melodic lines on the one hand and to the tempi on the other, are based on dialogue or encounter, or on the contrast between the piano-solo emerging from the low register and the tape which imitates and metamorphoses the sounds of the original instrument using sounds synthesised by the UPIC system. The structure of the work - although presenting new sonorities and a new syntax - remains "traditional": it realises the tripartite dramaturgy of emergence and enlightenment starting from depth and darkness to reach again the relapse, with the help of the new technology and its new musical means. The laborious piano part was interpreted by Endre Olsvay.

            Márta Grabócz, C.I.R.E.M., March 1990    Ligeti and Mâche

...This year, the Warsaw Autumn programme committee offered the public a more attentive appreciation, spaced out over time, of two composers: Ligeti, whose eleven works were presented in five concerts, and Mâche, to whom an entire concert was devoted. It was a completely justified choice, at least in my opinion, since it is for these two composers that I have had the greatest interest and sympathy for a long time, considering them both - Polish music aside - to be the most precious personalities of our time...
Listening to the music of François-Bernard Mâche - born in 1935 - one is tempted to use an epithet that is almost forgotten these days - and rarely used in relation to contemporary music: simply adorable. It's already adorable, thanks to the beauty of the sounds, not to mention their artistic arrangement, which is also particularly meticulous and seductive. It is a new incarnation of the most typical traits of French art in general, such as sensuality, a taste for nuance, the elegance of the subtlest lacework, richness of colour, clarity of style, a fascination with the world outside rather than inside. The aesthetic principle of this music, despite its new technical aspect, is rooted in the tradition of several centuries, beginning with Janequin, then taken up by Couperin and Rameau, and continued by Debussy, Ravel and Messiaen.
Mâche is fascinated by nature and its mysterious charms, but also by man as a creation of that nature; he does not seek to set them in opposition. He is drawn to primitive and exotic cultures, to the languages of Africa and Polynesia, to myths, rituals and magic. In his music, alongside the most subtle sonorities and figures of speech, the power of the elements sometimes bursts forth; sometimes we hear, as if in a ritual trance, sequences of certain rhythms and emotional states. All this makes up a fantastic world, very homogeneous and full of colour. It's a world of images and sounds with a very personal, consciously researched style that caresses our senses like the finest pictorial art. Among Mâche's works for solo instruments, we had already heard Octuor and Anaphores - for harpsichord and percussion - so subtle in their figures and colours. The most interesting of these works, however, are the compositions for instruments and magnetic tape, on which nature sounds are recorded: birdsong, frogs croaking, insects buzzing. The sound of running water, wind and fire, as well as human voices. The composer does not distort the recorded sounds, but meticulously edits them and harmonises them with instruments. He does this so marvellously that the two layers form a homogeneous musical whole for our ears. In Mâche's own words, his intention is to blur the boundaries between nature and culture. Indeed, the instruments playing their part so closely resemble the sounds of recorded nature that it is sometimes difficult to distinguish the component parts of arabesques obtained in this way. This correspondence, as well as the idea itself of 'secretly watching nature', in no way leads Mâche to gratuitous naturalism. Recorded by him - and artistically edited - the chirping of birds or the sound of running water lose some of their original meaningful context and suddenly reveal their hitherto unknown musical meaning. We've known for a long time that we can look at nature with a painter's eye and discover all its artistic forms, even the most abstract ones, unnoticed in an ordinary context. Mâche has proved that listening to nature with a musician's ear can also be inspiring and revealing, especially when linked to such a personal stylistic vision. Of all the masterpieces written in this style, Naluan, for recordings of birdsong and small ensemble, strikes me as the most beautiful. This work was presented at the XIX Automn in Warsaw. But there are other extremely rich examples. Mâche's tetralogy (four compositions made from a single tape, with a recording of a woman's voice speaking in a South African dialect, and various sounds of nature) presents different instrumental contexts and, of course, different conceptions and forms. At present, I know Korwar (for harpsichord) and Rambaramb (for piano and orchestra) from this cycle - which, alas, have not yet been performed in Warsaw. It is certain that exotic languages and myths (which fascinated the composer) were at the origin of the titles of these works. We have heard a quarter of this tetralogy during this festival.
What can we say now about Temes Nevinbür for two pianos, percussion and magnetic tape, performed by S.Eszteny, J.Witkowski and the Warsaw Percussion Group? This is another example of the French composer's fascinating poetics, and one that I'm always on the lookout for my own personal sound library. If I were forced to isolate myself on a desert island with my favourite record, I would certainly choose a recording of one of Mâche's 'natural' works. During the quartet concert, we also heard Maraé for six percussion instruments and the sounds of the sea, wind and fire (recorded on tape). This 'symphony of the elements', which rather vigorously depicts the force of nature, shows me once again the subtlety of Mâche's style. But here, you have to listen to the successive actions of the instruments and the tape, which stay with you for a long time. Although this music is the 'noisiest' of the works I know by this composer, it is extremely significant. Its highly expressive finds are somewhat reminiscent of P. Schaeffer's musique concrète.
 And finally, two more recent works presented during this concert devoted to the composer Mâche - for two pianos eight hands performed by A.Dutkiewicz, S.Esztény, E.Knapik and K.Meyer. Listening to recordings of these works convinces me more and more. Very often the sound of the pianos evokes - and this is perhaps a particularly striking aesthetic image - the sound of many bells, all the more so as it is achieved through harmonic shifts of great beauty and logic (a new element in Mâche's style!). However, beyond a second work (Lèthè, written for the Warsaw Festival) that is deliberately more colourful, richer and livelier than the first (Styx), which is more austere, sombre and a little monotonous, what remains engraved in our memory is the marvellous progression of chords.
Ligeti and Mâche, two different personalities. I think that if they were the only ones composing nowadays, they would be enough to ensure that the contemporary era would not have to be ashamed when confronted with the musical achievements of the past.

              Tadeusz A.Zieliński, Ruch Muzyczny n°24, 24 November 1985

Unclassifiable, François-Bernard Mâche! In tune with the world, off the beaten track of post-serial and post-modern followers, he pursues a veritable quest, questioning millennia-old societies, examining Mother Nature and listening with an ear that is both acute and delighted to everything that sounds, buzzes, chimes, tinkles, horns, striulates or sings.
He was one of the first to incorporate the slow melodies of whales into his compositions, he tracked down the language of the Mohicans or the Xhosas, captured the sounds of water in Cycladic caves or, like Messiaen, he spent a long time intoxicated by birdsong.
At the crossroads of nature and culture
An "ecologist" before the word existed, his work is situated at the moving intersection of culture (he holds a degree in literature and was for a long time the music editor of the NRF review) and nature. From these far-flung sound expeditions, in space and time but also in the interior of things, he has brought back shells, fossils, cuttings, airs from the sea and handfuls of fine sand, which he sometimes uses in an almost raw state, sometimes after long distillations or macerations...
After this delicious auricular aperitif, we set off for the New Hebrides, where a tape made from the sounds and cries of animals and insects multiplied and proliferated among an octet with Naluan, the name of a dummy used in initiation rites. The instruments thus prolong the primitive gesture of man when he determined his relationship with the world by outlining the contour of the rock to decipher his dream," confided the composer at the premiere in 1974.

                          Fernand Leclercq, Le Soir, Brussels, 16 March 1992