Bruno Serrou: With Andromède, you're taking on a full orchestra with two choirs and three pianos. Why three pianos?

François-Bernard Mâche: One of the characteristics of the work is the superimposition of tempi, and when you superimpose just two tempi, it's as if you had two bells ringing on different rhythms. So, to create the feeling of a polyphony of tempi, it is necessary to superimpose three of them. Each piano gives a specific tempo. I also wanted an abundance of notes, which I couldn't have achieved with two pianos. Finally, the distribution in space is more balanced, with a horizon marked out by the pianos distributed from the left to the right of the orchestra. 

Bruno Serrou: What is the total size of Andromède?

François-Bernard Mâche: Around one hundred and sixty people on stage. As long as you're given the opportunity to use large-scale resources, you're not going to make small savings on one or two musicians more or less!

Bruno Serrou: Did you avoid using understudies?

François-Bernard Mâche: The orchestration is indeed very divided, which means a very large score and the inherent material problems. The score represented a year's work for a thirty-five-minute work. I obtained an annual grant from the Ministry of Culture, which enabled me to take a sabbatical year, and I was able to interrupt my ordinary work to devote myself full-time to a musical project. When it was time to return to my job as a teacher, I decided to change assignments, and moved from secondary to higher education, defending my doctoral thesis.

Bruno Serrou: Is this work purely acoustic?

François-Bernard Mâche: After hearing the work, a number of people were convinced that they had heard a magnetic tape, when in fact it was a question of original instrumental effects, notably a passage where I use a combination of four flexatons, which some people mistook for electronic sounds.

Bruno Serrou: Was writing for a large number of acoustic instruments something new for you?

François-Bernard Mâche: Not completely. In addition to La peau du silence, I'd already written for medium-sized orchestras like Synergies, and even for large orchestra and piano with Rambaramb, where I used more or less the same magnetic tape as in Korwar. So I'd had some experience of orchestral writing since 1962.

Bruno Serrou: Did you try to write in such a way that the acoustic instruments sounded like electroacoustics?

François-Bernard Mâche: I've been doing that since La Peau du silence, when I consciously tried to extrapolate electroacoustic processes into orchestral writing. Andromède is a bit like a sequel to Kassandra, in that it incorporates mythical imagery into the music, since for me, music has affinities with myth. In the myth, Andromeda is delivered by Perseus, and for Perseus to deliver her, he has to make a certain number of encounters, receive magical gifts that will protect him, and the number 3 is very present, which also explains the presence of three pianos. Perseus meets the three Grées, three old women who are beyond the ocean and have only one eye for the three of them. To compel them to show him the route he must take, he takes their one eye from them as they exchange it, and only gives it back to them in exchange for the information he needs. He also receives three talismans from Hermes, with which he fights the three gorgons Stheno, Euryale and Medusa. Andromeda is not, however, a work with a program. I don't recount the legend, but by writing a sequence, I immerse myself in the spirit of the myth. The sea and Trinitarian symbols are part of it.

François-Bernard Mâche, De la musique, des langues et des oiseaux, Michel de Maule -INA 2007, p.259-261