François Bayle

François Bayle.

Born in 1932 in Tamatave, Madagascar where he lived for 14 years. Studies in Bordeaux (1946—54). In 1958-60, François Bayle joined Pierre Schaeffer’s Groupe de Recherches Musicales in Paris, and between 1959-62 worked with Olivier Messiaen and Karlheinz Stockhausen. In 1966, Pierre Schaeffer put him in charge of the GRM which, in 1975, became an integral department of the French National Audiovisual Institute (INA). He maintained this position until 1997.

In addition, it was François Bayle’s idea to create the Acousmonium (1974). He also originated the record series Collection Ina-Grm, organizes concerts and radio broadcasts still supports the development of technologically advanced musical instruments (Syter – Grm tools – Midi Formers – Acousmographe).

In 1993, he founded the Acousmathèque, a repertoire of some 2000 works composed since 1948, and that also organizes symposiums and composers’ portraits.

Upon leaving the Grm in 1997, he created his own studio and the record label Magison.

Bayle’s œuvre is notable for its masterly craftsmanship and rhetoric, its agile discourse and its sophisticated thought.

To date, he has composed 99 works.
Among others : L’Expérience Acoustique (1972), Camera oscura (1976), Tremblement de terre très doux (1978), Son Vitesse-Lumière (1980-83), Fabulae (1990-91), La main vide (1994-95) –Morceaux de ciels (Pieces of heavens) (1996), Jeîta-retour (1985-99), Arc, pour Gérard Grisey (1999), La forme du temps est un cercle(Time’s form is a circle) (1998-2001), La forme de l’esprit est un papillon (The mind’s form is a butterfly) (2001-03), Univers nerveux (2005). – Extra-ordinaire (2005)

Les Couleurs de la nuit, 38’03, stéréo, 1983:

1/ animé – 2/ plus animé ;
3/ 4/ 5/ – trois andantes : couleurs froissées / lune floue / bouffées
6/ nuit noire – 7/ nuit fauve – 8/ nuit blanche – 9/ nuit dénouée

Here is a spirited work, composed in an urgency, a sort of meteorite fallen from the sky from Son Vitesse-Lumière (composed at the same time). The core matrix, to which a limited number of other material is added, is a fragment taken from a recording of bowed strings (a few seconds from a concerto by Corelli, according to the composer’s memory). The pièce sound as a “violonistic rustling” stretched into iterative dust across its thirty minutes.

We find again the Baylian jungle. This intense feverish flurry is brought to its apogee during the final four movements in an impressive dramatic progression made of escalations and retreats, of influx and loftiness. The impression of “forces spurting forth” is accentuated by the steely quality of the global sound of the piece, added to a feeling of being under pressure which runs through the piece.

The grip of this terrible night is adjourned only for the linked Trois andantes in the first third of the piece, forming a sort of ardent, sensual, calm core, before relinquishing us to pandemonium.

First performance: Paris, Ircam, Espace de projection, 15 mars 1983
Régis Renouard Larivière – traduction Valérie Vivancos.

L’Expérience Acoustique, 6’40, stéréo, 1969-70:
8/ La langue inconnue – 9/ Intervalles bleus – 12/ « It »

… La langue inconnue 10’21
This « Unknown language » from the title would in fact be the language of sounds. It does not resemble the articulation of phonemes in our human language. In contrast, it appears in a single stoke of the brush, agglutinate, telluric and stupefying, both massive yet curiously hollow at the center. This jungle is also a belly. The ceaselessly varied rhythmic ostinato is accompanied by a high-pitched scintillation, following and fascinating from a distance, an object impossible to clearly discern because of the overabundance of light.

The crescendo having reached its destination, the music collapses on itself, very briefly offering the breach of a finally unobstructed glimpse of this “landscape”.

… Blue intervals 6’51
A hight-piched interlacing of diaphanous and brilliant sounds nourishes the ear, holding its attention, captivating it (overflow once again). Fissures open up, allowing the incomprehensible phonemes of a deep voice to thrust forward. It swells and accumulates before dissipating, a dense cloud, materiological wrenching and tearing. The delicate high-pitched and menacing mesh closes in like water engulfing an event in an infinite race of sound.

… « It » 3’39
This short movement in a « pop » style consist of repeated and varied voice fragments and of striking sounds, quite rich in harmonics and quite eclectic, successively constricted then unfurled by filtering. The percussive mouth noises are those of Soft Machine drummer Robert Wyatt, while Kevin Ayer continually murmurs “I did it again”…

Régis Renouard Larivière – traduction Valérie Vivancos

L’infini du bruit (The Noise’s infinite) 10’50, 1979

The concrete source which arouse the animal ear, the electronic trajectories with their analogical heat and the audionumerical color with their shimmering reflections, all present their own inimitable qualities.
Surfaces make up space. And like mirrors facing one another, they open up the auditory perspective on their long corridors with infinite curves. 

La forme du temps est un cercle (Time’s form is a circle), 23′, octophonie, 2001:
4/… allures 5/… circles

Nature – that reservoir of organisms and temporal forms – proposes many patterns to our rhythmic imagination: breathing, pulses, ebb and flow, a day’s cycle or the passage of seasons… Their textures and designs form the ground floor, the carpet of our existence.
Time’s figures, those whose audible traces reveal their inner movements, can surprise us by their seemingly familiar vocabulary.  My project, the idea behind this work, is to arouse the desire or pleasure of listening by presenting rather temporal perceptions based on their images, figures, impetus and vividness. Several “moments” therefore that such entities traverse shall attempt to demonstrate special aspects of time’s “grain,” in order to prolong its emotional potential.
Here then, are some of time’s such figures at work.  There is the one that hurries then flees, – the one that pounds and hammers, – that breaks the wave, – that moves backwards and does an about-face, – that splashes into a shower, – that trickles like rain, – that flows, while dripping off, – that slowly forms a bead, – that spurts out in jolts, – that gyrates in a whirl, – that evaporates…
Variations from “knocks” to “traces,” from a heavy pulse to melody, from a tolling bell and its mysterious concurring powers to the furrows of clouds of dust and orbits circulating at various speeds, not to mention the various “paces” of the pulse itself.
Some pythagorian considerations then, since, as the poet says:
{…} Pythagoras reveals to his Greeks
that time’s form is a circle…
{…} Everything happens a first time, eternally.
He who reads these words invents them.
J.-L. Borges – (The Number – 1981)

At the end of the different stages, the listener will have completed a trajectory, one of temporal unity beginning from the finest “grain” and progressively focusing his/her perception in order to discern and identify images and forms.
Colors’ transience, speeding figures will be resolved in a spiral (the three-dimensional form of a circle), by which the initial sound-image (tolling bells) will infinitely evolve into the final sound-image: that of summer crickets during a night of suspended, dream-like time.
F. Bayle – traduction Sharon Canach.

… pace 9’07
(… moving, time pulse)
What is a “pace”?  In Schaefferian “musique concrète” solfeggio, it means the fluctuating quality that a sound maintains.  The movement that animates the life of a resonance through an internal pulse, one that beats … (not to be confused with a “vibrato,” which is a melodic oscillation from the trill family).
The word in French, allure, comes from the verb “aller,” to go, a way of going (rigid or supple, regular or limping).  In English, pace, comes from the Latin “passus,” or rate of movement.  Both apply to the dynamic energy behind the phenomenon-being.
The “pulse” of these beings.  My own participative “pulse.”
In addition, the pace or manner of being is also that which can not hide any psychological flaws: that particular, awkward appearance, developed over experience (that of time).

… circles 13’15
(… streaming, time whirlwind)
First, the light hail of these “grains” of time that trickle out as if from an hourglass and nibble at a steady duration, stimulating it like gusts of wind over water, slight accelerations within an immobile velocity…
Then, these sliding guststhat slowly rise, wandering in a circular manner, up the listening space…
Then, these figures, in constellation form that the wind encircles…
Then, these circles that grow larger, encircling themselves concentrically, stimulating one another, soothing one another…
Then, this fine grain that weaves its thread that itself gives substance and engulfs the space…
It is readily understandable, this game could go on…