Elle signera plus d’une centaine d’œuvres lors de sa carrière, dont un opéra, trois ballets, plusieurs cantates, des pièces pour orgue et percussions, des œuvres lyriques, deux symphonies, des compositions pour ensemble de chambre et aussi des œuvres pour le cinéma et pour le théâtre. Grâce à ses études auprès de Dukas et à l'influence musicale de Claude Debussy, elle développe un sens aigu et efficace du timbre et de la couleur instrumentale, bien qu’elle témoigne « d’un style aussi peu académique et conventionnel que possible ». Elle rejoint en 1952 le Conservatoire de Paris en tant que professeure de déchiffrage. Ses cours, surnommés la "boîte de Pandore", suscitent un si grand intérêt qu’elle hérite en 1969 de la prestigieuse classe d’analyse d’Olivier Messiaen, sous l’encouragement de ce dernier.
Deuxième Prélude et fugue pour orgue (1929)
Elsa Barraine (1910-1999) was a French composer, a student of Paul Dukas, and a politically engaged activist. Following the Munich Agreement, she joined the Communist Party and became a member of the Resistance during World War II. In September 1941, she co-founded the National Front of French Musicians' Resistance with Roger Désormière and Louis Durey. This group primarily comprised composers such as Henri Dutilleux, Manuel Rosenthal, Francis Poulenc, Georges Auric, and Arthur Honegger, among others. After the war, she worked as a teacher, journalist, and artistic director of the publishing house Le Chant du Monde, which supplied orchestral materials to major symphony orchestras and made scores by leading 20th-century Russian composers—Prokofiev, Khachaturian, Kabalevsky, Shostakovich, Mossolov, Knipper, Myaskovsky, and many others—available for purchase or rental.
She composed over a hundred works, including an opera, three ballets, several cantatas, pieces for organ and percussion, lyrical works, two symphonies, compositions for chamber ensemble, and also works for film and theater. Thanks to her studies with Dukas and the musical influence of Claude Debussy, she developed a keen and effective sense of timbre and instrumental color, although she demonstrated "a style as unacademic and unconventional as possible". In 1952, she joined the Paris Conservatory as a professor of sight-reading. Her classes, nicknamed "boîte de Pandore" generated such great interest that in 1969, at Olivier Messiaen's encouragement, she inherited the prestigious analysis class.
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Semi-improvised performance of Ed Williams' Decomposition of the Siciliana from J S Bach's Sonata IV - BWV 1017. With Anouck Genthon (violin) & Ed Williams (harpsichord) during the Attacca festival, Hochschule für Musik Basel, Ackermannshof, in June 2023.
The original duet’s part of the Largo has been discarded and the continuo part allowed to flourish to become a different kind of duet, involving the original instrumental pair of harpsichord and violin. Acting like enzymes breaking down organic matter, the two performers collaboratively weave an improvised tissue of timbres, intervals and silences that emerge from the diffraction, repetition and savoring of the original score’s notes. This calls to mind the image of string figures described by Isabelle Stengers: “...but knowing that what you take has been held out entails a particular thinking “in-between”... with the demand that you not proceed with ‘mechanical confidence’... two pairs of hands are needed, and in each successive step, one is ‘passive’, offering the result of its previous operation, a string entanglement, for the other to operate...” (Stengers, 2011).
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La partie du duo original du Largo est abandonnée et la partie de continuo peut s’épanouir pour devenir un autre type de duo en soi, impliquant le duo instrumental original du clavecin et du violon. Agissant comme des enzymes décomposant la matière organique, les deux interprètes tissent en collaboration un canevas improvisé de timbres, d’intervalles et de silences qui émergent de la diffraction, de la répétition et de la dégustation des notes de la partition originale. Cela rappelle l’image des figures de cordes décrites par Isabelle Stengers : " ... mais savoir que ce que vous prenez a été tendu implique une réflexion particulière « entre »... avec l’exigence de ne pas procéder avec une « confiance mécanique »... deux paires de mains sont nécessaires, et à chaque étape successive, l’une est « passive », offrant le résultat de son opération précédente, un enchevêtrement de cordes, pour que l’autre opère... " (Stengers, 2011).
On "Beyond the Coda", another work of Ed Williams: "decomposition study" with an organ,
and another decomposition: "Soave Dolc'Ardore" for a string quartet
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"Io t'abbraccio", extrait de l'opéra "Rodelinda", chef-d'oeuvre méconnu de Haendel
par la superbe et renversante Jeanine de Bique et Tim Mead @ Opéra de Lille
avec "le concert d'Astrée" d'Emmanuelle Haïm
& "ombre", autre extrait de "Rodelinda"
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TESLA FM is a radio on line involved in non-commercial music, experimentation and countercultural information. From experimental electronics to electroacoustic and sound art; from improvisation to jazz and classical music; from old melodies from the 19th century to current compositions; from unknown artifacts from the 80s to sounds inspired by that decade; cultural archives..., an eclectic journey.
Many international contributors as the manager and producer of Tesla Ishak Benavides aka Dj Shak, Ignacio Fernandez and his "Locus Solus" program, the Polish multi-media artist Monika Pich in a "space oddity recollection", the artist and sound curator Franco Falistoco with "El ruido es el mensage" the field of sound experimentation, being radio art and sound art, the ecclectic Pilar Talavera and her "Flushing toilets", the musician and photographer Nacho Alvarez aka Dr Milton creating a revisitation of Radio Raheem, Chica Paula, the pseudonym of Paula Schopf the sound artist "No Statik at All", the french music travel agent Philippe Petit and his passion for "Modulisme", as well many other people involved in this project...
Apart of the live show and an infinite hours of archives, a few tracks to listen to:
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This extract is included in the DVD box "Les grandes répétitions", a serie of rehearsals filmed by Gérard Patris and produced in the 60s by "Le service de la recherche" of the french national radio, founded by Pierre Schaeffer.
These 5 remarkable movies are focused on Cecil Taylor, Edgar Varèse, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Olivier Messiaen and Hermann Scherchen.
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Ce projet mené par le pianiste Edouard Ferlet et la claveciniste Violaine Cochard consiste en une relecture d'oeuvres de Jean-Sébastien Bach mêlée à quelques improvisations.
This project led by the french pianist Edouard Ferlet and the harpsichordist Violaine Cochard consists of a re-reading of Bach' works criss-crossed with a few improvisations.
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Kazakh violinist Aisha Orazbayeva , born in 1985, is renowned for her fearless interpretations of contemporary music and radical approach to old repertoire.
She is playing numerous composers as Xenakis, John Cage, Bernard Parmegiani, Morton Feldman, Luigi Nono, Christian Wolff as well J.S.Bach, Telemann and her own compositions. She is well known for her performance of Salvatore Sciarrino' Caprices.
Such is the range of the violinist's virtuosity, capable of producing so vast an array of sounds from a seemingly limitless palette of extended techniques, that as an audience we are wont to look from human to machine and back again and find it close to impossible to say which was which. The Quietus
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An amazing repetitive music composed by François Bernard Mâche in 1975,
titled "Solstice"
for harpsichord played by the (very) great Elisabeth Chojnacka
and organ by Jean-Louis Gil
with an interresting interview archived by the INA to follow here
(in french langage - notice that you can choose the extracts of this long interview)
"(Solstice) ... c'est pas une oeuvre répétitive à proprement parler mais c'est quand même une oeuvre qui tranche avec la plupart des autres. Je la concevais un peu comme un divertissement à l'époque, ce qui agaçait beaucoup l'interprète qui l'avait créée, Elisabeth Chojnacka, parce qu'elle considérait qu'au contraire, c'était une oeuvre intéressante, et elle disait même : "ça, c'est du répétitif intelligent". Alors donc, en effet, il y a quelque chose de répétitif mais c'est une oeuvre où il y a une influence indirecte de musique orientale, seulement il n'y a pas de mise en boucle.C'est constamment dissymétrique"
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