Vienna

Compositions

Unsoundables, 17’ / 2021

This work could have been named “Insondables” in French; with a slight ambiguity between sound and probe which in French are son and sonde. In English the word sound in Unsoundable refers to sound and probe, without changing the writing, and also has several other meanings: reliable, deep, sure, imperturbable… Faced with this profusion of meanings, English won in my imaginary quest for places to which we cannot access and which have a sound dimension that escapes our hearing. Places that we see or perceive but where access is impossible and which represent possible sound universes. We can then send a probe there; in this case mental and imaginary, to explore these places.

The mental probe explores those places, situations, spaces where our body cannot access. And, like a probe we would send to the underground, we discover different universes, sometimes similar to those we know, sometimes totally impossible. Several short situations follow one another like a quick trip to these unsoundable places, each with its family of sounds, its space and its logic. Although the places are referenced in my work, there is no need to give the clues; the listener’s imagination will easily identify them.


Nova Puppis, 20’ / 2020
Punctus spatio, 17’ / 2022

Loudspeakers are an extraordinary invention; the fact that a cardboard membrane vibrates and thus reproduces any sound is almost a mystery! They reproduce sounds but these are not exactly the same as sounds in our environment are, which irradiate in all directions while loudspeakers tend to be directional (spherical loudspeakers exist but have not yet become largely diffused). To make this difference stronger, and since we have two ears, after the “monophonic” sound in the first half of the twentieth century; “stereophony” became the standard reproduction model, where the fact of having two loudspeakers that reproduce the same information but with slight differences, gives a spatial and movement perspective to sound.

Loudspeakers have highly dominated our listening environment and since the 1960s attempts have been made to introduce a three-dimensional listening perspective. Four tracks, eight tracks, 5.1, 7.1, etc. are different configurations in which the listener is immerged in sound through surrounding loudspeakers, many of these configurations having had their origin in the film industry. When composers work with these environments, they use different spatial strategies which can imply that each loudspeaker will be reproducing a different sound, the same sound coming from several loudspeakers or sound moving from one loudspeaker to other thus creating trajectories. These and many more spatial strategies have enriched acousmatic sound over the last decades.

Punctus spatio is not only a story of points and movements… Punctual sounds are the main starting element but music is the result. Points merge in lines and lines configure surfaces, and lines and surfaces create images in our mind. Space creates the charm, the fusion of perception points which interact with our memories, imagination and our extraordinary capacity to organize sounds in form. 

This work is dedicated to the memory of a good friend, Bill Brunson from Stockholm, who recently left us…