Mâche, Darasse, Nunes. New stars in music

On Saturday afternoon, three composers (unknown to IRCAM) , Mâche, Darasse and Nunes, captivated the audience in Radio-France's Studio 105, which once again proved too small.
François-Bernard Mâche (1935) is the intellectual (a graduate of the Ecole Normale Supérieure and a professor of Greek), the theoretician and the composer of extreme refinement, who is at the same time convinced of the magical power of the universe, and who does not make music "from concepts". Such is his Kassandra, the revealing title of a work in which "lucidity" recognises all that it owes to its "passionate source": for Cassandra the seer refused to give herself to Apollo "who condemned her not to be believed when she foretold the future". The score is by no means a literal illustration of the myth, but an attempt, no less lucid and passionate, to take possession of the world, a sonic communion between the voices of nature (the storm, the fire, the bees, the unknown languages) recorded on tape, and those of the orchestra, of Western man, who imitate each other, complement each other, play and dialogue as equals with an admirable lyricism, even more deployed than in the beautiful mixed works of the Korwar series.

                        Jacques Longchampt Le Monde 14 February 1978

François-Bernard Mâche, one of the most original and inventive French composers of our time, has produced several very interesting recordings, all of which have unfortunately disappeared from the catalogues. It is therefore particularly fortunate that the GRM, of which he was one of the most active members in his heroic days, is now devoting a magnificent recording to him, bringing together three very recent works. All three belong to the category of 'mixed' works, but here the originality of the approach lies in the fact that the instrumentalists react to the sounds of the magnetic tape and enter into a dialogue with it in a kind of joust, a tournament, that is as exciting as it gets. Above all, the tapes themselves, escaping the banalities of electronics, are made of natural sounds, the cries of birds or other animals, rain, wind, storm etc., manipulated or not, amplified or not. The result is an 'ecological' music, full of sunshine and joie de vivre, invigorating and rugged, verdant and rocky at the same time. Kassandra, for 14 instruments and tape, won a well-deserved Prix Italia in 1977, and remains one of Mâche's most perfect successes, one of his most original and substantial works.

                    Harry Halbreich, Harmonie-Opéra No. 26, December 1982

In François-Bernard Mâche's still small discography, this disc will undoubtedly take pride of place. It brings together three recent works of the highest quality and which, moreover, perfectly reflect the aesthetic credo of their composer - an Attic classicism fertilising the most contemporary discoveries...
Kassandra (1974), for 14 instruments and tape, recaptures the tragic grandeur of the Greek heroine punished by Apollo for refusing him and condemned to predict the future in the midst of general disbelief.
Here, François-Bernard Mâche has succeeded in composing an extremely dense page, in which the logical sequence of the ten sequences is rigorously laid out, and in which, above all, language becomes the bearer of emotion and humanity, of eternity and poetry: The superimposition and juxtaposition of Basque, Fijian, Kannara and Tibetan texts developed in mid-voice over astonishing orchestral sonorities born of medieval instruments (crumhorn, bombard, rackett) or oriental instruments (shanaï, zummara) help to create a timeless and spatial sonic magic, where timbre becomes the primary compositional element and thus the sole generator of music.

                               Jean Gallois, Diapason January 1983

François-Bernard Mâche: from Agrégation to electro-acoustics

The received idea - obviously false - is that electro-acoustics is the refuge of non-musicians, not to say conservatory failures. The truth is that the most outstanding exponents of electro-acoustic music have 'letters'. Pierre Henry and Jean-Claude Eloy, to name but two of the best known, had remarkable classical music studies; as for François-Bernard Mâche, he studied brilliantly with Messiaen while continuing his literary studies at the École Normale Supérieure. He taught contemporary poetry for six years, while discovering cultures outside the Christian West and learning the techniques of electro-acoustic music.

He was the first to apply the methods of linguistics and semiology to musical analysis and composition. A co-founding member of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (G.R.M.) in 1958, he was quick to abandon purely electronic compositions in favour of combining tape, noise, keyboard or voice and instruments in 'mixed' works. Honoured in 1966 by the discoverer Hermann Scherchen and by Polish radio, then in the throes of creative exploration, he was a guest at avant-garde festivals (Royan, Warsaw, Tanglewood), took part in the highlights of the Persepolis Festival and achieved international renown.
Unlike Pierre Henry and Jean-Claude Eloy, his use of pure electro-acoustics has been relatively discreet, and he draws heavily on the sounds of nature, primordial water and, under the distant influence of Messiaen, birdsong. Having become an independent and original creator, he avoided the traps and pitfalls of both experimentation and intellectuality, giving primacy to the physical substance of life through the omnipotence of rhythm. The famous Toccata, the climax of Korwar, a piece of Melanesian inspiration for which Elisabeth Chojnacka has become the privileged interpreter, is an illustration of this. It is also illustrated by the rhythmic character that Mâche confers on the evocation of water, thereby rejecting any connotation of fluidity. 

Material sensitivity
In 1975, for Mâche's first recording, Maurice Garcin chose the works that had been the subject of an evening at the 1973 Royan Festival. The performers were none other than the creators, Jean-Pierre Drouet, whose darbouka beats had nothing to envy of African musicians, Chojnacka and the Labèque sisters. Mâche's second recording has just been released (INA-GRM 9.107 ****). It is accompanied by an analysis by Daniel Charles, director of the music department at the University of Paris VIII. In order to gain a better understanding of the models that inspired Mâche, Daniel Charles discusses, in the light of the exegesis of Caillois and Souriau, the secret but obvious links that exist between our sensibility and "the structures whose unfolding gives nature its spectacular variety". Certain structures of matter, "reputed to be inert and therefore insensitive", are strangely harmonious with those we perceive on our own scale. Mâche strives to reach out to the structures of inert matter, and in so doing he arouses the "material imagination" evoked by the philosopher Bachelard throughout his work. He is no longer content to transfer what can be imitated (the sound of a storm, the babbling of water, etc.), but to return to the inner source of resemblance. In his work, water becomes a rhythmic element.
Mâche's second recording includes three recent pieces, all marked by a reference to the Hellenic world, for which he has a particular affection. One, Sopiana, written for flute, piano and tape, is an astonishing exercise in which Pierre-Yves Artaud's flute competes with, counterpoints or rhythms the song of two birds. The other two, Kassandra and Amorgos, were written for 14 and 12 instruments and tape. While Amorgos (1979) gives water a rhythmic function, Kassandra, on a theme of tragic intensity, creates an almost planetary and temporal syncretism (Basque, Fijian and Tibetan fragments are superimposed on medieval and Asian instrumental sounds, creating a sonic magic that makes timbre the organiser of the celebration.
Pierre-Yves Artaud, Jacqueline Méfano at the keyboard and Boris de Vinogradov at the helm of the Nouvel Orchestre Philharmonique and the soloists of Ensemble 2E2M are to be congratulated for their contribution to our knowledge of one of the most original composers of the new music.

                                              Lacassagne, Le Midi libre, 13 March 1983

At the SMCQ: a whale and birds...

It was 'Music and Nature' last night at the SMCQ. Or "La Symphonie pastorale à notre façon". We heard: a warbler chirping for 35 well-counted minutes (the Messiaen); a dialogue between various tape-recorded birds and a flute-bird on stage (Sopiana); an amplified flute and cello imitating a whale's lament and two hands in the piano strings suggesting the cetacean's movements in the ocean (Vox Balaenae); finally, storm sequences - driving rain and thunder in counterpoint (Kassandra).
The second half of the programme was devoted to François-Bernard Mâche, a French composer who is passing through here (although we don't know exactly what he came to do). There was little to say about the music we heard, except that it is very difficult to play. Lise Daoust rivalled the virtuosity of the pre-recorded birds and the Ensemble de la SMCQ solved the problems of collective polyrhythm well.
The piece by American George Crumb, heard before the interval, is a series of sound effects. Easy, childish and musically rubbish.
In the end, what we retain from these two long hours of listening is the 35 minutes of Messiaen's La Fauvette des jardins. Music as much as sound; appallingly difficult to play, talkative, delirious, colourful. Another tour de force from Louis-Philippe Pelletier. And it's almost a spectacle to watch him play. But he would have needed a brighter piano (like Yvonne Loriod's on the disc).
Very few people were there again last night.

                       Claude Gingras La Presse, Montreal, Friday, April 11, 1986

(CD INA-GRM Musidisc)

Co-founder with Pierre Schaeffer of the Groupe de recherches musicales, François-Bernard Mâche has been composing highly original works for forty years, based on studio processing of sound models - natural or cultural - that are far removed from the world in which we live. Whether it's linguistic, ornithological or aquatic, the recorded material always determines a highly artistic creation. However, music made with magnetic tape (in the past) seems more static than music made with samplers (in the present). The former remains broadly in the realm of imagery - as in Kassandra (1977), for example - while the latter truly evolves in the realm of magic, as in Manuel de résurrection (1998), inspired by ancient Egypt, which strikingly combines fleshy vocality, rhythmic jubilation and electronic primitivism.

                          Pierre Gervasoni , Le Monde, 4 September 1999