XXXth festival d'Avignon François-Bernard Mâche to premiere his latest work as part of the musical theater program

This is the face we'll be seeing in a few months' time in Avignon. Composer François-Bernard Mâche will be one of the great guests at the next Avignon Festival.
We'll be visiting our friends at France Culture, at the Maison de la Radio. We met him as he was applying for material for the premiere of his work at the Cloître des Célestins.
             Musical theater is France Culture's darling, and Guy Erisman's in particular. Every year we find ourselves faced with works that are not always easy, but often interesting in terms of research and discovery.
François-Bernard Mâche will be premiering his latest work in July. The theme? He was forbidden to talk about it. Dame Chrystèle Dornhjelm, head of France Culture, had vetoed it.
But this composer is no stranger to music lovers interested in contemporary music. He is a member of the Groupe de recherches musicales. We heard one of his works at the Royan Festival in '70. The work was conducted by Charles Bruch. The peculiarity of the score was quite surprising. Over 600 calls in the form of whistles had been distributed to the audience, who were thus actively participating in the concert. The whistles cost 200,000 old francs.)
So it's towards a creation that's likely to surprise that we're heading. Magnetic tapes, musicians, voices, mixing desk, 12-channel input desk, dynamic microphones in quantities the work is nearing completion.
François-Bernard Mâche believes the musicians will play their score by heart, bringing the work to life.
Let's wait and see, listen and judge.

                   E.Maby, Provençal-Dimanche 8 février 1976

Our photo: In the offices of France Culture François-Bernard Mâche (left) was not allowed to talk about his work. This will be a real discovery for us. Here he talks with Jean-Bernard, technical director at France-Culture.

Avignon premiere of the "Théâtre musical" cycle with the creation of "De Capo":
Script, text and music by François-Bernard Mâche, stage direction by Jean-Pierre Dougnac, set design by William Underdown, six musicians including Xavier Darasse (organ) and Françoise Gagneux on percussion: the show is dedicated to the autonomists of the world, no "melodramatic" story but the itinerary of a man who seeks himself through music, sound and gesture.

                          Le Soir, Marseille July 12, 1976

"Da Capo": François-Bernard Mâche discovers a musical language

François-Bernard Mâche, Jean-Pierre Dougnac, Guy Erismann and France Culture: a fine team offering us "Da Capo" on Thursday July 15 at the Cloître des Célestins.
Guy Erismann's commitment to musical theater has been well known for some years now, and his discoveries of contemporary musicians and directors are always fascinating. There's no shortage of technical resources. It's an oscillation between the best and the rest.
For this world premiere of "Da Capo", François-Bernard Mâche, marked by the influence of Varèse, Messiaen and Xénakis, has forged a highly personal language for himself after his stint with the Groupe de recherches musicales de la radio.
"Da Capo" means starting again, starting at the beginning (in musical language). It means taking up the simplest situations of human life, speaking of birth, of man, of his education, of his insertion into society, of his work, his sorrows, his joys, his loves perhaps, his conflicts, his death.
François-Bernard Mâche is a musician. In the sense that he refuses to adopt a stereotyped psychology to the words he sings. The fable or allegory aspect takes on great importance in this work, which should give a special character to his musical research.
Classical music? Modern music? A mix of sounds, interesting discoveries: two families of sounds will interpenetrate during these two hours: positive organ (with Xavier Darasse, quite a program), oboe and exotic instruments.
Message? Not at all. Evocation, a show that revives human concerns. In a story of a human couple promised happiness, then crushed by the constraints and turbulent fantasy of a ceremonious clown and the heavy presence of a monument to determinism, the show doesn't pretend to demonstrate or teach anything. These are just the contrasting elements the music needs to live on stage, and the meaning they deliver is ultimately that which each spectator attributes to these great commonplaces of human life.
"Da Capo": a show to see and discover. A contemporary work by François-Bernard Mâche, directed by Jean-Pierre Dougnac.

                 Edmond Maby, Le Provençal July 14, 1976

"Da Capo": Chronicle of the quaternary era by François Bernard Maché and Jean-Pierre Dougnac
"Da Capo" is the first musical theater show of this thirtieth festival. A show that blends all genres, and whose starting point is music. "A direct show, where what is visible must be immediately understandable; everyday situations, but no real scenario or psychological characters": these are the words of composer François Bernard Mache, author of the text. Through this sort of fable, an allegory of the quaternary era, in which actors, dancers and musicians are equally involved, a symbolic couple tells not their own story, but revives human concerns according to the process: birth - education - social integration - work - conflict - death.
FB Mache's vision is not necessarily pessimistic, but derisory, without realism, and with a burlesque edge.
For his part, Jean-Pierre Dougnac was interested in the lengthy, collective preparatory work with the composer, and above all in the musical approaches - in his opinion - little approached until then: research into the relationship between gesture and sound, the desire to avoid finding oneself in front of a mini-opera. To this end, the two elements interact, sound provoking gesture and vice versa.
As the musical scheme is the basis of this show, there are few texts involved, and they never illustrate the thoughts of the speaker. For FB Mache, the text is the "residue" of instrumental music, itself a by-product of the natural sounds of the elements.
A music, sounds, either natural and recorded on magnetic tape, or produced by the organ, by ancient instruments (crumhorns, Poitou oboe, shanaï) for an often repetitive role as implied by the "Da Capo" of the scores. Added to this are a host of natural sounds produced by elements of the setting, sometimes heterogeneous, which play a full part in this work "accessible to everyone, not intended for initiated ears" (JP Dougnac).
A composite image of humanity of all times, also a satire, a realization intended to be very "readable", but without thesis or message.

                          NS, La Marseillaise July 14, 1976

At the Célestins cloister "Da Capo" or how men are born, grow up and die

There's no point in trying to define musical theater, since each creative team can, as it sees fit, create a curious mix between music and text, between music and set design, or, as in the case of "Da Capo" presented yesterday by François-Bernard Mâche, the set design itself generates music.
In this creation, music plays an essential role, as Mâche himself says, the text is the residue of the music. Even the title refers to music. Indeed, doesn't the old musical term "Da Capo" mean "to start again"?
So it's the music that tells the story, and the author wants it to be simple, describing scenes from life: birth, education, war, revolt, the unexpected and...of course, death. But this play, whose subtitle is "Chronicle of the Quaternary Era", is not limited in time, and that's why the story doesn't end in sorrow, it ends as normally as possible with the birth of a child, which means, we can reasonably assume, that everything will begin again, but differently.
As a human couple grappling with the facts of life, we might expect a message from the author, a demonstration. But he wants to leave viewers free to think whatever they please. To give the spectator even greater freedom, the texts are few in number, and F-B. Mâche's music is accessible to all.
Jean-Pierre Dougnac, the director, concluded by declaring that although his entire team had put in a lot of hard work, the result was very simple and easy to understand.
The show will be presented at the Célestins cloister on July 15, at 10 pm. On this occasion, we'll be able to see whether the ambitions of the author and director will be realized, i.e. whether the audience's reactions will be favorable or unfavorable to this experiment, which can best be described as complex.

            Georges Régnier, Le Méridional La France July 14, 1976

The premiere of "Da Capo", "a work from the quaternary era" by François-Bernard Mâche, directed by Jean-Pierre Dougnac, inaugurated the musical theater that will play such an important role in this year's festival at the Cloître des Célestins in Avignon on Thursday evening.
In this privileged venue - whose sober harmony dates back to the 14th century, transformed into a surrealist hangar - a packed house listened patiently to a cacophonous work that has the merit of lasting only 70 minutes. "Da Capo", according to the author-composer, means starting from scratch. But where to?
Against a backdrop of scaffolding, organ pipes, giant stage sets, pulleys, barrels, old tires, drums and percussion instruments, a couple dressed as Adam and Eve find themselves confronted by "the heavy presence of a monument to determinism". The accompanying sounds are more akin to plumbing defects and flushing noises than to music in the conventional sense.
But there were no demonstrations, just a few boos at the end, drowned out by applause whose warmth matched that of the temperature.

       Claude Benedick, A.F.P. special correspondent July 16, 1976
(reprinted in Midi libre Montpellier, l'Eclair de Nantes, L'Union de Reims etc. July 17, 1976 )

"Da Capo": Musical theater (?) more to see (and still more) than to hear

"Eight years of experience in Avignon have shown that Musical Theatre cannot satisfy any definition...". Planted as an exergue on the "program bible" of the first 1976 creation of the XXX Festival and France-Culture, this warning can, in colloquial terms, no doubt, be translated as: "There's both good and bad in this form of expression.
And, in the precise case of what was presented last night at the Célestins cloister, more to see than to hear.
Which is, perhaps, a paradox when you consider that, in addition to the financial support provided by France-Culture for a production of this kind, the assurance of airplay is the cornerstone of this kind of show. I had reached this point in my reflections, but when I heard Mme Jacqueline Baudrier in person, President and CEO of Radio-France, I humbly decided that it was not my place to draw conclusions...
So, "Da Capo"... the story of a human couple promised happiness, then crushed under constraints... does not pretend to demonstrate anything, nor above all to teach anything... Everyone is free to see in it the image of an art of living...".
This is the composer's point of view: François-Bernard Mâche (Normale Sup' Agrégé de Lettres, former student at the Clermont-Ferrand and Paris Conservatoires, assiduous member of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales), a serious man par excellence if ever there was one.
Well, the result... One good point: "Da Capo" is short. Phew!
And it's easy on the eye: the set, implausible, scaffolded, made of pipes, planks (which is more than normal, but musical planks like the saws of the same name), musical instruments as conventional as the organ - played, if you please, by Xavier Darasse transformed into...a guru! ), but also as unexpected as rolls of...craft paper (which, unrolled and torn to measure, form one of the highlights of this story with neither tail nor head), interlacing wires, trumpets and car horns (leading to a concerto of horns). In short, William Underdown's set is the n°1 element of "Da Capo".
The staging by Jean-Pierre Dougnac, who made his debut with "Ziziques éclatées!", is the second, since there's always something happening on stage, just like in a department store.
As for Yolande Marzolff's choreography, it recaptures the virtue of the early years, with the star couple dressed as Eve and Adam.
The script (?), text ( re?) and music (a strong sequence of all possible combinations of reed instruments) are by the aforementioned François-Bernard Mâche.
And for an hour and a half, we wring our necks, plug our ears, but always open our eyes to catch a glimpse of the couple's evolutions, the creepings of the others, the contortions of all, following a rhythmic pattern long known to Robbins, for example.
To say that we're bored would be stupid, unkind and untrue.
But to say that we are witnessing a masterpiece is even more so.

          Edmée Santy Le soir, Marseille July 16, 1976

"Da Capo" by François-Bernard Mâche Musical biography

Will we have to be retrained, "as part of our ongoing training"? The festival, which is not stingy, will be happy to offer us courses in harmony and counterpoint, since it has been advocating "musical theater" for some years now, the Avignon form of total spectacle. But it's not certain that music-lovers will find it more to their liking than we do; you don't need any particular knowledge to appreciate François-Bernard Mâche's score and text, which is above all a witty festival of noises, staged with an amusing frenzy by Jean-Pierre Dougnac, more inspired than with his "Misanthrope". The underlying theme of this "Da capo" - a kind of history of the couple, from its beginning to its death - is of little importance, in truth. We follow it little more than a ballet argument, and it is also a ballet, incidentally, directed by Yolande Marzolff. The best part of this musical biography of an existence for two is the sort of rampage that must represent "Les Travaux et les Jours", unless it's "La Société civilisée" or "La Guerre", I don't know. Suddenly, the performers are seized by a collective madness. In William Underdown's stage set, a strange labyrinth that resembles a trapeze, a rollercoaster and an obstacle course, the actors climb up, down, jump, gambol and wiggle, activating all manner of rattles, bells, crickets, drums and other instruments as diverse as they are noisy. It's a fun-filled session where adult audiences rediscover childlike simplicity. The municipality of Avignon should buy this singular machine and place it in a public garden; it would be a delight for the kids.
We come away from the show rather delighted, and even quite happy, though we can't quite explain why. We can't say that it's the message that has transported us, nor the music. Let's bet it's the unpretentious good humor of this entertainment that wins us over. It may be a little pricey for its free nature, but then, it's not every day you get to celebrate. It's better to have expensive fun than to be bored, however poorly.

               Matthieu Galey, Le Quotidien de Paris, July 17, 1976

"Da Capo" at the cloister. Sound machine and cream pie

The Festival's particularly rich Musical Theater program kicks off at the Célestins cloister with the premiere of "Da Capo". Script, text and music by François-Bernard Mâche, staging by Jean-Pierre Dougnac, choreography by Yolande Marzolff, set design by William Underdown.
The team includes a regular at the Théâtre Musical avignonnais: Jean-Pierre Dougnac, whose "Musiques éclatées" caused a bit of a scandal in '69, and whose "Il faut rêver dit Lénine" waves of penguins swept through the cloister in '72.
"Da Capo" is first and foremost a huge sound machine, made up of moving tubes, pendulums, pivoting barrels, tires and chains, mattresses, ropes, rolls of adhesive plastic, hourglasses and boxes of pebbles, all suspended, hooked, balanced or off-balance around towers, walkways, staircases and slides. A formidable gadget that can stand on its own, but which, once you take the trouble to animate it, produces every imaginable squeak, rattle, squeak, scrape and clatter, plus various other noises.
The most astonishing moment of the show is when the whole machine is set in motion by actors and musicians, in an improvisation orchestrated by the happiest of chances (or during rehearsals). Paying with their bodies, through the clusters of penetrable percussion, sliding down the pipes, dropping from the masts, climbing the spiral staircases and tumbling down the slide, they multiply the delirium of the sound castle. It's playful in the extreme. In other words, it's a lot of fun.
Apart from this sequence, the show's sound effects have an interesting dramatic effect: the peeling off of adhesive tapes torn from their rolls, to convey the violence of civilization's "folding" operations. This doesn't prevent the musical episodes, with organ and reed instruments, from being very delicate, with echoes and subtle repeats. And humorous dialogues between funny flutes and disguised voices.
These undertakings, which bring into play the arsenal of derision, burlesque and the desacralization of artistic material, are seductive and invigorating.
What remains is the "content", the story being told: the trajectory of human life from birth to death, passing through the usual alienations. What young choreographic company wanting to break out of the rut of academicism hasn't danced this scenario at least once, in a suburban M.J.C.?
What innocent spectator has escaped the symbolic representation of childbirth or castrating upbringing? Attempts at innovation also have their cream pies. Fortunately, the other qualities of "Da Capo" - notably the beauty of the lighting and the dream of futuristic spaces it conjures up - help us to forget its own.

                       B.B. Le Dauphiné libéré, July 17, 1976

In the rich program of musical theater presented this year by Avignon, with creations by Bob Wilson, Claude Prey, Drogoz and Kuffler, Aperghis, Duhamel and Kagel's Mare nostrum, François-Bernard Mâche's Da Capo represents the author's first attempt at the stage; Mâche's works are few in number, but are particularly original and acute, such as Le son d'une voix, Rituel d'oubli and Korwar, in which the composer's thoughts often revolve around the problem of the function of music as language, or as the cry of nature or man.
Here, he examines the relationship between sound and gesture: "Giving music to see and gesture to hear", and this work is presented as the "deciphering of a sound model", in this case his own musical imagination "in the most general and elementary form, that of an allegory of humanity or human life: birth, education, love, work, death, the birth of a new child who will take the same path again; Da Capo: "Starting again at the beginning"...
According to the author's statements, the music is very elaborate, and the gesture gives it a second life on stage; This is the case at the beginning, where the hooting of the wind in the loudspeakers, the singing of the toads imitated by the organ, are accompanied by a beautiful backlight on the complicated machinery that occupies the scene preceding the birth of the naked man and woman, emerging from a kind of cocoon and opening up to life through a long, moving sequence of crawling and easing together.
However, the music then seems to be devoured by the stage illustration of the myth and reduced, as is often the case in musical theater, to a supporting role in which improvisation seems elementary. Dialogues and imitations between crumhorns, flutes, organ, percussion, bells, etc., with little distinction between what is written and what springs from the theatrical performance.
The dynamism of the stage and the illustrated myth create a baroque show full of life and ideas, colorful even if there are a lot of modern clichés and irrelevancies. The education of the couple through musical imitation of sounds and voices is very tasty, as is the excessively long work sequence, the bravura piece of the work, where the whole set of stairs, slides, knotted ropes, inner tubes, bridge in the savannah, bamboo, etc., is an immense obstacle course where a scenic railway sprinkles the most diverse percussion instruments; the troupe of actors and musicians have a field day, without the musical result being very obvious. The next scene, about civilization, advertising, elections and the trifecta, is rather unremarkable.
On the contrary, the death of the couple buried under the sails that their birth had torn is a beautiful and rigorous scenic and musical image, in which Mâche fully achieves his initial goal, so strong is the correspondence between the fisherman's net slowly advancing towards the man and woman (to a music of dry rhythms produced by bamboo poles equipped with bells striking the wood underlying the net) and the death symbolized by this gesture and this music. And the child who crosses the dead scene, tries out some of the primitive percussion instruments, and begins a bird song on the organ, is a lovely vision of innocence that only has the drawback of being predictable.
One hopes that, in the future, Mâche will be bolder and not afraid to develop a score (of music or natural noises, whatever) that contains some fine original sequences; the show, directed by Jean-Pierre Dougnac and choreographed by Yolande Marzolff for the couple's complicated yet beautiful steps, is by no means boring, if a little bloated, It is performed with the exuberance and enthusiasm of youth by sixteen actors and musicians, including two unfortunately anonymous dancers, who dance naked with a certain heroism, and Xavier Darasse, who could have a career as an excellent clown, were he not already a marvelous organist.
					Jacques Longchampt , Le Monde July 17, 1976

Da Capo: an intelligent, witty show
François-Bernard Mâche's "Da Capo" has one immense merit: it is a work that is never boring, and seems to avoid the all-too-frequent pitfall of false philosophy. No doubt its initial purpose is almost metaphysical: quite simply, it's the story of the human couple, from their involuntary birth to their disappearance in the horrors of war.
But this essential adventure is told with a constant sense of humor, a constant wink, a keen sense of effect, comedy and emotion. It is, in its genre, very good theater. And that's undoubtedly why a fraction of the Avignon audience took sides against a work that has the misfortune to be intelligent...
Be that as it may, some fifteen actors and musicians skillfully lead us into a dreamlike universe, the elements of which were designed by William Underdown.
To represent the noisy world in which we find ourselves, he has imagined a sort of Far Eastern Luna Park, where you can't move without setting in motion an infinite number of instruments, bells, rattles and bamboos, and without creating a hubbub based on wood and metal, in which the individual is annihilated and drowned. I would add that the set is extremely beautiful, and at times reminiscent of a Japanese print.
Jean-Pierre Dougnac's inventive staging is often inspired by Far Eastern theater: I'm thinking of the beautiful tableau de la guerre, where the actors confront each other in a hieratic combat punctuated by the blasts of the wood block.
We believe in the climate created on the stage, we take sides with these two young, beautiful, naked beings who find themselves at grips with the traps of our civilization and who disappear in a general war, and we are moved by the appearance, in the midst of the rubble, of this naked little boy thanks to whom everything will begin again...Da capo!
But how much of this beautiful picture book is music? I admit it's a bit rash to call this show "musical theater". Composer François-Bernard Mâche is content to punctuate the action with irresistible rhythms that give it a constant pulse, and to introduce a few medieval instruments.
But the score remains very thin. And it's all the more satisfying to hear Xavier Darasse (a marvellous actor) at the organ, with his witty allusions to Bach and Beethoven.
Be that as it may, this is a show of excellent quality, which does not deny itself intelligence, tenderness or humor. It's quite something not to be bored at the theater.
					            Pierre Petit, le Figaro July 17, 1976

"Da Capo": stage entertainment where sound and gesture are king
François-Bernard Mâche (music, script, text) and Jean-Pierre Dougnac (direction) create "Da Capo", a direct work dominated by sound and gesture, in thirteen interlinked tableaux and an hour's performance.
With virtually no text, no "real dramatic action" and no singing, this chronicle of the Quaternary era manages to symbolize and sketch out the story of "a people promised happiness".
Sound and movement replace the spoken word, creating a more direct effect, impact and image.
The visual aspect (choreography by Yolande Marzolff, set design by William Underdown) constantly engages the spectator, thanks to a wealth of eccentric, eccentric and sometimes surreal set elements, accumulated in profusion and the result of meticulous, complex "machinery". If this doesn't necessarily delight the eye, it takes on another dimension (why not a role?) depending on how it's used.
First and foremost, to create unexpected, quasi-permanent noises and sounds that have no logical function.
As these sound events create astonishment, spreading humor through a host of gags, the audience frequently laughs, but goes no further.
And therein lies the rub: despite the best of intentions, the whole lacks structure, backbone and drama, leaving the viewer hungry for more, since the inventions, however clever, are short-lived. This is all the more regrettable as F.B.Mâche's sound production, on the other hand, is skilfully thought out, measured out and detailed, with a complete osmosis between old instruments (especially winds) and sounds on magnetic tape, more recent instruments and objects on the set (percussion): a rich musical environment whatever the source (natural sounds broadcast: wind and its whistles, the surf, the chirping of rain, thunderstorms...).
Actors, dancers and musicians happily combine their roles (it's often difficult to distinguish who's who) to create a very complete presence. Many of the sequences are energetic and lively, linked together by the rhythmic incitements of the organ (Xavier Darasse), the driving force behind much of the show.
The evolution of the constraints undergone by the couple, who at first evolve in the simplest form, remain symbolic and fleeting, with no real commentary from the author other than that of the music. an attitude deliberately chosen for a production in which the spectator has total freedom of choice, but which results in an incomplete production": an approach that can only claim to be one aspect of musical theater.

				Nicole Salabert, La Marseillaise July 17, 1976
On Thursday evening, at the Célestins cloister, the premiere of "Da Capo", "a work from the quaternary era" by François-Bernard Mâche, inaugurated the musical theater that will play a major role at this year's festival. A décor of scaffolding, organ pipes, giant stage sets, pulleys, barrels, old tires, drums and percussion instruments, a couple dressed as Adam and Eve: in this 14th-century cloister transformed into a surrealist hangar, a packed house listened patiently to a cacophonous work far removed from what is commonly known as music. But that was not its aim. Or so we hope.
				Les Dernières nouvelles d'Alsace July 17, 1976

"Da Capo" in Avignon: a motley debut of musical theater

By presenting five musical theater creations, Avignon could not pretend to give an a priori chance to five outstanding works. Even so, it's not logically impossible. The fact remains that "Da Capo" is not the ideal kick-off.
Not that the show wasn't seriously staged, I'd like to stress, which is to Jean-Pierre Dougnac's credit. Fast-paced, with no hesitation in the abundance of gestures, noises and sounds, and featuring good actors, it has the merit of not being long. We leave unsatisfied, but not exhausted...
Nevertheless, well-tuned work alone cannot create substance or interest, when neither is very evident.
The symbol, the story, is what it is: a man, a woman are born, incorporated into the group - and clothed in the process, the couple being a little before (and a little after too) in the simplest of garb - educated, liberated. Later, it's time for civilization, with its derision and tics, and for war. We die... But then a young boy, also naked, discovers this empty world, to which he must, one assumes, breathe new life. "Da capo", back to the beginning, here we go again. This cyclical vision, neither optimistic nor pessimistic, could in its allegorical banality have engendered the worst as well as the best. But it's not the worst. It's far from the best.
It's bric-a-brac. Anyone who has ever rummaged through a store, hoping to make a discovery, will understand. Sometimes you come across the "stuff". They don't give the lot its value, and you have to sort through them.
On stage, a gimmicky set of pipes, inner tubes assembled in tunnels, scaffolding, suspended drums, pulleys, catwalks, car body parts, a huge inflated rubber cushion that whines a trumpet sound when actors fall into it from the top of a slide and so on. This is because the set is entirely sound, and this is one of the aims of the author of the script, text and music: François-Bernard Mâche. Everything is agitated and produces noise: metal blades, clanging, bells, in short, a whole range of "active" percussion, to which are added wind instruments, which are similarly "active".
Voices, for their part, have a musical function, in their construction, through brouhahas, mingled words and cries.
There's also a positive organ, so we see Xavier Darasse, silver spangles in his hair surrounding his bald spot, duly mobilized in this mess. The organ makes this heterogeneous - and certainly difficult to assemble - composition seem like a sum of "stops" brought together by some eccentric organ builder. Games and play: the intention was to amuse. The text is somewhat funny, as are certain gestures and situations. But the fantasy doesn't go very far, or for very long. The bill is light.
Visually surprising more than anything else (apart from a few scenes, the birth, the death, the last images with the child); musically, or more precisely in terms of sound, with no real research into timbre or rhythm, for example (with the exception of the electroacoustic effects, where we find Mâche); deliberately without meaning, or at least left to the initiative of each individual, "Da Capo" fails to take us very far, when it does, down the path of invention.
Georges Gallician, Le Méridional La France, Marseille July 18, 1976

Avignon: "Da Capo" above all a well-made hoax
In all sincerity, I don't believe that this is a revolution or even a notable evolution in the field of musical theater. It's simply a well-crafted hoax. Neither the author nor the performers should hold it against me: on my part, it's more a mark of praise and, above all, sympathy. In my youth, I practised hoaxing as often as possible. And even today, when the opportunity arises. So I liked "Da Capo", script, text and music by François-Bernard Mâche, just as it sounds. Or at least what the author, in a moment of excessive lyricism, called a "scenario", a "text" and "music". .... But then, there's no such thing as a "controlled appellation" in art. Everyone is free. And so am I, of course...
The "subject" is the misadventure of a couple defeated by the conventions and constraining powers of modern civilized life. It's a mockery of language, at least especially the language of advertising formulas and scholarly communications. Why not add mockery of political language? And why not, finally, that of today's musical theater? Of course, attacking the Fifth Symphony and the toccata in D minor is no easy task. And that's precisely what I'd criticize almost all modern musical theater for: being all things to all people. In "Da Capo", the only discernible "aggression" is eminently conventional: we are presented with a naked woman. Excuse me, but there were a few of us in the large audience who knew how it's done, and we weren't the least bit surprised. There was also a naked gentleman (same observation).
The sound part, well in place, judiciously organized, is made up of freely linked words (if I dare say so), various noises, sounds obtained by means of instruments. All the performers are both actors and musicians. Their undeniable talent does not prevent some of the sequences from running a little long. I must emphasize the excellent craftsmanship of these artists, whose diction in particular is remarkable.
William Underdown's stage set-up is complex and delirious, but perfectly suited to the action, and is a kind of gigantic sound machine. The staging is by Jean-Pierre Dougnac, the choreography by Yolande Marzolff, who deserve praise in the sense I have tried to indicate above.
Come to think of it, today's world sweats and reeks of boredom so much that perhaps "Da Capo" should be hailed as a kind of event...
					J.A., Le Provençal-Sunday, July 18, 1976

The donkey for sound. François-Bernard Mâche's "Da Capo" at the Célestins cloister

Avignon rightly prides itself on having given birth to a new genre, musical theater, whose features are still vague, but which everyone agrees is promising. "It offers each creator, or each creative team, a choice of very different relationships between sound and gesture, sight and hearing, sound performance and text, music and fable. These relationships can eventually lead to the erasure of one of these elements in favor of another...". With François-Bernard Mâche's "Da Capo", it's the spoken word that goes by the wayside, or nearly so.
The open-air stage of the Célestins is taken over by a gigantic machine ("celibate" if you like) whose sole purpose is to make sounds. There are the musical instruments themselves: the organ in the center, and the percussion panoply on the courtyard side, arranged like a set of pots and pans. Then there are the "silly" cobbled objects: cans containing pebbles, suspended drums, "musical" boards, a slide with a squeaker at the end of its course; in short, anything that knocks, scratches, vibrates or clatters...
When actors and musicians set these objects in motion and blow their reeds, the music takes shape. It's worth it for its unexpected, if not random, character, and its droll contentment. The pleasure is short-lived, however, for those who turn up their noses at the almost wordless fable that takes center stage.
M.Jourdain makes history
For to the (relatively) new nature of the visual and sound apparatus (without going so far as to say foreign, in our era of intense internationalization of ideas, let's not forget that Michel Raffaëlli, not long ago, proposed a "Bécane" for grinding noise, while the sculptor Tinguely, among others, has been inventing machines for doing nothing for some time now), we must oppose the old moons of what this tells us. Here we have Man and Woman (with M and F obligatory) who, having emerged naked from the primordial egg, have to contend with social constraints. At the end, a young boy takes up the organ and plays the piano. We assume a new beginning. "Da Capo" in music means "starting again". In history, it smacks of eternal return. But Mâche insists that music "easily dispenses with history". A Marxist, even a neophyte, or simply a man of reason, cannot swallow this. Our composer, a modern M.Jourdain, unknowingly makes history when he cites Berber or African music. He's caught red-handed trading in exotic spices. Moreover, the people in the scene are that good old primitive horde that Charles Darwin gave to Freud.
Laughing on his side
It's hardly surprising that words are few and far between, given that the project's sole aim is to combine gesture and music. Yet we are saddened by the pettiness of what this says. It's not very clever to put one's laughter on one's side by reading a particularly stringy phrase from Jacques Lacan. As for the "spoken-sung" passages, as if taken from crumbling newspapers of the notorious "consumer society", this is the most yellowed cliché of soft protest theater.
Here, then, is an Avignon avatar of the Californian hippy "philosophy" of the 60s. The old biblical allegory, with its vaguely "krischné" costume, is still in use. Finally, we are surprised that someone of Mâche's stature, who once used the linguistic model, should so naively deride spoken language, in favor of the illusory creation of a meta-language that would be the music he forges. So much for every musician's dream. But isn't this literally like playing the donkey to get sound?
On reflection, the pungency of the tone of this article also stems from the irritation provoked by a show that too willingly transforms the critic into an agent of the circulation of meaning (with white stick and wheeled whistle).

"Da Capo" is a co-production between the Festival and "France-Culture". Cast: Pablo Amaro, Jean-Louis Jacopin, Catherine Le Cocq, Rebecca Pauly, Armande Altaï, Catherine Richet, Olivier Ricou, Pierre Soullard, Michel Tureau, Bernard Valdeneige. The musicians are : Xavier Darasse, Jean-Louis Fiat, Edmond Lemaître, Jean-Pierre Nicolas, Françoise Gagneux, Patrick Guise, Jean Riant. Script, text and music by Mâche; stage direction by Jean-Pierre Dougnac; choreography by Yolande Marzolff; set design by William Underdown.

Jean-Pierre Leonardini, L'Humanité July 19 1976

Sound machines

In Avignon, musical theater is determined not to remain on the sidelines of political debate. The first production at Les Célestins, François-Bernard Mâche's "Da Capo", is at least an allegorical and humorous meditation on conditioned man, harping on fabricated words and ideas. This philosophical fable, so often served up, is a weak plot here. But the sound show devised by Mâche, director Jean-Pierre Dougnac and set designer William Underdown is very exciting indeed. They have created scaffolding and catwalks from which hang sound clusters, handcrafted machines that make squirrel-men produce sound. The rhythmic cacophony created as the actor-musicians make their way through these vibrant structures, counterpointed by the sounds of baroque flutes, is as pleasing to see as it is to hear. It's a sight for sore eyes!

      Jean-Jacques Lerrant, La Tribune, Le Progrès, espoir, Saint-Etienne July 19, 1976

"Da Capo", a lyrical head-turner

Innocent spectators - but are there any left at the Festival d'Avignon - certainly watched in amazement the first show of this Festival, Bernard Mâche's "Da Capo".
This is musical theater, an Avignon specialty. Theater is in a bad way, music is going round in circles on the Avignon bridge, but musical theater is doing well. There's something going on here. Something strange, disconcerting and highly concerted.
In "Da Capo", François-Bernard Mâche, the author of the music, text and script, has done neither music nor text nor script in the classical sense of these terms. He has stirred up visions, cries and noises, kneaded rales and rumors, shreds of words and dribbles of ideas.
The result can stun the naïve. It begins with mistral winds. From a mass of shapeless tissue, a kind of giant placenta, emerges a couple, a beast with two backs, in the costume of Eve and Adam. These etherozigotos twins indulge in an unambiguous dance.
Eve is ravishing and I admire Adam's composure in these inflammatory gymnastics. They're in Paradise. But the world and its fury reclaims them, dresses them and integrates them into an enormous complex of creaking iron, shrill cogs that will twist them to the rhythm of the machines, until death. This is life. It has to be insane to satisfy the fashions of Avignon.
You have to cultivate the absurd, nonsense and despair, just as we cultivated the blue flower, the prince and the shepherdess in other times and places. Every era has its dadas. Ours is into rosses and Eros. It likes to break words, souls and spirits, and sometimes feet, with such repetition.
But in "Da Capo" we're dealing with intelligent authors. You can feel it everywhere. Both François-Bernard Mâche and director Jean-Pierre Dougnac are former students of the Ecole Normale Supérieure. But they've gone beyond the games and hoaxes of retired khâgneux. They have made a work of this chaos. It smacks of genesis. More genital than genial, it nevertheless achieves an astonishing unity. What's more, nothing happens, yet every second makes you want to know what happens next. In this, it is music. It doesn't say anything precise, but it carries you away, imposing its rhythm and movement, giving form to the formless and meaning to the nonsensical.
It therefore has a special place in contemporary creation. It is not a product of decomposition. It takes a decomposed world and gives it an embryonic composition. It's no longer the doom and gloom of the Apocalypse; it's perhaps the first glimmer of a genesis. In the dead-ends and cul-de-sacs of contemporary creation, "Da Capo" is a salvific head-turner.

Jean Cotte, France-Soir Tiercé July 19, 1976

Da Capo's sound system A great technical feat

A profound musical work or a well-crafted hoax? The question remains after the first performances of "Da Capo", the "adventure of the quaternary era" presented by François-Bernard Mâche and Jean-Pierre Dougnac at the Cloître des Célestins. And it's all part of the Théâtre musical program organized each year by France-Culture and the festival.
The fact remains, however, that the technical performance of this show is beyond comprehension. There's such an abundance of sound devices that one thinks with awe of the gigantic work carried out by Jean Riant and the technicians who helped him put it all together. Jean Riant, who was at the Célestins cloister on Friday afternoon in the company of Jean Bernard, France-Culture's technical director, had no hesitation in describing the staging as "technically insane". The performance is all the more impressive for the fact that it was achieved in record time: for example, the micxros that had been ordered in November only arrived the day before the first performance. Da Capo" would not exist without technology, that much is clear. And Jean Riant goes even further, asserting that, in the end, it's the technical support that calls for creation. It's a bit like the worker supplying the sculptor with clay, providing him with his working tool. It's then up to the creator to manage: he can completely fail in his work, or on the contrary, produce a little marvel.
For the moment, the electro-acoustic profession does not exist in France. As Riant points out, "in this field, we live off the wind". Whereas in France, for example, the technology is highly advanced and electronic music is of a very high standard. In France, on the other hand, the creative process is constantly coming up against the shortcomings of technology, which is still too closely tied up in a commercial system (variety shows, jazz concerts, etc.).
Largely for this reason, the "Da Capo" set-up is not as complete as it should be: 31 microphones when sixty are needed, 40 lighting circuits instead of 80. There is also a financial problem, and in this respect we must take our hat off to France-Culmture, which is doing its patronage work to perfection: one figure suffices, the microphone that enables the harp to be heard costs a mere 2,600 francs.
Loudspeakers behind the instruments, spatial stereo with a row of 7 microphones placed behind the spectators, micro-contacts everywhere: these few aspects of the sound system give a good idea of the prowess achieved by the technicians for the show. Everyone's work is well worth the trip.

                        			Le Méridional La France July 20, 1976

A surprise awaited us at Les Célestins, with François-Bernard Mâche's musical show. It's not that Da Capo has a very deep philosophy, but it expresses, like a ballet without strict rules5/11/09/=, through sounds, noises and gestures, a kind of singular joy that is beautifully sacrilegious. The prohibitions of silence are defied, and throughout this vague story of a couple, reasonable attitudes are given the day off. The actors provoke a maelstrom of decibels, making all kinds of noise, thanks to the extraordinary slide for adults, which is part "Grand Huit", part roller coaster and part bachelor machine.

Matthieu Galley, Nouvelles Littéraires July 22, 1976

Another success for the Festival d'Avignon sponsored by France-Culture. After Mâche's "Da Capo", Claude Prey's "La grand-mère française". Two works by sharp, cultured ecorchés, aggregated as much as disaggregated, who wear their culture like a pruritus. But what is itching and burning in Mâche's work is flagellation in Prey's.
Jean Cotte, France-Soir July 23, 1976

...musical theater inaugurated this year by François-Bernard Mâche's Da Capo, directed by Jean-Pierre Dougnac: a silent...and musical eulogy of the return to original nudity as a remedy for social constraints, which shows the relevance of the discourse...
				Michel Boué, Humanité Sunday July 28, 1976

Novelties in Avignon
At the Célestins cloister, the official festival presents, with the support of France-Culture, a new work by composer François-Bernard Mâche, also a professor of philosophy, entitled "Da Capo". There's no question of "pop" music here; this is music on tape, and therefore in principle electro-acoustic music, but in reality it's instrumental sequences thinly disguised electronically, supported on stage by live musicians playing period instruments, among them avant-garde organist Xavier Darasse, who makes himself heard by improvising ravishingly on a small positive organ. The action - for there is an action, in which the spoken word plays a subordinate role, and which is expressed rather through the art of mime and dance - offers features similar to those of "Orphée 2000": In this case, it's about a human couple who are torn from their essential purity by the above all tragic tumult of modern life, represented above all by a set of winding staircases, daredevil peaks like gigantic tin cans, machines, pans, pitfalls and sound traps, stretching like a baroque castle of the year 2000 from one end of the stage to the other. As for the couple, they dance and mime in the nude, and in Yolande Marzolff's marvellous choreography, they succeed in convincing even the most stubborn of spectators of the veracity of their search for love, solitude and their profoundly essential being. Both are as beautiful as ancient gods, so why doesn't the program name them? When they come to give thanks at the end, normally dressed, bowing to the cheers of the audience, when the delighted author kisses the dancer's hand, you really get the impression that everything is right and exact in this show, that a goal has been reached on the path to the search for truth, far from any routine, far from the taboos and prejudices of an age now engulfed.

					Antoine Goléa, Carrefour, July 29 1976

"Da Capo": a musical that bears witness to magnificent teamwork
There's no lack of spirit in composer François-Bernard Mâche's musical Da capo, directed by Jean-Pierre Dougnac. Against a backdrop of pale light, which lends a strange poetic quality to all manner of everyday objects - pipes, rope ladders, old tires - musicians and dancers tell the story, each in their own way, of a human couple promised happiness, then crushed under constraints, or the confrontation between the turbulent fantasy of a clown and the heavy presence of a monument to determinism. A show that doesn't claim to teach anything, but only to highlight the contrasts that music needs to exist. It has to be said that by mixing the usual organ, bows and percussion with a host of bizarre noises produced by banging on everything on stage, the musicians did indeed achieve some astonishing musical chords, underlined by the creeping and leaping of the dancers, all of whom were excellent, especially the human couple. Da capo: a magnificent team effort, where everything was designed for the ear as well as the eye.

Hélène Cingria, Gazette de Lausanne July 31, 1976
...I've seen three shows worthy of the name:... "Da Capo" by François-Bernard... Da Capo" by François-Bernard Mâche. These three works are more than individual successes. They share common traits, the same way of seeing the world, approaching opera and experiencing music. This is extremely comforting. We are at last witnessing the birth of a style that is unique to our time.
					Jean Cotté Journal du dimanche August 1, 1976
Musical theater, the second wind of the Avignon Festival
Theater is in a bad way, and so is music. But musical theater is in excellent health... Out of six creations, three were successful. Aperghis' "Histoire de loups", Claude Prey's "La grand-mère française" and Mâche's "Da Capo" are the lucky winners of this trifecta.
						Jean Cotte, France-Soir August 4 1976

...Cavaillon has its melons, Avignon its musical theater (beware, the ghost of Wagner is lurking!). Already some thirty-six plays, since 1969. The concept being the most rubbery, we see the various constituent elements of the show amalgamate, shrug their shoulders or fade away.
For François-Bernard Mâche, the beginning was sound, and first and foremost the wind. "Da Capo", a vague history of mankind, from Adam and Eve (dressed up) to some apocalyptic war, is above all a pretext for making noise, and therefore music, by any means necessary. The stage is invaded by pipes of all kinds, shells, rattles, slides, drums with smooth strings running through them, barrels filled with pebbles, etc. (plus a few ancient traditional instruments). All operated by actors and musicians, speaking or not, rather sadly costumed and lit. The sound result is often interesting, but what fundamental difference is there between the musical gesture of an orchestral timpanist, for example, and that of an actor bouncing on a springboard?

					Sylvie de Nussac, L'Express August 16, 1976
The Festival gave its best in its own inventions: musical theater and open theater, which is taking on greater and greater autonomy within the Festival. We'll talk about that later. I wasn't able to see Da Capo, by François-Bernard Mâche, directed by J.P.Dougnac; the "echoes" in the audience, the "real audience" that paid for their tickets, were very enthusiastic.
			Christine Fouché, Réforme 53/56 av. du Maine August 28, 1976

...But François-Bernard Mâche's lavish, baroque "Da Capo", clearly more ambitious in its claim to "give sight to the music and hearing to the gesture", fails to weld the two elements together. On the one hand, as is always the case with Mâche's work, there is a skilful musical development based on the imitation of wild sounds provided here by an arsenal of antique instruments and a whole range of noisy machinery integrated into the set, and on the other, a series of allegorical scenes on the eternal cycle of humanity ("birth, education, love, work, society, war, death, the birth of a new child who will take the same path again").
This time, while the show is brimming with ingenuity, should we blame the lack of text alone for the unevenness of the episodes, the general lack of substance and the lack of cohesion of the whole?
			Maurice Fleuret, Le Nouvel Observateur September 2, 1976

This year, Avignon has devoted itself to "musical theater" (as far from "musical comedy" as operetta can be from opera) with great seriousness and rigor. Thus...with "Da Capo" François-Bernard Mâche, as a good student of the École Normale Supérieure, invited us to do some gymnastics of the mind, not at all restful, but very much in the image of our century.
			In, 35 rue de Clignancourt, Paris nov.-december 1976

As for François-Bernard Mâche, an excellent pioneer of experimental music, his landmark work Da Capo, performed at the Cloître des Célestins, from July 16 to 21, at the Avignon Festival, was the "highlight" of the festival, attracting much comment from music specialists and critics, who were astonished to discover, in this creation, an audio-visual and gestural ensemble creating a complete but completely new spectacle.

			L'Auvergne littéraire n°228, Clermont-Ferrand April 1977

As part of the "Théâtre musical" series (see Monday), France-Culture rebroadcasts this work by François-Bernard Mâche, performed at the 1976 Avignon Festival.
The music tells the story of our planet in the Quaternary era. Ancestral rites (birth, celebration, death...) are joined by modern myths governing human relationships: democracy, freedom, order, work...
The composer (who also wrote the script and text) remains faithful to the music of nature, to instruments of ancient tradition (Breton bombard, bagpipes, various flutes, Poitou oboe, Indian shanai, organ, percussion) and adds to it the abundant invention of sound devices that also form the decor.
From these suggestions, the director and set designer, with the participation of a clown, actor-dancers and musicians, organize this game of mirrors in which the imaginary merges with the everyday. Everyone can recognize the absurdities of our world and laugh at them. In this way, the old musical term "Da Capo" (start again) is given a symbolic meaning: what if the world started again differently?

Télérama July 13, 19