Bruno Serrou: The next work you selected was composed in February 1962 and premiered in 1968. It's called La Peau du silence. What is the significance of this title? 

François-Bernard Mâche: It's beautiful, isn't it? It's not mine, but it comes from an extraordinary expression that appears in a poem by Seféris that I particularly like, and to which I still refer today, La Citerne. There's a passage that says: "May the skin of the silence that strangles us suddenly soften beneath our touch". These words struck me as a poetic evocation of the power of music: to caress the skin of silence...

Bruno Serrou: What are the issues in this work?

François-Bernard Mâche: There are several. The first, the power of language as a model, is central to the work. The middle movement, the most developed, bears the title Poème, inspired in fact by Sterna de Seféris, a poem that is articulated by the instruments. The second focuses on the integration of natural models. The introductory movement incorporates recordings made on the shores of the Pacific Ocean, in California, by sound recordists seeking to bear witness to the primitive form of stereo. In the 1950s they experimented with 'dual' stereo, using two-needle players running in parallel on a two-zone disc. One needle played the left track, the other the right. And to demonstrate the power of this stereo, recordings of all sorts of natural sounds were made for the sole purpose of technical demonstrations. I was struck by the beauty of this demonstration. In short, what was happening with sound was a bit like what was happening with images through the microscope. The electronic microscope can be used to explore things of astounding beauty, but only scientists can use it, since the purpose of the tool is to gain a deeper understanding of the finest structures in matter. Dual stereo gave me access to such unexpected natural beauty. In particular, I discovered a recording of Pacific waves that was so beautiful that I decided to adopt it as is. But it was too long, at eight to ten minutes, for a first movement. I therefore proceeded to a relative reduction, extrapolating durations that were homothetic to the original, dividing the whole by two and a half, to obtain the measure I wanted. This is how we hear the sound of waves, the cries of seagulls and a sound buoy being shaken by the waves. These elements suggested a specific style of writing for the orchestra. As the waves are regular but different, I devised a varied ostinato. This movement was the only score I ever presented to Pierre Boulez. After making an appointment with him, who received me kindly, I showed him the beginning of La Peau du silence and, on the first page, he said to me: "Oh, there's an ostinato", with the shocked look of someone who has just found a slug in a salad. For him, that was the one thing to avoid in a work, at a time when serialism aimed to avoid repeating anything and to avoid any resemblance. I replied: "Yes, indeed, there is an ostinato... but a varied ostinato", and he dismissed the variation with a gesture, "Yes, varied, but it's still an ostinato". And he invited me to follow his courses in Basel. I had neither the possibility nor the desire to do so, and he left me with this sentence to which I didn't immediately react: "What interests me in a diamond is not that it's brilliant, it's that it cuts. A very Boulezian phrase; a nice one. I was struck by the spirit of the staircase, because in retrospect I thought I should have replied: "an industrial diamond is enough in this case"... But I didn't say that to him.

Bruno Serrou: As well as using language as a model, you also use sound from the same perspective...

François-Bernard Mâche: In this work there is indeed language and natural sounds, those of the sea and those of nocturnal animals. The work is in two parts, with a fairly symmetrical arch structure, and the two movements surrounding the central nucleus incorporate into the orchestral writing some of the manipulative processes of electroacoustic music. Significantly, one is entitled Manipulations, the other Montage. The latter juxtaposes sound objects like stickers in a montage on magnetic tape. In fact, this pre-existed electroacoustic music, since it's basically what Debussy did, juxtaposing short motifs, which he generally repeated twice, before moving on to the next. This is already pure montage, and the opposite of Brahmsian thematic development. 

Bruno Serrou: Debussy's phrases are very short indeed, unlike those of Brahms, for example...

François-Bernard Mâche: They are shorter, yes... but he repeats them twice. It's another use of time, which is very strange. Why does he repeat them twice? Nicolas Ruwet has given this question a great deal of thought. This music stutters, in a way, but this stuttering is always expressive, and doesn't give the impression of rehashing. It's very interesting. Ruwet has shown that the process has several different functions.

Bruno Serrou: For example, Debussy gives time to identify his micro-cells, whereas Webern never repeats.

François-Bernard Mâche: It's probably because the novelty of the writing required repetition in order to be better understood.

Bruno Serrou: Webern, on the other hand, doesn't give you the time to do it, unless you listen to the whole work again. 

François-Bernard Mâche: Right.

François-Bernard Mâche, De la musique, des langues et des oiseaux, Michel de Maule -INA 2007, p.229-232