Reviews of Aliunde

François-Bernard Mâche...has a neat line in rather suggestive non-verbal dialogue between, say, voice and contrabass clarinet, but often lets his processes run on too long...A new ensemble piece, Aliunde, strung together some trenchant duets and trios with bland electronic chords.

                          Robert Maycock, The Independent 6 July 1988

The idea of a model underlies François-Bernard Mâche's creative thinking, precisely in order to explore original avenues. The use of a Midi keyboard (demonstrated the same day at the FNAC Forum) enables the sequencer to transform sound in real time, creating new timbres that can also be amplified. In 'Aliunde' (= from elsewhere), the composer managed these resources with constant delight. Mâche's piece was the most beautiful revelation of this Accroche-Note evening.

            Dernières Nouvelles d'Alsace n°221, Friday 23 September 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

In October 1988, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the French Institute in Budapest welcomed François-Bernard Mâche for a conference on electroacoustic music. On this occasion, the Academy's Institute of Musicology organised its first concert devoted to French electroacoustic music (works for tape, mixed works and works in real time), presenting four works premiered in Hungary by François-Bernard Mâche, Marc Battier and Jean-Claude Risset. This report on the concert was initially requested by Hungarian Radio.

In order to introduce F.B.Mâche to the Hungarian public, it must be emphasised that he is one of the rare composers who approach his work from a position of philosophical reflection and profound knowledge of our culture and its foundations, as well as a very personal stance in the field of aesthetics. Having taught ancient Greek and published a book and some fifty articles on music, aesthetics, linguistics and mythology, F.B.Mâche claims that his main task is to find the archetypes common to culture, music and nature. According to his credo, the primary function of the composer is to seek answers to the diverse sounds of the world around us and to interpret the sound phenomena of nature musically. To achieve these aims, F.B.Mâche turned, many years ago, to an in-depth study of the myths, rituals and linguistic structures of virtually unknown peoples and ancient civilisations, as well as the strophic and varied songs of birds or replicants. Today, in the age of new musical technology, composers use the digital sampler to discover new models by analysing sounds captured in nature or the specific sounds of little-known instruments from the Far East, Africa or other continents.
Over the course of the evening, we were able to explore two of the composer's creative periods:

- NOCTURNE, dating from 1981, is based on an ancient musical form: the canon, used as a starting point and reincarnated in a contemporary way. 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 of 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 it presents 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 arduous piano part was interpreted by Endre Olsvay.

- In his work ALIUNDE (From Elsewhere), written in 1988 for the Ensemble "Accroche-Note", the composer uses the new electroacoustic instrument - the digital sampler AKAI S 900 linked to a MIDI keyboard - as well as the ensemble of a soprano, a contrabass clarinet (or clarinet), tablas and percussion.
The aim of this original and as yet uncommonly sonorous reunion is to revive a 'mythical' dramaturgy using the most ancient formulas of performance and ritual, while relying on the most recent musical technology. The Hungarian performers accepted the challenge on a 'first approach' level, although Ildikó Fodor, Endre Olsvay, Gellért Tihanyi, Béla Faragó and László Juhász had a very difficult task on this occasion. In this context, it is not possible to present the construction of this creation, which is so rich and complex from the point of view of content. To sum up what appears to be the most essential aspect of this 20-minute work, it must be emphasised that the composer revives - even if in an unintentional way - the aesthetic stance of the Beethoven of the VIth SYMPHONY and the Debussy of LA MER and LES NOCTURNES, when he sets to music the cathartic relationship between man and nature - the initiatory relationship that exists between human beings and the forces of nature, mysterious, indecipherable, sometimes frightening, at other times moving and sublime.
The work's sequences include:
         1) an introduction to the imaginary rite using various secret signals ;
	    2) an interplay of responses from the soprano and contrabass clarinet with the sampler, which describe in gestures the feelings of fear and flight in the face of the unfathomable sounds of an unknown labyrinth of nature.
         3) After a moment of contemplation, after the tone of enchantment.
         4) The middle sections express the penetration to a higher degree into the unknown forest of noises, tremors and unarticulated tapping.
         5) Then the march - or 'fugue' - through the sounds of distant, cosmic spheres represents the final stage before
         6) mystical initiation, fusion, assimilation and union with the supreme forces of nature.

The heroine of this itinerary is the soprano, whose "companion" is the clarinet or contrabass clarinet. The richness of the sound of the natural world and of an imaginary rite comes from the different blocks of sound sampled and then distributed over the register sections of the MIDI keyboard. The various blocks alternate according to the sequences of the piece. The sources used and then mixed by the composer and placed in series on the keyboard are, for example, the following: a series of 'calls' (white noise, damaru, sparrow, cicada); Japanese and Greek bells; balasantur (balafon + santur); a series of percussion instruments (shaker, glass, toms, cow bell, ball block, tambourine, cicada, sparrow, rattle); etc.
What was only possible in a concert hall by imagination or with 16- or 24-track tapes during the great manifestations of "soundscapes" until very recently (as, for example, in John Cage's ROARATORIO), is now becoming accessible and practicable with surprising simplicity. Thanks to personal computer music systems, the sounds of a meadow or a forest become partners for singers or traditional instrumentalists in the same way and as well as any instrument from the known "historical families".
The work ALIUNDE is both a completely new and successful attempt at musical form and at synthesising different sound sources. May this work encourage Hungarian composers to follow this path full of surprises and prodigious discoveries!
                                              Márta Grabócz, C.I.R.E.M., March 1990