electrocd

Feu

Annette Vande Gorne

Feu

  • Annette Vande Gorne
  • Year of composition: 1985-86
  • Duration: 11:59
  • Instrumentation: stereo fixed medium
  • Publisher(s): Ymx média
  • ISWC: T9004476760

To Pierre Philippot

•• Action: This piece tells a story. It is a narrative — the second step towards knowledge — with often metaphorical characters that move about and meet according to the two apparently opposite sides of the same substances: inside/outside, matter/artifice, Reality/Symbol, with varying ‘listening perspectives’ (borders).

For example: the (external) breath of fire and that of man (internal); the small natural explosions (matter) and their synthetic imitation (artifice) with the big explosions (zoom) of the fireworks, which can also be a metaphor for war seen as a show under the applause of each side, filtered through the television screen and the loudspeakers…

•• Energies / movements: Breathing, swaying. Granulation, accumulation. Explosions, projections. Trails, tracks, whirling. Line, stillness.

•• Symbols: Fire. Picture of life, of love. From the vital breathing to the quivering of the whole being (nerve ramifications). From comforting warmth to love-explosion, love-destruction. From celebration to death. Life: variations on the same…

•• Form: Constant moving from one type of energy to another with inlays of a same image, that becomes more and more asserted. Growing dynamic process and brutal collapse. Silence. Re-using of the main elements in a fragmented order and in accumulation, behind an iron curtain.

•• Anecdote: Through sight, a flame gives the sensation of a diaphanous, powerful and ethereal energy; however, upon listening, no other element conveys such a feeling of profuse raw material, of sharp edged ‘matter’.

•• Spatialization: Perspective and mobility in cinemascope: with a minimum of 12 loudspeakers, most of them placed in a frontal arrangement, play with the existing levels of depth, create new ones, create widthwise movements. Do not hesitate to strengthen the dynamics.

[xii-93]


Feu [Fire] was realized at the Métamorphoses d’Orphée studio of Musiques & Recherches in Ohain (Belgium) and premiered on June 6, 1986 at the Synthèse Festival of experimental music in Bourges (France). Énergie / Matière, made of the works Feu and Métal, was awarded the 1985 SABAM Special Prize of the Year of Music. Many thanks to Violette Beaujeant, Jacqueline Gezels and André Van Belle for their spontaneous sound recordings when I was unavailable.


Premiere

  • June 6, 1986, Synthèse 1986: Concert, Bourges (Cher, France)

Revision

Cycle
  • Tao (1983-91), 77:26
Albums