Elizabeth Anderson
Avenue de Monte Carlo, 11
1190 Bruselas, Bélgica
e.anderson@skynet.be
An Interview with Annette
Vande Gorne, Part One
Annette Vande Gorne (ver figura 1), a renowned
composer of electroacoustic music, explores dif-
ferent energetic and kinesthetic archetypes in her
obras. Having accidentally discovered acousmatic
music in France in 1970, she became convinced by
the revolutionary character of an art which permits
her to use nature and physical worlds, among other
sources of inspiration, as models for an abstract and
expressive musical language. Her contributions in-
clude pioneering research on space—a fifth musical
parameter, the other four parameters being pitch, du-
ration, intensidad, and timbre—and the relationship
between words and meaning, as well as between
words and vocal material. Of equal importance
has been her exploration of gesture in acousmatic
música, which is founded on a keen awareness of
the fundamental link between the musician and
the machine, a concept that carries as much weight
in composition as in interpretation. Through her
teaching, Vande Gorne (born in 1946 in Charleroi,
Bélgica) has conveyed these notions, alongside the
French electroacoustic aesthetic, to several genera-
tions of composers in Europe and beyond. She also
offers diverse opportunities for composers, enterrar-
preters, and researchers at Musiques & Recherches,
the institute for electroacoustic music she founded
in Ohain, Bélgica, en 1982 (ver figura 2).
This interview was conducted in French on 18 Julio
2005 at Musiques & Recherches. It was subsequently
traducido, edited, and updated through additional
interviews with the composer at Musiques &
Recherches between 2005 y 2011. [Editor’s note:
This interview is published in two parts, con el
second part appearing in the next issue (Volumen 36,
Número 2).]
Elizabeth Anderson: You have had a diverse career
in electroacoustic music as a composer, researcher,
maestro, and founder of Musiques & Recherches.
Yet you were trained as a classical musician and
discovered electroacoustic music by chance. Can
you share this serendipitous experience and explain
what effect it had on you?
Computer Music Journal, 36:1, páginas. 10–22, Primavera 2012
C(cid:2) 2012 Instituto de Tecnología de Massachusetts.
Annette Vande Gorne: I discovered electroacoustic
music at the age of 25, having previously completed
classical piano studies and parallel coursework
in Belgium, as well as written musical studies,
including harmony and counterpoint. I was also
doing theoretical studies with Jean Absil in Brussels,
notably in harmony, counterpoint, fugue, y
orchestration.
In the summer of 1970, I went to Vichy, Francia,
for a training course in choral conducting. Mientras
allá, I walked down a hallway one day and heard
unrecognizable sounds coming from a room. El
door was closed. I was timid, but I pushed the
door open, walked in, and saw nothing except
people seated with their eyes closed in front of two
loudspeakers. I sat down, like them, and closed
my eyes. And I am certain that if I had not closed
my eyes, nothing would have happened, porque,
entonces, a whole universe opened up—a whole universe
that I did not know as a classical musician. Fue
a universe of mental and physical sensation, uno
of images of rhythms and lines, and the physical
impression of floating, of completely losing my
references, of being in myself and out of myself at
Cifra 1. Annette Vande Gorne during the spatialization
of a monographic concert on “The Electroacoustic
Project” acousmonium at the Technische Universit ¨at,
Viena, Austria, 28 Noviembre 2010. (Photo by Thomas
Gorbach.)
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Cifra 2. Multichannel studio “M ´etamorphoses
d’Orph ´ee,” Musiques & Recherches, Ohain, Bélgica,
2006. (Photo by Annette Vande Gorne.)
the same time—the sensation of a complete loss of
stability, movimiento, dynamism, and energy.
At the end of the experience, I immediately
decided that this was what I wished to do. I didn’t
know who to speak to, so I went to Vichy the follow-
ing year and enrolled in the electroacoustic training
curso, which was given by Joanna Bruzdowicz and
Franc¸ ois Delalande from the Groupe de Recherches
Musicales. En 1977, after having participated in
many such workshops in France, I found myself, en
the age of 28, as one of twelve students from a group
of fifty candidates who passed the entrance exam
at the Conservatoire National Sup ´erieur de Paris.
It was difficult and, by the way, it’s the same exam
that I give to my students now. En ese tiempo, allá
was an enormous number of people who wished to
penetrate the electroacoustic universe, particularly
musique concr `ete. Pierre Schaeffer and Guy Reibel
were the two professors. Schaeffer gave the seminars
and Reibel supervised the weekly assignments.
anderson: What was it like at the Conservatoire
with Schaeffer?
Vande Gorne: It was really like another world. Él
was a bit like the type of experience that, estos
días, I advise my students to seek out. It is really
necessary to forget the knowledge that one can have,
the references that one can have, while listening
to any music. If not, one’s listening isn’t good. Él
took me three years, about the length of my studies,
to understand that morphological and acousmatic
listening were necessary. It was definitely about
eso, morphological listening—where one listens to
a sound object as it unfolds in time, with its energy,
with its movement—and acousmatic listening,
cual, at the beginning, are difficult to develop in
parallel.
So, this influence by Schaeffer was absolutely
predominant, because if Schaeffer had not written
the Trait ´e des objets musicaux [T.O.M.] this music
could have remained, as in Pierre Boulez’s descrip-
ción, “tinkering.” Instead, the T.O.M. permits, de
the system of sound description, to think about this
music as another language. The system permits me
to “find myself” by classifying the sounds. Pierre
Henry said, “I classify, por lo tanto, I compose,” and I
think that it’s true. By virtue of this classification,
one can give a personal vision to the entire sonic
universe that one has recorded at the tip of a micro-
phone. One can then make relationships between
different sounds through the typology. Something
that I also discovered, and which I think is very
important, is the notion of “grain” that Schaeffer
developed in his classification system. This really
helped me to think about sound as matter. Uno
doesn’t think about this in the European classical
music world where, on the contrary, one avoids the
imperfections in sound material. I think it’s also a
characteristic of Belgian electroacoustic music.
anderson: And Reibel?
Vande Gorne: One thing that he worked on, y eso
I really appreciated, was the notion of gesture, el
physical relationship with sound that performers
experience every day. The human body always
anderson
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has a physical relationship with sound through
gesture, which allows the body’s interior impulse
to unfold in time. Reibel reintroduced, in this very
general universe, a traditional and musical approach
to gesture in the construction, by the body, de
a given musical time through the s ´equence-jeu
[play-sequence-jeu], a type of improvisation with a
corps sonore [sounding body]. The play-sequence-jeu
constitutes a musical entity that could give birth
to a piece. It’s the first connection the composer
has with the future work, and it prefigures what
the piece will be. By making play-sequences, el
composer deploys, in time, interior and physical
impulses by way of gesture, and the resulting aural
trace carries the personal signature of the body
and the composer’s interior sense of duration. Este
“time” is important to me as the base for the
following work in the studio, which is “out of
time” where, in contrast, the body is “in time.”
As a composer, I can render my own temporality
audible thanks to having composed on a fixed
medio.
So, Por un lado, había [Schaeffer’s]
solf `ege, with its system of description of the ma-
terial and approach, and on the other hand, el
immediate, intensely lived, temporal improvisa-
tions using sounding bodies. The development of
material in time seems, to me, to be essential insofar
as it is experienced by composers themselves and
not transmitted to interpreters as a thing that one
leaves to the job of the interpreter. This is one of
the motives for my having chosen composition on
a fixed medium and not live electronics. The term
by Michel Chion, sons fix ´es [fixed sounds], seems to
me to be quite correct—to fix time. As a composer,
I am master of my own time. I can communicate to
another that which is the very essence of musical ar-
chitecture as I know it. As long as I was an interpreter
[laughs] I ”lived” this time, but it was with the mu-
sic of others. Ahora, as a composer, I can also give my
temporality.
anderson: You also met Franc¸ ois Bayle while in
París. What did you find in his composition and
research that was important to you?
Vande Gorne: Sí, meeting Franc¸ ois Bayle was
at once an experience that was human, musical,
y, above all, aesthetic. It took me a long time to
understand what it was about. To respond, me gustaría
first like to go back in time and explain the path that
led me to acousmatic music through Bayle’s theory.
One thing that seemed essential to me was to
be able to communicate with the listener, con
otros. If one is an artist, one is not an artist for
oneself; one is an artist for others. We are only a
sounding board for something that does not belong
to us during the moment. We create it and, incluso
less so during the moment, we communicate it. Arte
belongs, at that moment, to the person who receives
él. So, como consecuencia, I never considered that the
work of an artist is a work of personal expression.
I do not have a romantic vision of art, in other
palabras.
From the moment I left the cultural codes of
Western and classical music, its harmony, es
beautiful evolution towards the perfect forms of the
18th and the beginning of the 19th centuries that I
had learned up until the age of 25 and even beyond,
I asked myself, “how does one communicate if one
leaves these codes? By taste?” I always loved nature.
I always loved to observe nature from all its angles,
not as a scientist, but as a poet. And I loved finding
relationships between me and nature. To find myself
as a very small parcel, but nonetheless a parcel, de
this nature created around me.
It was then necessary to reposition myself in
relationship to the thought processes that were
transmitted to me through Western music, en orden
to find a type of thinking that would be more
serene. Or a type of thinking that would be more
contemplative, in any case. And I discovered, entre
otros, the Taoist system of classifying the universe,
which seemed to me to be of this order. En esto
sistema, nature becomes a model. The universal
expression I was looking for is naturally there. It can
be descriptive nature, such as the sound images in a
paysage sonore [sonic landscape], or real-life nature,
and it includes relationships with the physical
world, which we know naturally. Everyone knows
what a fall is, or an oscillation.
From that point, I functioned with archetypes
without having perceived them consciously. Y
this was the aim of the first four movements, Eau,
Feu, Bois, and M ´etal, of one of my first works, tao.
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I obliged myself to use the material decided upon
by Taoism in these movements, but I made entire
universes.
Universes that I think are the quintessence of
fire, or the quintessence of wood, as manifested, para
ejemplo, through different material and energy mod-
els in Bois, notably corpuscles, rotation, oscillation,
and iteration. This quintessence is also apparent in
the symbolism that represents the destruction of the
Amazon forests, which is conveyed at the beginning
and at the end of the movement. Alongside recog-
nized iconic appearances, I also used an abstract
approach with the goal of creating meaning through
the archetype and metaphor. All of this took time.
It was a very long path for me, because I did not
think about music like this before having discovered
acousmatic music.
I think it took about ten years to understand
Bayle’s theory. I absorbed his theory bit by bit, tomando
what was interesting to me. His notion of image
interested me. En particular, the image as created by
fixing the listener’s attention on something with a
memory marker, la representación. Another thing
that interested me was the notion of the trace that
the image could leave, as a vestige, while at the
same time becoming an abstraction.
Working with the trace was something I had
already done naturally, previously through trans-
formation techniques in the studio. Back then,
the studio was a simple tool for composition and
editing because, at that time, studio techniques
were simple: reverberation, transposition, velocidad
variación, and filtering. From the beginning, I didn’t
choose electronic music or music based on synthesis
because I found the sonority, and above all, the dy-
namic life of these sounds, to be very flat, very dead,
hardly evolving. They were also far less beautiful
than the instrumental sounds that I knew. Sin embargo,
when I recorded sounds at the end of a microphone
and brought them back to the studio, yo descubrí
that making musical phrases from non-transformed
sounds was very interesting. That was the first step.
Or even synthesized sounds, but non-transformed
unos. There was nothing else—no transformational
herramientas, only the discourse of the recording.
I used the notion of the icon and its trace un-
consciously in Lamento ou d ´elivrance du cercle,
which was my first piece. They also exist in Exil,
chant II. After making initial recordings, I worked
in the studio, but it was a very basic, classic type
of work, as I previously mentioned: reverberation,
transposition, variations of speed, and filtering.
Sin embargo, through this work I discovered that I was
a potter, or a sculptor. I could construct sonori-
ties by superposition, and I could recreate another
alchemy. Using sounds that I recognized, semejante
as a recording of water, or the sea, I found this
alchemy, the trace, by making transformations. Pero
I didn’t have the theory. And it was Bayle who
brought the theory of the trace to me: l’empreinte,
the trace of the world, which supports and jus-
tifies the existence of the piece. The other thing
that interested me about Bayle was his approach
to memory, the play of memory, to be exact. Él
seemed interesting to me that, since music is the
architecture of time, time is constructed in the
memory of the listener who consciously structures
the listening experience. A lot of Bayle’s theory
concerns perception via listening, via memory.
Finalmente, yo descubrí, through Bayle, the preoccu-
pation with finding universal sounds through the
notion of archetypes. The archetype is not only an
image for me. It is also a real-life physical expe-
rience, real-life physiology, the relationship with
the body, and the relationship with proven physical
laws.
From that point on, acousmatic music wasn’t
limitado, for me, to sound which is fixed on a medium.
That’s an instrumental notion. Acousmatic music
is an aesthetic that moves in the direction of
perception of the world through one’s own modality.
This is also from Bayle. Por ejemplo, as a composer,
I am the first listener of a work that can be seen to
create itself. I am only a sounding board. Hay
constant retro-actions between the process of choice
and the impact of the work on my imagination. I
experiment with this creation. This means that it
is en champs, according to Iannis Xenakis; o, en
otras palabras, directo. In the moment that I compose
él, I hear it. So, I am the first experimenter of what
I hear. Y, por lo tanto, I correct it in relation to
what I hear. The return is immediate. This is why I
chose this music and not music that is written on a
staff.
anderson
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anderson: How has your compositional approach
evolved since your experience in Paris?
Vande Gorne: I composed my first work, Lamento
ou d ´elivrance du cercle, at the Conservatoire. Él
was a very expressionistic work, very immediate in
its gestures by way of many play-sequences made
with sounding bodies. The first works were very
important because they oriented the following ones.
What was the orientation at that point? Mixing
via a fondu enchaˆın ´e [cross-fade], whether it was
fast or slow, in order to make transitions. I learned
a lot from Jean Absil, who said that composing,
having ideas, making sound, orchestrating, is not
difficult. One thing holds a work together: el
way the composer moves from one idea to another
through transitions. Not having had a structured
language in the beginning, I relied on cross-fades
in order to make transitions. So, I composed music
that was fairly continuous, with few cuts and few
inserts; o, if there were any, they were immediately
included in a mix. It was a type of music that was
fairly massive. Exil, chant II also falls into this
categoría. Sin embargo, in Exil I was already preoccupied
with the image. The piece has extremely diverse
sonorities, yet one can recognize the traces: para
ejemplo, ondas, ducks, voices—all sorts of things.
Exil summarizes everything that interests me now:
asunto, movimiento, energía, and nature.
I have not yet cited text. Text is another way to
communicate. It gives the listener the possibility to
enter into a work. But not any text. At the age of 14 o
15, I discovered poetry, which I still adore and often
read. I discovered Saint-John Perse, who I think is an
essential poet. What is a poet? A poet is a musician
of words on the one hand and, además, someone
who is capable of expressing that which we all have
inside yet that over which we have little hold—the
unutterable part of each of us. What is strange is that
all human beings can, if they wish, find themselves
in poetry, if they wish to penetrate that world. I
think poetry and music are exactly the same thing
with the same goal, yet with different means.
En 1989, I began a long-term working relationship
with the Belgian poet Werner Lambersy, cual
led me to construct a different relationship with
poetic text. Para mí, musical illustration can develop
behind the text as, Por ejemplo, in Noces Noires.
The words and their sonorities can sometimes be
hidden in the texture of the sounding matter as, para
ejemplo, in Architecture Nuit. The profound but
unapparent meaning of a philosophical tale can be
given by sounds that are chosen for their capacity
to provoke the imagination of the listener as, para
ejemplo, in Le Gingko. The inherent architecture of
the text, which reinforces the meaning, is put into
relief by the musical architecture, and the variety
of expressive possibilities in electroacoustic music.
I compose this way with my electroacoustic opera,
Yawar Fiesta.
This is because, when I have a text in hand, I
can read and re-read it in order to understand its
significado. I can study its form and analyze it to
understand the work of the person who created the
texto, which helps me to understand how to structure
my own music around it.
anderson: Can you explain how space became
important for you in your acousmatic compositions
and how the notion of space carries to other areas of
your work?
Vande Gorne: The element that made me choose—
and finally completely modify—my listening was
espacio. I became aware of it during that first 15- a
20-minute experience at the workshop in Vichy,
where I heard sounds moving in space. I speak
about a spatial dynamic, something I didn’t hear
in classical music. I didn’t work with this at the
beginning, with my first piece, but Exil, chant II,
had images and sounds that moved around in space.
After my first piece, I composed music for theatre,
which necessitated highlighting the psychological
state of the characters. At that moment, I discov-
ered transformational tools, notably reverberation.
Immediately and instinctively I perceived that space
could be a means of expression—as found in non-
acousmatic music—and that the space created by
reverberation could help to better translate certain
psychological states of the characters. There I was,
in front of a new, unexpected parameter that could
be integrated with the same technology associated
with composition on a fixed medium. If that hadn’t
existió, there wouldn’t have been research on space
or the consciousness of it.
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My first piece of incidental music was for the
play Henri IV by Pirandello, and was entitled, Folies
d’Henri. Was it really a question of madness? It’s
hard to know. Sin embargo, in order to portray the main
personaje, who does not feel like being among men
and wishes to live another life and be in another
universe, I introduced, at a certain moment, sounds
that avoided each other, that went elsewhere. Space
became an expression of an inaccessible elsewhere.
The music worked very well in the theatrical
representation by virtue of this one parameter:
espacio. So, I understood the advantage. And from that
moment, I considered space as a musical parameter
in composition. Mucho más tarde, en 1989, composed space
appeared in multiphony. That’s when I composed
my first multichannel piece, Terre (the last piece
in Tao), which is octophonic. In Tao, space is not
expressive, but abstract. The architecture of the
different sections of the piece is tied to spatial
architecture and evolution.
My interest in space also began to take other
forms at that moment. En 1988 y 1991, I published
the first two editions of the review LIEN, which I
founded. Both editions are entitled L’Espace du Son.
L’Espace du Son is also the name of the acousmatic
festival and interpretation competition in Brussels
that I conceived in 2000. It’s all tied together for
a mí. The discovery of space as a possible structuring
process comes naturally in composition, así como
the thing to which space is attached, the instrument
to make the space. What does one need to make the
espacio? One needs loudspeakers in a given space, y
not just two loudspeakers. I discovered acousmatic
music in 1971 and in 1972. Before I went to the
Conservatoire National Sup ´erieur de Paris and
began to compose, I gave my first concert in a
church thanks to a small sound system consisting of
eight loudspeakers and a spatialization console that
a friend constructed for me.
That moment was important for me because the
instrument, that Bayle would name the Acousmo-
nium in 1974, seemed essential to me. So, la primera
thing that I did after that first concert was to buy
loudspeakers and amplifiers and all that went with
them and, little by little, construct an instrument
for interpretation, with which I gave my first acous-
matic concert in 1980. I did this before constructing
the studio. And that concert, with twelve loudspeak-
ers, was the first acousmatic concert in Belgium. Él
took place in a wooden theatre which had excellent
acoustics. After that concert, I immediately
understood the interest in having an instrument
that permits diffusion, in the real sense of the term.
Diffusion allowed the music to be brought out of
the cupboards in the studio and heard in good spatial
conditions where the composed space of the piece
was interpreted, because I interpreted the works at
that time for the public. So, there is a link between
the composition, the instrument, the interpretation,
the competition, and the review, LIEN.
And while we’re on the subject of diffusion, I’d
like to add that I initiated a type of research at
Musiques & Recherches several years ago which
focuses on an elaborated type of gestural access
based on energy models, eso, thanks to the Lemur
multi-touch screen, aids the studio composer
and interpreter in concert in developing spatial
figures.
anderson: Tell me more about your compositional
and aesthetic philosophy.
Vande Gorne: There’s one thing that I think is
essential, and it’s probably a result of my classical
fondo. I never had a technical approach to
música. I find that a technological approach to art is
interesting for the artisan, and I am completely aware
that an artist from a technological world must know
the technology perfectly. I do not deny technology,
but it’s simply a tool. It is not a goal. And technology
for me, these days, includes the digital studio, plug-
ins, and Max/MSP. In the past, technology included
tape, scissors, and the analog studio. I think these
are tools that one can divert from their function.
This is something I learned from Schaeffer: a tool
is only good if it can serve another function than
that for which it was conceived. Por ejemplo, en
principle, reverberation is made to create space. Pero
it can also create color. This somewhat rebellious
spirit, that I learned from the French, stays with
me in regards to the world of technology, cual
I consider as a tool but not more. Por ejemplo,
take Max/MSP. It’s a craftsman’s workshop to
a mí. Is a composer asked to build instruments?
No: instrument building and composing are two
anderson
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different professions. Por ejemplo, the time taken
to construct a patch to generate sound or make
a transformation or automation is lost for pure
pensamiento, for composition, for the internal integration
of the compositional project, for the long mental
path that the project asks. Por lo tanto, I do not hope
to be a good instrument builder. I’m not. I’m a
musician.
The problem in electroacoustic music is that
people who habitually would not meet each other
on the same territory do. This includes artists,
científicos, engineers, and computer programmers.
As always in an economic society, the engineers
and computer programmers seem much more useful
than the artists do. And I know institutions where
the composer is only an object, a guinea pig, y
whose ideas serve to nourish the realizations of
scientists and computer programmers. And the poor
composer is like a donkey that runs faster and faster
after this marvelous science which, in any case, él
or she is not made to understand.
Another problem is that electroacoustic music,
particularly on a fixed medium, seems to lack mu-
sical complexity. Complexity, such as polyphony,
is one of the characteristics of classical West-
ern music. It is too often missing in electroacoustic
compositions, except for the music of several accom-
plished composers, such as Franc¸ ois Bayle, Francisco
Dhomont, and Robert Normandeau. In my recent
obras, for instance the opera Yawar Fiesta, I attempt
to return to this complexity, including polyphony,
but always at the service of communication towards
the listener and meaning. For an artist, the ultimate
goal is to communicate beauty to another person.
This beauty exists through the artist, OMS, as a
resonator, has antennae that are perhaps finer than
those of others; the artist has an interior life, arriba
todo, that is richer and that is nourished by other
letras.
I have, notably, lithographs from Atlan and Ubac,
painters from the abstract period who do exactly the
same thing; they begin with a landscape and they
only allow a trace of it to be seen. These influences
seem to be important, more important for me than
technology alone. De este modo, in the same way, cuando yo
transform a recognizable sound, I make it abstract,
but I keep its relationship with the known world,
with nature, with archetypes. I keep the trace. Este
permits me to communicate with the listener, a
more or less direct his or her imagination. I do this
in the structural context of the temporality of the
trabajar, by playing with the memory of the listener
through recurrences, sound-signals, articulations,
and dovetailing, which allows the passage from one
section to another.
anderson: Many of your works are based on poetry.
How does poetry inspire you?
Vande Gorne: To explain how poetry inspires me I
would like, primero, to comment on the evolution of
civilization and draw a parallel between that and
arte. I think we are now at the same turning point in
civilization as in the Renaissance, because we live in
a similar wake of turbulent political and economic
veces. Back then, after a period where the trends of
abstraction and symbolism had occupied the entire
artistic field, artists felt the necessity to develop an
expressive simplification of the artistic language, a
tendency that was also engendered by the discovery
of new means of expression. That tendency arises
today in the form of new technologies.
If we look at the Renaissance from a musical
perspectiva, we know it was a passage between the
polyphonic complexity of the Bourguignon school
and its underlying religious symbolism, towards the
expressivity of the Italian madrigal and the madrigal
comedy. [“Madrigal comedy” is another term for
madrigal cycle, an experiment during the second part
of the 16th century in which composers attempted
to adapt madrigals to dramatic needs.] The idea
of representation was developed in the madrigal
comedy which, as a musical form, necessitated
the preponderance of a melodic line and, as a
resultado, the simplification of polyphony. Monteverdi
epitomized the evolution of this complexity, cual
culminated in the birth of opera, the heir of the
madrigal comedy. Sin embargo, opera contains action,
which provoked further simplification and yielded
such forms as the melody, the recitative, y
the aria. The birth of opera can be seen as the
entry into the Baroque period, which retains this
indispensable expressivity. If we take away text
from the music and keep the expressivity, nosotros
have the stylized codes from the Baroque period.
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Como consecuencia, Baroque instrumental music also
retains the same expressivity by using these stylistic
codes that are tied to emotions, thanks to the
development of the relationship with the text
and the resulting simplification of the musical
idioma. With Baroque music, we return to the
notion of abstraction, but with the preoccupation of
expressivity.
I think this same evolution towards expressivity
in electroacoustic music, hoy, is fundamental. Y
it’s the reason why I choose to use the relationship
with text to reinforce the expressive power of my
electroacoustic pieces—that, in addition to adoring
poetry. Por ejemplo, en 1982, I decided to make
a musical illustration of the poem, Exil, chant II,
by one of my preferred poets, Saint-John Perse. I
always analyze a text before composing. And the
in-depth analysis of Exil, chant II showed me not
only the subtlety of the structure and the rhythm,
pero también, through the poet’s choice of words, todo
the musicality and even the sound matter. In doing
this—and unconsciously, at the time—I entered the
particular world of acousmatic music. I realized
the descriptive and expressive possibilities available
through electroacoustic means while composing
this piece because there was a natural link between
the sound matter in the poem and the choices I
made for the sound matter in the music. Notablemente,
the sound transformations in the studio and the
composition on a fixed medium that was based on a
mental representation came to me naturally because
they were in relation with the suggested images of
the text. And that is acousmatic.
anderson: And what direction has your relationship
with poetry and sound taken since 1982?
Vande Gorne: My fascination with text led me to
make a radio program in 1984. The title of the
programa, which was later made into an article, era
Les sons de la voix ou le langage des sons. Fue
a sort of sound compilation of all that seemed to
me to be interesting and essential in musical works
that use the voice. I found in certain works by Bruno
Maderna and Luciano Berio, among others, that the
voice not only had a semantic purpose, but was used
as sound matter as well. So voice became matter as
Bueno.
This is why my work with texts by Werner
Lambersy is very important. I composed three
pieces, and am currently composing an opera, con
texts by Lambersy, who I consider to be a very
great French-speaking [Belgian] poeta. These pieces
address all the relationships that one can establish in
the electroacoustic world with all transformational
medio, from the voice that is considered as sound, como
a producer of sound, to the voice that is considered
as a producer of meaning. Noces noires (1986), es
a producer of meaning, and includes the voice of
Lambersy himself. The text is very beautiful and
has many mental images. So, I used the madrigal
modelo, the relationship to text in 16th century Italy,
in order to create sound images and matter which,
employed at the first level of their signification,
would reinforce the meaning of the words. Esto es
what interested me.
Noces noires contrasts with Architecture, Nuit
(1988), which is based on five poems. In Architecture,
Nuit, I address the interactions between sound and
asunto, as well as between sound and meaning,
in five different ways. An eternal dilemma is
highlighted in Architecture, Nuit. “Does the music
follow the words or does it follow an independent
and concomitant discourse?” The text is one source
among several that include the timbre of the voice,
the alchemical transformation of sound, etc.. Fuentes
of images, significado, y, above all, espacio, the interior
space of feelings, the cries of emotion, the silences
behind the words and, además, the real exterior
space perceived in the text. The music responds
to it by virtue of the different spaces inherent in
the initial recording of the voice. Arquitectura,
Nuit is a polyphonic and polytimbral work, and its
meaning lies in the composition of the space and
timbre. Its architecture is founded on relationships
that evolve from discontinuity to continuity, de
mass to line, from near to far, from matter to
vibration, from dark to light, from profusion to
nakedness. Each movement is organized as a fractal
of a whole around a horizontal axis (Left/Right) en
the central work and, through one or several of these
trajectories, develops a series of variations on the
same theme: space/words, space/timbre. It’s the first
piece where I consciously used space as a musical
parameter.
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As a former choral director, I know the voice,
and I also studied voice at the conservatory. Él
seems to me to be an ideal medium in order to
communicate with the public, because music is
an art of communication and we all have a voice.
Vox Alia (1992–2000) illustrates a later stage in
this evolution that considers the voice as matter.
In Vox Alia, which is octophonic, there is only one
sound source, the voice. Sin embargo, it is completely
transformed to the point that it is unrecognizable.
There’s no text. The piece is constituted by alchemy
and the notion of the trace, which allows the origin
of the sound to show through indirectly. That was
the meaning of that work. Es, En realidad, a madrigal.
[Vande Gorne sings an extract from Monteverdi’s
Lamento di Ariane as an example.] In Vox Alia
I tried to reproduce the essence of the madrigal
by not linking the melodic phrasing but, en cambio,
linking the different expressive spaces with the
desired affectation. Each movement in Vox Alia has
a specific spatial organization that reinforces the
affection announced by the movement’s title, en
the same way as was done in Baroque music. El
first movement, Giocoso, is constructed with two
contrasting spaces, as if two people spoke and played
together. Amoroso intertwines embracing spatial
movements and has an enormous amount of sound
ornaments. The voice of a child is clearly audible
in the third movement, Innocentemente, donde el
multi-directional space changes like the movements
of a young child. It is a completely confused space
because there is no particular directionality in a
child’s space. Sin embargo, the form is very strict:
a palindrome. Furioso is just the opposite. El
orientated space is very aggressive vis- `a-vis the
audience. When one is furious, one projects one’s
rage towards someone or something precise with
great force. In Furioso, the force is held back, in front
of the public at one central point, for a long time.
It develops slowly on a stereo axis and, at a certain
moment, it projects brutally to the audience. En el
last movement, Parola volante, I took key phrases
of Schaeffer’s voice speaking on his morphological
and spatial conception of music, and illustrated
what he spoke about in the same way he spoke,
using transformations of his voice. Parola volante
is in stereo because I wished to respect the unique
place of the spoken word. I leave more liberty
for the interpretation of this movement on an
acousmonium.
The series of etudes on the voice in Vox Alia
led me to a new rapport with an explicit, semantic
texto, which I developed in Fragments de lettre `a un
habitant du Centre (2002), based on a text by Kamal
ben Hameda, a French-speaking Libyan poet who
immigrated to Europe and who has a keen view on
Western urban civilization. The narrator’s voice and
expressiveness is at the centre of Fragments de lettre
`a un habitant du Centre. The musical moments,
a series of mini-forms marked by a few discreet
reference points to give the thread of memory, son
the fragments of a vast poem.
I must say that each time I compose a piece
with text, I start by deeply analyzing the text; I
try to feel the profound meaning of each phrase
and try to put myself in the place of the author.
From this analysis, which is not only a formal
análisis, arise several possibilities of choice
regarding material and form. It’s the first stage of
composing.
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Mesa 1. List of Works by Annette Vande Gorne
Work
Genre
Duration
Folies d’Henri
Lamento ou la
Theater music for the
play Henri IV
Acousmatic work
d ´elivrance du cercle
(stereo)
Exil, chant II
Acousmatic work
(stereo)
10(cid:2)30(cid:2)(cid:2)
17(cid:2)25(cid:2)(cid:2)
22(cid:2)35(cid:2)(cid:2)
Notas
Text by Luigi Pirandello.
Date
1980
1982
1983, remezclar 1998 Poem by Saint-John Perse, con
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the voice of Annette Vande
Gorne, narrator. Commission
from the Fonds d’aide `a la
cr ´eation radiophonique de la
Communaut ´e franc¸ aise de
Belgique FACR [Funds for
radiophonic creation from the
French-speaking Community
in Belgium]; remezclar. Recorded
on empreintes DIGITALes
IMED 0890, Exils.
Text by Philippe Marannes.
Extract (“Crise”) recorded on
empreintes DIGITALes IMED
0890, Exils.
DIGITALes IMED 9311, tao.
The individual movements are
described in the next eight
filas.
Zheng by Violette Beaujeant.
Zheng by Violette Beaujeant.
En avant, marche
Etude for synthesizer
Folies de Vincent
VCS 3
Theater music for the
play Sulfur Sun
6(cid:2)22(cid:2)(cid:2)
17(cid:2)
1983
1983
tao
Multi-movement
acousmatic work
77(cid:2)26(cid:2)(cid:2)
1983–1992
Recorded on empreintes
1st element: Eau
Acousmatic movement
1st element: Eau
(mixed version)
2nd element: Feu
(stereo)
Mixed version for
stereo electroacoustic
sound and zheng
Acousmatic movement
(stereo)
3rd element: Bois
Acousmatic movement
4th element: M ´etal
Acousmatic movement
(stereo)
4th element: M ´etal
(mixed version)
5th element: Terre
(stereo)
Mixed version for
stereo electroacoustic
sound and zheng
Acousmatic movement
(8-channel audio)
5th element: Terre
Two-channel version of
the acousmatic
movimiento (stereo)
16(cid:2)15(cid:2)(cid:2)
15(cid:2)33(cid:2)(cid:2)
13(cid:2)33(cid:2)(cid:2)
12(cid:2)
14(cid:2)42(cid:2)(cid:2)
14(cid:2)
27(cid:2)30(cid:2)(cid:2)
25(cid:2)59(cid:2)(cid:2)
1984
1986
1984
1986
1983
1984
1990
1992
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Mesa 1. Continuado.
Work
Faisceaux
Energie/Mati `ere
Paysage/Vitesse
Noces Noires
Genre
Mixed work for stereo
electroacoustic sound
and piano
Acousmatic work
(stereo)
Paysage sonore
(soundscape) para el
ballet Nuit Hexoise
by Odile Duboc
Acousmatic work
(stereo)
Action/Passion
Music for
Architecture Nuit
contemporary dance
Acousmatic work
(stereo)
Aglavaine et S ´elysette
Vox Alia
1. Lamento
2. Giocoso
3. Amoroso
4. Innocentemente
5. Furioso
6. Parola volante
Theater music for the
play Aglavaine et
S ´elysette
Multi-movement
electroacoustic work
For AKAI S1000
sampler and MIDI
keyboard
Acousmatic movement
(8-channel audio)
Acousmatic movement
(8-channel audio)
Acousmatic movement
(8-channel audio)
Acousmatic movement
(8-channel audio)
Acousmatic movement
(stereo)
4(cid:2)
5(cid:2)
4(cid:2)54(cid:2)(cid:2)
4(cid:2)16(cid:2)(cid:2)
4(cid:2)52(cid:2)(cid:2)
1(cid:2)50(cid:2)(cid:2)
Duration
8(cid:2)
Date
1985
Notas
28(cid:2)15(cid:2)(cid:2)
15(cid:2)
1985
Prix SABAM 1985.
1986
34(cid:2)14(cid:2)(cid:2)
1986
Poem by Werner Lambersy, con
the voice of the poet. Recorded
on Sonart IMSO 9504 y
empreintes DIGITALes IMED
9839, Impalpables.
1987
For a choreography by Patricia
1989
Kuypers.
Five poems by Werner Lambersy,
with the voice of Alain Carr ´e,
narrator. Commission from the
RTBF and INA-GRM. Recorded
on Sonart IMSO 9504 y
empreintes DIGITALes IMED
9839, Impalpables.
1989
Text by Maurice Maeterlinck.
43(cid:2)56(cid:2)(cid:2)
20(cid:2)09(cid:2)(cid:2)
35(cid:2)
24(cid:2)45(cid:2)(cid:2)
1992–2000 Commission from INA-GRM.
Recorded on empreintes
DIGITALes IMED 0890, Exils.
The individual movements are
described in the next six
filas.
1992
1996
Commission from the GRM.
1998
Commission from the GRM.
Recorded on PeP 002, 2000,
Pr ´esence II.
1998
Commission from the GRM.
2000
Commission from the GRM.
2000
Commission from the GRM.
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20
Computer Music Journal
Mesa 1. Continuado.
Work
Le Ginkgo
Genre
Acousmatic work
(stereo)
Duration
14(cid:2)43(cid:2)(cid:2)
Date
1994
Bruxelles bivoque
Radiophonic work
6(cid:2)
1998
LongTemps: souvenir
Acousmatic work
1(cid:2)30(cid:2)(cid:2)
2002
(stereo)
Fragments de lettre `a un
habitant du Centre
Acousmatic work
(5.1 audio)
12(cid:2)13(cid:2)(cid:2)
Notas
Based on a novel by Werner
Lambersy, with the voice of
Vincent Smetana, narrator.
Recorded on Sonart IMSO 9504
and empreintes DIGITALes
IMED 9839, Impalpables.
Commission from M&R, con
Thierry Genicot and Dimitri
Coppe.
For a public sound projection
from the beffroi [tower] de
Ghent, in homage to Lucien
Goethals.
2002
Poem by Kamal Ben Hameda,
Text spoken by Eveline
Legrand. Recorded on
empreintes DIGITALes IMED
0890, Exils.
Les ´ecritures sur support
Radiophonic
3 hr 4 mín.
2003–2004 Commission from the Fonds
documentary in four
partes
Les ´ecritures sur support:
1. Les ´energies
Les ´ecritures sur support:
2. Les montages
Les ´ecritures sur support:
3. Les m ´elanges
Les ´ecritures sur support:
4. Les polyphonies
Cosmographie
Installation
Ce qu’a vu le vent d’Est
Acousmatic work
(8-channel audio and
stereo)
43(cid:2)
42(cid:2)
48(cid:2)30(cid:2)(cid:2)
50(cid:2)30(cid:2)(cid:2)
12(cid:2)30(cid:2)(cid:2)
8(cid:2)
d’aide `a la creation
radiophonique de la
Communaut ´e franc¸ aise de
Belgique FACR [Funds for
radiophonic creation from the
French-speaking Community
in Belgium]. The individual
parts are described in the next
four rows.
2003
For a latex sculpture by Anne
Liebhaberg.
2003
Recommended by the
International Tribune of
Electroacoustic Music 2004,
2nd prize Pierre Schaeffer
Competition 2003. Recorded on
Academia Musicale Pescarese
AMP 2004 and empreintes
DIGITALes IMED 0890, Exils.
anderson
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Mesa 1. Continuado.
Work
Genre
Duration
Date
Notas
Figures d’espace
Acousmatic work
13(cid:2)49(cid:2)(cid:2)
2004
Commission from the Rainy
(stereo)
Francistein Remix
Acousmatic work
7(cid:2)14(cid:2)(cid:2)
2006
(stereo)
Days Festival, Luxembourg.
Recorded on empreintes
DIGITALes IMED 0890, Exils.
Yawar Fiesta
Acousmatic opera
In progress
2006–2012
Libretto by Werner Lambersy.
(7.1 audio)
The individual acts are
described in the next seven
filas.
2006
With the voice of Franc¸ oise
6(cid:2)
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Vanhecke, soprano.
Commission from Franc¸ oise
Vanhecke for her show
Electroshok.
With the voices of Charles
Kleinberg and Werner
Lambersy, narrators.
Commission from the GRM.
With the voices of Franc¸ oise
Vanhecke soprano, Fadila
Figuidi, Annette Vande Gorne,
contraltos.
12(cid:2)17(cid:2)(cid:2)
2006
2007
10(cid:2)
6(cid:2)
2009
With the voice of Nicolas
12(cid:2)30(cid:2)(cid:2)
2010
In progress
2011
Isherwood, bass.
With the voices of Nicolas
Isherwood, bass, y
Paul-Alexandre Dubois,
baritone. Commission from the
Muzik Akademie der Stadt
Basel.
With the voices of Nicolas
Isherwood, bass, y
Paul-Alexandre Dubois,
baritone.
In progress
2011–2012 With the voices of
Paul-Alexandre Dubois,
baritone, and one tenor.
Yawar Fiesta Lamento
(female choir, Act I)
Yawar Fiesta Monologue
final (Act III)
Yawar Fiesta
Combattimento (femenino
choir, Act II)
Yawar Fiesta Ouverture
Yawar Fiesta Condor,
(Act I, part 1)
Yawar Fiesta Condor,
(Act I, part II)
Yawar Fiesta Taureau,
(Act II)
22
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