DVD Program Notes

Sound Anthology

Computer Music Compositions (Annette Vande Gorne, Curator)

• Track 1 (.m4v 54.7 mb) YAWAR FIESTA: Acte I, Condor (extrait: Peuple aux fÍtes emplumÈes) – Annette Vande Gorne - 12:24

• Track 2 (.m4v 35.2 mb) Protopia/Tesseract – Elizabeth L. Anderson - 13:49

• Track 3 (.m4v 32.2 mb) Io – Ingrid Drese - 12:16

• Track 4 (.m4v 33 mb) Prologue for an image – Daniel Perez Hajdu - 12:24

• Track 5 (.m4v 43.6 mb) Klaviersammlung (piano collection) – Hans Tutschku - 9:53

• Track 6 (.m4v 26.7 mb) Dragonfly – Laurent Delforge - 10:08

• Track 7 (.m4v 19.1 mb) Belle Inconnue – Loup Mormont - 8:05

• Track 8 (.m4v 32.7 mb) Invitation ‡ prendre le temps – Rafael Munoz - 12:07

• Track 9 (.m4v 16.8 mb) A Pianistic Adventure – Jean-Louis Poliart - 6:16

• Track 10 (.mov 655 kb) DVD Credits

Part One: Annette Vande Gorne, Curator

Curator's Note

Satisfied since 1971 that acousmatic music is the alpha and omega of all aesthetic and technological research in electroacoustics, that its very existence has changed the conditions of production, reception, and perception of music, I could only offer for this Computer Music Journal DVD music produced for these new imaginary relationships to sound, without images.

Teaching the techniques of écriture for media and acousmatic composition at the higher level of the music conservatories since 1986 has finally created an acousmatic "school" in Belgium with its own specific character. I propose that the listener discover here a selection from three generations of Belgian composers, as well as a guest of honor, Hans Tutschku, Professor at Harvard, who combines the rigor of his culture of origin, Germany, with a richness of sound and musical immediacy of play on a sounding body—in this case of old pianos.

1. YAWAR FIESTA: Acte I, Condor (extrait: Peuple aux fêtes emplumées)—Annette Vande Gorne (Chief: Nicholas Isherwood, bass; Chorus: Nicholas Isherwood, bass; Paul-Alexandre Dubois, baritone)

Can space, written and performed live, lead to expression and dramatization. . . Music? Opera? Even if the project does not involve any singers on stage, a majority of sound material derives from the voice. This is not an electroacoustic work (with its research materials and abstract writing), but the dramatization of a text by, among other things, the placement of the sounds and spatial figures. The technology of the music finds a link with the tradition of singing opera.

The libretto describes how incantatory ritual in Aeschylean tragedy represents the fighting of duels within us, concepts of life opposed, and is symbolized by the struggle of a condor and a bull that still takes place during the "feast of blood" in some villages founded by the Spanish in the Peruvian Andes.

An example between poverty and the power of money, "Who to cut the cord of misery?" This is also the attraction of desire and brute force. Only art brings the two forces together, the author concludes: "That here at least where the words are acts for what they are: the party continues. Here at least where the words are sung, all come together in games of shadow and light."

The chief of the Indians, the timbre of bass, reassurance personified by a declamatory questioning, spiritual wisdom whose strength always wins eternal in duration, the material contingencies, political and economic. (The Dalai Lama is a current example.)

The choir of the Indians is organized by alternating opposite timbres crossing all the text, the choice of words in the overall shape of the three acts.

YAWAR FIESTA was produced at Studio Métamorphoses d'Orphée, Musiques & Recherches, Ohain, Belgium.

Text (translation: Anne-Marie Glasheen)

Chef: Peuple aux fêtes emplumées, aux femmes en corolles de laines rouges, allons!

Chief: People of the plumed festivals, whose women wear red wool corollas, let us go!

Faisons savoir, aux maîtres des enclos et des arènes,

Inform the masters of the pens and arenas,

Que nous viendrons, comme chaque année, avec le fils des espaces sans barrière.

That we shall be there, like every year, with the son of the wide open spaces.

Qu'ils se préparent pour la corrida. Elle est à eux...