http://www.univ-montp3.fr/~solomos/Lestu.html
Notes on François-Bernard Mâche and L'estuaire du temps, Makis Solomos
First publication in Méthodes nouvelles, musiques nouvelles. Musicology and
creation, edited by Márta Grabócz, Strasbourg,
Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg, 1999, p. 237-249.

"Art would like, by its increasing spiritualisation, by its separation from nature
to revoke precisely this divorce from which it suffers and which it inspires".
Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory.

François-Bernard Mâche is one of the (rare) composers who have managed to challenge the formalism inherent  in modernity, without going completely against it - neither premodern nor postmodern, he defines himself as a "postprogressist" [1] . Indeed, while he insists that, for art, it is the ends and not the means that count - the problem of contemporary music is not one of material or even syntax, it is first and foremost stylistic and aesthetic; it concerns the symbolic force that music acquires or not", he writes in his book Musique, mythe, nature [2] - it is not to restore conventional purposes or to subscribe to consumerism. His musical work and his theoretical reflection [3] open up a constantly new path, insofar as it has not yet been
little explored and remains a burning issue.
It is beyond the scope of this brief essay to describe this path. We will confine ourselves
to evoke two of its most obvious moments, combining reading notes on Music, myth, nature
 with analytical notes on a recent work by Mâche, L'estuaire du temps [4] . First performed in 1993, L'estuaire du temps, a large-scale fresco (28 minutes) in three movements - offering, according to the composer, a reflection on time [5] - is written for orchestra and sampler [6]. Its two extreme movements will provide an opportunity to reflect on the two moments in question: the notion of 'model' and that of 'archetype'.

1. The 'model
At the heart of Mâche's thinking and his musical work is the notion of 'model'. This notion seems to me to derive from a thesis: the refusal of music to withdraw into what could be qualified as  immanence. Such a retreat characterised a large part of modernity, particularly in the 1950s and 60s when, as part of the prevailing structuralism music came close to being defined as a pure self-regulating system: anything foreign 
to its self-functioning had to be evacuated - meaning, interpretation, the audience, history, the subject, etc. [7] . Of course, this retreat - which can be understood as an extreme evolution of the old idea of music as language, language being reduced here to a pure combination of signs - only really materialised in a few
very rare works, such as Boulez's famous Structures. But the danger - the danger of music merely confirming a social order that we know only too well - was real, and Mâche was one of the first composers to realise this, hence his proposal to move away from immanence. Listen to Musique, mythe, nature:

"The only profound musical crisis of our time concerns the why, not the how, of music. The secular era of the supposedly autonomous musical pseudo-language seems to me to be over. Music is no longer "the only signifying system deprived of a referent", as has been wrongly said. This purity has always been illusory, and now real sounds have  flooded it with new material: there are better things to do than worry about
creating new ones. Neither the invention of forms nor the invention of sounds appear sufficient goals for
the composer's work. The crisis of contemporary music, and its relative social failure call for a solution other than a political or technical one. My basic hypothesis is that these difficulties are due above all to the Promethean illusion that the composer, like the technocrats, could create a second nature, freed from the servitude of the first by a sovereign arbitrariness, and that music, instead of being energy or raw material, was a set of signs that could be socially exchangeable, like paper money" [8].

Immanence - in Mâche's terms: the priority of the how over the why, the so-called autonomy of the musical, the invention of forms and sounds as ends in themselves, the reduction of music to a pure combination of signs - can be short-circuited by adopting the notion of model. Hence its primary meaning: without being
properly speaking the place of transcendence, the model provides a way out of immanence because it 
introduces reality into music. In this respect, Mâche's development is significant. At first, models are used in an abstract way - there is a simple "model transfer" [9]. Thus, in Safous mélè (1959), Mâche establishes
correspondences that are "largely conventional, and often arbitrary" [10] between a poem by Sappho (which, incidentally, is also sung) and the instrumental accompaniment: "the result is a kind of sound cryptogram" [11]. Subsequently, the correspondences between the chosen model (i.e. the element outside the musical work, borrowed from reality) can become more concrete, thanks in particular to the use of the
sonagraphe (which analyses the spectral composition of the model), as in Le son d'une voix (1964), in which Mâche analyses vowel formants before making certain correspondences. [12] . But, above all, whereas the first models used were borrowed solely from language, La Peau du silence (1962) [13] introduced, for the first time models derived entirely from nature: its two extreme movements use the model of the sea, which would later often inspire Mâche. Finally, a work with a significant title, Rituel d'oubli (1969), defines a final stage: the real (the model)  is present as such (recorded tape) and is juxtaposed or superimposed on its instrumental correspondences. Some borderline works are defined as 'phonographies': they involve only the real, and  the composer's intervention is limited, like that of the photographer, to 'manipulations' [14] .

The originality of Mâche's approach lies in the fact that he has not hesitated to take a decisive step : instead of transferringf the model (i.e. its abstract concretisation by a code which means that the model is not perceptible when the work is heard, but only detectable through analysis) substituting a more concrete materialisation - I would point out, however that the transfer of the model has never totally disappeared from his work. Indeed, starting from a model (an element outside the work) is nothing new in the twentieth century:
Bartók and the golden ratio, Xenakis and the probabilistic laws governing gases, the serials and magic squares, the fractal explosion of the 1980s... However, it is exceptional for this element, which is external to the work, to be really external to it, in its fullness of sound. It merely shapes its 'structure'. On the contrary, with Mâche, it becomes part of its carnal manifestation: for, and this is the great novelty, the models he chooses are already sonorous. In this sense, he anticipated the so-called "spectral" movement.

The first movement of L'estuaire du temps alone illustrates the three types of sound models that Mâche usually uses, as well as the two extreme ways of establishing concrete correspondences, obvious to the ear, with the instrumental writing. In terms of the models used, present in real time thanks to the sampler, this first movement uses a linear progression. Up to letter C of the score, we hear sounds that are part of the 'natural elements' mixed with a few animal sounds: programme 1 delivers sounds such as "surf", "pebbles", "wind",  "barn owl",  "grouse call".etc. Then (from C onwards), language models come into play: programme 2 plays whispered or spoken words, which are either invented (letters C and D) or come from several languages (E and F: Lithuanian, Russian, Armenian, Batak, Indonesian, Javanese and Xhosa). Finally, from G onwards, 
models dominate, made up of animal sounds mixed with a few other sounds (programme 3 [15] ) - as we have often seen, natural elements, speech phonemes  and animal sounds are the three types of model used 
by Mâche [16].

Let us briefly analyse their instrumental correspondences. The first two parts (letters A-B: sounds essentially derived from natural models; letters C-F: phonemes) perfectly illustrate two methods [17] . In the first part, there is an eloquent direct imitation, drawing on the imaginary sound bequeathed by tradition and enriched by the composer. Thus, in bars 12-16, the strings play very rapid melodic lines, in the extreme high register and in pianississimo, evoking the grain of pebbles, while maracas in crescendo and decrescendo simulate rain sticks. [18]. In bars 26-31, four flutes with the indication "perceptible breath, pp, without vibrating
without vibrating and gliding from one note to the next', make entries (eventually forming a cluster) by  imitation on a brief motif consisting of a descending minor third and a rising minor second, punctuated by a few vibraphone sounds: the relationship with the sampler, which delivers sounds of ‘grouse call’ and ‘barn owl’ is obvious. A final example of imitation: four plugged horns, at a distance of semitones, make very gentle vibrations while the wind is blowing (bars 35-37).

The second part of this first movement of L'estuaire du temps uses what might be described as a
transcription. In order to instrumentally double the phonemes "played' by the sampler, Mâche employs a system combining arbitrary correspondences and correspondences derived from spectral analysis. For vowels, spectral analysis enables us to determine the average frequency of their formants.
For consonants, a variety of timbres (pizzicato, tremolo or arco strings, harp) and percussive attacks are used,  according to an arbitrary correspondence. Example 36 and example 37, which reproduce a draft by Mâche, show all the correspondences in play, with the system used - note that, sometimes, the composer takes liberties with this system and in this example the percussion is not indicated. This type of transcription applies to whispered phonemes. With spoken words (letters C and D), the orchestral transcription work
consists of imitating the overall intonation of the word; the instruments play in unison or with aggregates that correspond more or less to the formants of the word. In addition instrumental groups can be associated with languages (strings for Lithuanian, brass for Russian). Example 38 illustrates the transcriptions of the Lithuanian words "Nukrinta" and "Nukrinta Kebgerme" in bars 93-95, the Russian "Matsimatsimaa" (bar 100)
and from Armenian "Yetevotch" (bars 118).

2. "Archetype" and process
The moment when Mâche integrated for the first time - as such or/and with their instrumental dubbing - the "sounds of the elements", i.e. nature, was decisive :
« So that the music would no longer be an empty message, but rather a fusion with the universal rhythm, it seemed wiser to me to turn to models with a more confused organisation, such as the sounds of the elements", he notes [19] in Music, myth, and nature. The composer's musical work constantly raises the question of nature, of the relationship between music and nature. One might detect in it the trace of a nostalgia, not reactionary, but as Adorno understands it in the quotation given as an exergue to this work:
"Art would like, by its increasing spiritualisation, by its separation from nature, to revoke
precisely this divorce from which it suffers and which inspires it » [20] . It could also be read as
Xenakis or Cage, the anti-subjectivist tendency of modernity - what could be more natural than to evoke the anti-subjectivist tendency of modernity?
what could be more natural than to evoke nature when you want to put aside a subject flirting with totalitarianism? Whatever the case, Mâche's 'naturalism' is nothing like the naturalism bequeathed by tradition: it is not a question of representing nature, of staging it under the human gaze; his work lets it be, uncontrolled, releasing an energy of its own. In short, it is also a question of breaking out of immanence, but in a more radical way than with the notion of model. The question is no longer to reinject reality into music, but, in a way, to abolish the frontier between nature and culture. A vast debate, which we won't get into here! Let us just recall for the record that when Mâche incorporates birdsong into his music, it's not to 'musicalise' them-  and even less, as has been said, to represent them (musically) - but because he considers that they are already music [21]. That’s why he explicitly asks the question: "Where does music come from? [22] .

What is important here is to emphasise that the intrusion of the sounds of the elements (such as
animal sounds) and the whole enterprise of abolishing the boundaries between the cultural and the natural, are concerned with a quest for universality. Mâche seeks to highlight, "in adult music, universal sound figures and processing techniques, widespread in all cultures, and [...] even beyond the human species" [23] . He
criticises the historicism of twentieth-century music, not by decreeing the « end of history » - a convenient formula for those who have decided to stick to a precise stage of historical development, generally reconstructed from scratch by means of historical regression - but by suggesting that contemporary music is no longer music when it defines itself as a historical excrescence. We could largely support his point of view by evoking theses that do not consider modern art from a historicist or Mannerist perspective (for which this art is no more than a succession of particular techniques, particular languages) but, on the contrary, as an attempt to unravel general processes: I'm thinking of certain psychoanalytical theories [24] or certain  phenomenological approaches [25] - precisely because of its abstraction, modern art is able to achieve this generality.

It is thus easier to understand why the question is not to take nature as a model, to imitate it or, as has been said, to represent it. The essential point is to determine sufficiently general 'forms' that are common to man (to all men) and to nature.These 'forms' can be named in two ways, and Mâche does not make up his mind. Sometimes he refers to 'structures': in Music, myth, and nature, the comparison between the song of the marsh warbler and some musical works, as the 'Sacred Dance' from The Rite of Spring, is done by means of a ‘distributional analysis' of the birds' songs, which in this case describes an asymmetrical combination
of sound objects [26]. Elsewhere, he evokes the rooting of these "forms" in an origin; they then become "archetypes": "Certain apparently abstract patterns go back to the very origins of our apprehension of space and time [...]. And it is even probable that the most universal patterns, the mythical archetypes, have their origins in psychic activity prior to birth", he writes [27] . For convenience - and because it seems to me that Mâche leans slightly towards the second proposition [28] - we will speak here of archetypes.

The processual forms often found in Mâche's work - but also in the work of other composers of today - sound like archetypes. With them, the musical development is like organic growth: like the human body or any other organism, everything seems to flow from everything else and, simultaneously the whole presents a superior organisation. Because of the process of continuous transformation, escapes us and therefore seems unconstructed, natural. By the way, their apparent simplicity - the dramatic pattern is their foundation: progressive growth and fall - gives them a very general character.

The third movement of L'estuaire du temps is one of the most beautiful processual forms. written by Mâche. It consists of two main parts. The first is marked by a framework of strings, offering a very gradual ascent, onto which are grafted percussion sounds emitted by the sampler. At the end of this long passage, acoustic percussion comes in.
dialogue with the sampler programmed to brass sounds, starting from the point reached
and descend very gradually; (acoustic) percussion is used throughout this passage, as well as
(acoustic) percussion is used throughout, along with occasional woodwinds and strings
with very rapid strokes and punctuated sounds (pizzicato strings, harp sounds and staccato woodwinds).
staccato woodwinds). The relationship between the acoustic percussion and that emitted by the
sampler would require an in-depth analysis that cannot be provided here. We will
will focus on the first major section (about 5 minutes) and, more specifically, on the
string pattern.
This framework (bars 7-162) constitutes a very special kind of process: evolution, although very linear, undergoes a mutation without it being possible to pinpoint the exact moment: an ascension of the strings in packets ends up generating a harmonic, even melodic process. Example 39 illustrates the process in its entirety [29] - it should be added that this entire passage is played with a very gradual crescendo (from ppp to fff) and a very rapid diminuendo for the last four bars. Thus we see the gradual entry of 12
lines (the double basses are divided into 2, the cellos and violas into 3, the violins into 4) in an overall rise, then their gradual absorption until they are reduced to 6 parts. In addition, the tonal movement, which was rapid at first, became increasingly stable. In it gradually shifts from quarter tones to seconds or even thirds.
Finally, in the second part of this process, 'classified' chords sometimes emerge. In this way, a pure texture - background noise if you like - ends up generating a  sequence  of chords. As for the eventual emergence of a melody, things are even more interesting. No melody is clearly visible in these diagrams or in the score; moreover, the pitch changes become slower and slower, perhaps exceeding the time scale of a melody. However, from bar 65 onwards, some unisons on certain notes or their echo-like repetition bring them to the fore : the sequence of G# in the treble clef (reached for the first time in bar 65)-F# (reinforced in bar 81)-do (which predominates in bar.83)-do# (bar 90)-mi
(bar 91).
All comparisons between this process and organic growths are possible.
To mention only those that follow from the few comments made here:
unpredictable mutations (the birth of a series of chords) even though they result from a process of
the appearance of a 'meaning' (the melody) that only human subjectivity (in this case, the analyst) can provide.
human subjectivity (in this case, the analyst) detects or authoritatively grants. Of course, these comparisons are
metaphor. But isn't the same true, in defitive terms, of the notion of archetype?
[1] Cf. François-Bernard Mâche, "Le post-progressisme", Les Cahiers du CIREM
n°22-23, 1992, pp.11-14.
[2] François-Bernard Mâche, Musique, mythe, nature ou les dauphins d'Arion, Paris,
Klincksieck, 1991 (1st edition: 1983), p.177.
[3] In addition to the book mentioned above, Mâche is the author of a large number of articles,
a list of which (up to 1991) can be found in Les Cahiers du CIREM n°22-23, 1992,
pp.189-194.
[4] The score is published by Durand. No recording has yet been made. I would like to thank
I would like to thank François-Bernard Mâche for providing me with a recording and also for
also kindly provided me with a few suggestions for his analysis, which will be limited here to
a few remarks.
[5] For Mâche, each of the three movements corresponds to a particular type of time:
linear time for the first, time of immersion in the moment for the second and
cyclical time for the last (oral communication, February 1995).
[6] The sampler is controlled by a keyboard played in real time by a soloist. It
has 11 successive programmes: 3 for the first movement (which Mâche calls "elements
calls 'elements', 'paroles' and 'multitimbre' respectively), 3 for the second ('bol',
melusine" and "pot-bol") and 5 for the last movement (4 "percussion" programmes and 1 "brass" programme).
"brass'). The sampler score indicates programme changes and,
as you might imagine, the notes written on the staves do not necessarily correspond to
necessarily correspond to pitches, but to the precise sounds of a programme. As far as
correlation between pitches and sounds, there are three possible cases: a) the note written on the staff
corresponds to the fundamental heard (programmes 4, 6 and 11); b) it
corresponds to a register (programme 1); it does not correspond to any predominant
pitch (the other programmes). Note an interesting feature of
program 10: the keys played can sometimes emit no sound at all, making it easy to
difficult rhythms can be played easily (for example, the performer plays a succession of
(For example, the performer plays a succession of quintuplets and, because of the 'holes' in the programme, we hear scattered quintuplet eighth notes).
quintolets).
[7] I would refer you to my doctoral thesis, A propos des premières oeuvres
(1953-69) by Iannis Xenakis. Pour une approche du phénomène de l'émergence du son,
Université de Paris IV-Sorbonne, 1993, tome I, chapter I.
[8] François-Bernard Mâche, Musique, mythe, nature..., op. cit, pp.104-105.
[9] This expression was used by Mâche to designate the practice of the first
Xenakis, where, to take a famous example, laws of probability that were first thought up
were applied to music.
[10] François-Bernard Mâche, Musique, mythe, nature..., op. cit, p.78.
[11] Idem.
[12] Cf. Daniel Durney, "La musique et son double : l'oeuvre de Mâche", Cahiers du
CIREM n°22-23, 1992, p.138.
[13] See François-Bernard Mâche's analysis in Mercure de France n°1201, 1963,
pp.590-593.
[14] "The author came up with the term phonography in 1960 to designate a practice
which would be to music what photography is to painting. [...] Like photography
photography, phonography offers both the possibility of appropriating reality and of distorting it.
its distortion. From the simple 'framing' of sound to radical manipulation and 'retouching
"all degrees are possible. Phonography merges with music
when the organisation of sequences is governed by its laws rather than those of everyday
and when any causal identification becomes secondary or even impossible.
impossible. In any case, the boundary is permeable (François-Bernard Mâche on
Phonographies de l'eau (1980), programme notes, Manca Festival, 15
December 1985).
[15] In detail: "bruit blanc", "appelau coq de bruyère", "ressort 1", "effraie",
"cymbal in the centre", "pinched blade", "spring 40", "callicrania monticola", "cricket",
"cock-of-heather call" (high-pitched).
[16] Question: the more or less linear passage from one to the other in this first movement of
movement of L'estuaire du temps, in the order just mentioned, have any symbolic
symbolic value?
[17] In his article "Esquisse typologique des macrostructures dans les oeuvres de
François-Bernard Mâche" (Les Cahiers du CIREM n°22-23, 1992, pp.118-130), Márta
Grabócz analyses in great detail the way in which Mâche concretises the model in his works.
his works.
[18] The case of the rainsticks is interesting in itself, as it constitutes an instrument in its own right, but one that imitates the model.
instrument in its own right, but one that imitates a natural phenomenon.
sampler, which places it on the same level as the other natural elements in the
programme 1.
[19] François-Bernard Mâche, Musique, mythe, nature..., op. cit, p.191.
[20] Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, trans. M. Jimenez, Paris, Klincksieck, 1982,
p.127.
[21] Hence the new discipline called "zoomusicology" that Mâche founds in
chapter 4 of Musique, mythe, nature..., op. cit. See also his contribution to this volume
contribution to this volume, as well as that of Peter Szendy, who points to one of the historical
historical origins of the question raised by Mâche.
[22] "We have to wait for Debussy to find the beginnings of an aesthetic that invokes the sound model
the sound model against cultural models, the open air against everything that sometimes smells of
rooms, chamber music, empty musings, and sound in real space as opposed to abstraction.
real space against the abstraction of the note. His statements have been interpreted
impressionist; or they have been neglected [...]; and there have even been attempts to eliminate them,
and even attempted to eliminate them, the better to revalorise what might at first sight appear to be formal preoccupations
in works like the Etudes or Jeux. But they were hardly taken seriously
seriously, because they raised the question: where does music come from?
(François-Bernard Mâche, Musique, mythe, nature..., op. cit., p.65).
[23] Ibid, p.47.
[24] Cf. in particular Anton Ehrenzweig, The Hidden Order of Art, trans. F. Lacoue-Labarthe and
C. Nancy, Paris, Gallimard, 1974.
[25] I would refer you to my work on sonority in Xenakis; cf.
in particular chapter V of my book Iannis Xenakis, Mercuès, P.O. Editions, 1996.
[26] Cf. François-Bernard Mâche, Musique, mythe, nature..., op. cit. pp.130-131.
[27] Ibid, pp.52-53.
[28] Significantly, the text is headed by a quotation from Malraux: "Faut-il
to suppose that the human being carries within him a language of forms that transcends
civilisations, just as he carries the nightmares common to them all? ... forms that we would
would call archetypal if this word did not have too many meanings. Let's call them
primordial. They are born, like the fear of an octopus, in a quasi-biological domain
quasi-biological domain, much deeper than collective forces: they are of the order of
of destiny" (ibid, p.7).
[29] I should point out that this diagram makes several simplifications: a) since the unit is the measure
the progression of heights is schematised; b) changes of measure are not taken into account
are not taken into account (letter D: alternation of 2/4, 3/4, 3/8 with 4/4, which dominates elsewhere)
elsewhere); c) the same applies to tempo changes (variable between quarter notes = 100 and
132).