VOLUMES

Conversely, the instrumental score is undoubtedly the first example of systematically adapted writing of notions and sounds familiar to “musique concrète”, to the extent that the same symbols were used to notate both. Since magnetic tape is much less flexible to handle than writing on staves, the author tried to use this practical contingency as a springboard for imagining massive new forms, sometimes close to Varèse’s conceptions (but not his sounds), and in contrast to the post-Webernian pointillism that triumphed at the time. The idea of the sound object was thus experimented with simultaneously in both techniques.

The work also illustrates what A. Moles called “the creative power of complexity”, since 583 sound tracks formed the basic material for Volumes, and some of these tracks already represented a mix of several dozen sounds; in addition to the “noises”, the electroacoustic part uses an imaginary orchestra in which 38 bassoons, 10 harpsichords, etc. blend their play of sound volumes with those of the live orchestra.

Concerning this notion of volume, long familiar to orchestrators but still obscure, the author started from the hypothesis that it is one of the principal qualities of sound, a qualitative theory excluding any quantification, hence any ‘parameter’; and this quality manifests itself on two levels: as an intrinsic attribute of a given sound, whatever its situation in real space (and we can then speak of a virtual volume, which makes, for example, the saxophone diffuse while the bassoon is dense); and as a real space, in relation to one or more groups of loudspeakers, and to the situation of the instrumentalists.

Variations in these volumes thus translate for the listener into contractions or expansions of the real sound space, and depending on the interplay of sound materials, into concentrations or dilutions of virtual spaces.

Commentary

There were very few previous examples of mixed music: Maderna’s Musica su due dimensioni in 1952, Varèse’s Déserts in 1954 and Boulez’s Poésie pour pouvoir in 1958 were about the only ones known, and even then Déserts alternated the two components without combining them, while Boulez’s work was rejected by its author. Schaeffer was not entirely wrong to accuse me of imprudence because I was prematurely employing means such as the rope plate without having had them officially tested. But the work was fundamentally marked by the spirit of utopia, and its twelve tracks on a sphere anticipated a technology that only became available some ten years later, for Stockhausen in Osaka. Spatialization had, however, been tested in real life in a few exceptional projects, such as Xenakis’s Philips pavilion in Brussels in 1958. Seven trombones also posed a problem, especially if you wanted to reconstitute the family from soprano trombone to contrabass trombone. The frustration I felt at seeing the work released on a mono disc (there was no stereo yet) was ultimately salutary. It taught me to relativise the importance of the tools required: timbres have become consubstantial with music, but space, despite its claims to be a constitutive ‘parameter’, is often, even in electroacoustic music, no more than a dimension of comfort or, sometimes, a distracting mannerism. But the abundance of layers of sound in Volumes is much more legible, and takes on much more depth in stereo than when flattened out on one or two loudspeakers.

The origins and instrumental playing modes of the recorded sounds were intended to facilitate their fusion with the acoustic instruments, and conversely the unusual or innovative instrumentarium tended to underline the relevance of a common approach. Not only was there no legitimate difference between the two fields, but even their writing could be part of the same approach. This is perhaps why the work is, quite conventionally, in three movements, albeit with a central double movement; and why some of the sounds created live appear to be ‘musique concrète’ objects. With hindsight, I find the instrumental part a little inadequate. There should probably have been more instruments, and they should have played a more active role.