Kubler super-star

The Accroche Note ensemble, a regular guest on the local scene, performed at the Institut in front of a packed audience of die-hard fans. Françoise Kubler, whose voice grows in stature from concert to recital, created the event of the festival with her deeply moving interpretation of Muwatalli by François-Bernard Mâche. Our dark muse, straight out of a Munch painting, left the bitter shores of Viennese Sprechgesang to follow in the footsteps of Kabyle Taos Amrouche. Her usual Strasbourg accomplices (Angster, Collet and Seban) were at the top of their game, as usual.

                    Roland Spener La République du Centre 22 March 1988

As in each of their appearances, the eclectics of Accroche Note pinpoint the sensation and nail you to your pleasure with the instrumental gesture and the thousand facets of the voice... As the Orient is stubborn, F-B. Mâche ruminates on a subtle and exotic discourse...

                               M.M. Les nouvelles d'Orléans 25 March 1988

Simplest was most striking: in Muwatalli, the solo voice sang short phrases in insistent rhythms with some hummed flights of fancy, rising to a well-placed climax.

                             Robert Maycock, The Independent 6 July 1988

 A second recital by the same group featured pieces by François-Bernard Mâche, and in particular a stimulating group of works close to the primitive. Kubler sang a postulated Hittite incantation with conviction and simplicity.

                                          P.G. The Times, 6 July 1988

The rood screen room at the Musée de l'Œuvre Notre-Dame is a splendid place, filled with medieval statues, the originals of those in the cathedral. An unusual environment, under the remains of a cathedral gable, for voice, clarinets and percussion dedicated to contemporary works that paradoxically make reference to the most distant antiquity.
The "Cathedral Builders" exhibition uses computer-generated imagery to illustrate the structure of medieval architecture. Should we see a parallel in the approach of François-Bernard Mâche, who seems to be reconstructing, in a new way, music from the past that is indecipherable as such, but using linguistic references to write it down, and being more concerned with an approach that would allow immediate perception? In the comments on the programme, there is a subtle discourse on models, which the composer, a musicologist and scholar, once made the subject of his thesis, and on a 'ritual of oblivion', which in its own way updates not so much a mythical past as the creative gesture. A touch of archaeology and the imagination immersed in modernity: the cocktail produces some very pretty results.
The Hittists [sic] revisited through the voice, with a zest of sensual orientalism and a sometimes baroque narration (Muwatalli), the Etruscans with a more raucous diction (Rasna). Françoise Kubler excels in vocal modulation. Jean-Michel Collet, on the zarb, recreates the incantation of Nubian percussion with all the agility of his hands. In 'Aulodie', Armand Angster's small soprano clarinet veers towards Hellenism, against a backdrop of a magnetic tape that uses digital synthesis to produce noises in almost direct time, first a little petomaniacal, then becoming more vibraphone-like, with the toms juxtaposed and blending happily in polyrhythm.
The final piece, commissioned by the French government for 'Accroche Note' and with the Latin title 'Aliunde', combines voice, clarinets, percussion and an Akaï S900 with Midi keyboard. The work is a little anecdotal in its structure, but produces some interesting effects, a climate at least endearing in the exemplary performance of the Strasbourg group that must have been appreciated by the author present. The audience packed into the museum hall could not fail to be seduced by this concert, so original in its content.

                                   M.M. Dernières Nouvelles d'Alsace, 9 or 10.11.1989

A pioneer in extending the sound universe of Western art music, François-Bernard Mâche has long been involved in two fundamentally opposed but not incompatible directions, as his most successful works demonstrate. His taste for the unheard of has led him on the one hand to experiment with the ever-expanding possibilities of electro-acoustics and on the other to consider the musical wealth of civilisations that are extremely remote, both in space and in time. Mâche's work sometimes borders on archaeology, particularly when it concerns extinct languages. Françoise Kubler's truly 'inhabited' interpretation of the Sacred Songs shows a remarkable match between the vocal treatment and the phonetic line, revisited after centuries or even millennia of oblivion: psalmody for the Hittite incantation, micro-intervals for the Etruscan prayer and the search for a certain triviality in the Gallic invocation.

                                 Pierre Gervasoni, Diapason May 1993

...these pages...make use of ancient metres and Etruscan, Gallic and Hittite texts. A world premiere and a great success for the Accroche-Notes ensemble in the service of an insufficiently known composer.

                                         la Marseillaise, 30 May 1993

In his Trois chants sacrés, the archaeologist Mâche presents mysterious ancient rituals based on Hittite (Muwatalli), Etruscan (Rasna) and Gallic (Maponos) texts. He succeeds in giving each of the three pieces their own ancestral character, the music seeming to have survived the centuries intact. Françoise Kubler, to whom the third piece is dedicated, gives a profound and vocally perfect performance... In its cultural and ethnic diversity, far from overweening intellectualism, François-Bernard Mâche's creation proves to be highly expressive, even if the apparent hermeticism of the first listening must first be pierced.
     					                    Bruno Serrou, Compact June 1993

François-Bernard Mâche is a luminous thinker of new music. As a composer, he has followed a now classic path. He started out as a serialist and ended up with a mystical modulation... It is one of the sweet characteristics of French musical intellocracy that he has found this 'third way', full of colonial nostalgia, and therefore rather art deco... All this required a great deal of inspiration - religious....Françoise Kubler, at the height of her trance (the picture is missing), barely manages to implode... I'm thinking... of Franz Kafka's The Mouse Singer. No one knows why she sings, no one hears how. She is there to sing and she sings.
                                            Jean Vermeil, Répertoire June 1993

For the Festival d'Automne in Paris or Musica in Strasbourg, the song of foreign sirens is no longer the only one to be heard. Since Françoise Kubler took up the torch from Cathy Berberian and Martine Viard, the Accroche-Note ensemble, of which she is the driving force with clarinettist Armand Angster, has flown from success to triumph: their latest disc, devoted to François-Bernard Mâche, is one of the finest ever recorded with one of those modest and profound musicians whom the compact disc does well to honour at last.

Henri-Louis de La Grange, Le Nouvel Observateur n°1508, 30.9-6.10.1993

The Trois chants sacrés by François-Bernard Mâche, the most beautiful part of the evening, offer a melodic richness for the voice that seems unheard of. Despite the obvious references to ancient and oriental vocal techniques, this is a vocal aesthetic that truly extends the possibilities and demands athletic vocal qualities.

                                           M.F. Midi Libre, 28 January 1995

François-Bernard Mâche is a cultivated musician. In other words, he likes to connect things that might seem far apart. In 1958, at the age of 23, he joined Pierre Schaeffer's Groupe de recherches musicales while still a student at the Ecole Normale de la Rue d'Ulm. With a degree in Greek archaeology, this associate professor of literature is no stranger to cutting-edge technology. His works, his style and even his working methods also aim to reconcile seemingly opposing elements: the Ancient (not to say the Antique) and the Modern, the East and the West, the distant and the near.
Today, François-Bernard Mâche's catalogue includes some sixty works. Khnoum, Planh, Kassandra, Styx - the titles of these works speak volumes about the universe the musician has constructed. They betray a great love of Greek mythology and of the world's languages. In the latter area, he has a soft spot for languages that are about to disappear and for those whose sounds we know but not their meaning. Emblematic of his relationship with the languages that provide models for his compositions - his Trois chants sacrés for solo voice call on Hittite, Etruscan and Gallic. The work is disturbing, both for its simple beauty and for the abolition of time it creates.

                        Dominique Druhen, Libération, 11-12 February 1995

In Rasna (Sacred Songs), there is a great deal of contemplation. As the company fades backstage, Françoise Kubler's voice physically crosses Lucinda Childs' body as one walks towards the other. We are gripped. 

                                  Marie-Christine Vernay, Libération 29-30 July 1995

As for the solo voice, punctuated by exotic percussion, we find Françoise Kubler, inhabiting the esoteric Trois chants sacrés (1984) with a spellbinding presence.

              Christian Fruchart, Dernières Nouvelles d'Alsace 28 January 2004

Music beyond measure. "Médusa", François-Bernard Mâche's tribute to his home town.
Permanence of the musical myth.
When music no longer appeals solely to our feelings or emotions, but to a distant, rediscovered memory.

This girl is possessed. The vestal of a proud ritual, she brandishes the moon-tambourine of the Gallic god Maponos, drunk with a sumptuous blasphemous incantation, invested with a wild and radiant joy. The pantheistic triumph of an untranslatable sacred song, whose voluptuous accents François-Bernard Mâche delivers and Françoise Kubler liberates the dazzled, forgotten emotion.
            Music of the origins, of all times, born of a blood older than the stars. Mâche, ferryman, intercessor? At once the master of a lost and rediscovered duration, the chemist of a sound matter that is consumed by new beginnings. One would have to coin the term "soprano-cosmogonic" to approach the incandescence of a song with high notes of lava, to describe the cultivated luminescence of the timbre, the iridescent modulations of subtle archaisms, the sinuosities revived and tamed. Kubler celebrates a devouring cult with the corrupting grace of a warrior goddess. The lost language of the Celts lives again in her, unsubdued and ever resurgent, nourishing milk, divine ambrosia. Mâche's music still has the power to belong to those who listen to it. And above all, it is free of all contingent references. Like its performer and dedicatee. 

(Photo: Françoise Kubler, the incandescence of a reinvented song).

                 Roland Duclos, La Montagne, 13 or 14 June 2005

Mâche with Messiaen

An appointment had been made for Monday evening at the Eglise du Bouclier in Strasbourg, and those who made it were well inspired. There were many young people there, often musicians themselves, students and friends in a musical field that Accroche Note in all its configurations explores with exemplary open-mindedness...
Their programme for this Monday (reflets/dna of 13 December), with friendly commentary by François-Bernard Mâche, was an inspiration to all... Armand Angster, Natanaëlle Marie, Christophe Beau and Markus Belheim had chosen in turn to salute, and thus close, the centenary year of Olivier Messiaen's birth with a performance of the composer's passionate Quatuor pour la fin du temps... to which was introduced the strange and intense beauty of the rituals suggested by Mâche's Trois chants sacrés - borrowed from Hittite, Etruscan and Gallic texts - for solo voice, backed by a few rare percussive motifs: Françoise Kubler is, in every respect, the ideal interpreter of these songs, and here she once again demonstrates her sovereignty.

                             A.W., dernières nouvelles d'Alsace 18.12.2008

Mâche with Messiaen

An appointment had been made for Monday evening at the Eglise du Bouclier in Strasbourg, and those who made it were very well inspired. There were plenty of young people there, many of them musicians themselves, students and friends in a musical field that Accroche Note explores with exemplary open-mindedness...
Their programme for this Monday (reflets/dna of 13 December), with friendly commentary by François-Bernard Mâche, was an inspiration to all... Armand Angster, Natanaëlle Marie, Christophe Beau and Markus Belheim had chosen in turn to salute, and thus close, the centenary year of Olivier Messiaen's birth with a performance of the composer's passionate Quatuor pour la fin du temps... to which was introduced the strange and intense beauty of the rituals suggested by Mâche's Trois chants sacrés - borrowed from Hittite, Etruscan and Gallic texts - for solo voice, backed by a few rare percussive motifs: Françoise Kubler is, in every respect, the ideal interpreter of these songs, and here she once again demonstrates her sovereignty.

                                A.W., dernières nouvelles d'Alsace 18.12.2008

Mâche and Messiaen to deny death
The Accroche Note ensemble's Advent programme is a little out of place, but nonetheless exciting.

At a time when the Christmas calendar is full of tender hymns and songs of joy, Françoise Kubler, Armand Angster and their friends have not really chosen to join in the chorus - with no intention, incidentally, of taking the festivities in the wrong direction.
The two works on the evening's programme are François-Bernard Mâche's Trois chants sacrés pour voix seule and Olivier Messiaen's Quatuor pour la fin du temps. The unclassifiable monody of the former and the absolute classicism of the latter are obviously a world away from the wonder of the Nativity scene. They are nonetheless two forms of prayer and meditation.
The Three Sacred Songs are inspired by Hittite, Etruscan and Gallic texts, the content of the last two of which remains hidden or obscure. With the voice of Françoise Kubler transformed into a great officiant, François-Bernard Mâche becomes, in his own words, an "archaeomusicologist" in search of "primordial images", archetypes "floating in the unconscious", and places the listener on the threshold of a fascinating mystery. As he goes on to say of these songs, isn't music that seeks out the soul of lost rituals "a tool for denying death"?...
                                                                       Christian Fruchart, December 2008