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 b. 1932, Tamatave — Madagascar
In 1958-60, François Bayle joined Pierre Schaeffer’s Groupe
de Recherches Musicales in Paris, and between 1959- 62 worked with Olivier
Messiaen and Kariheinz 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 lna-Grm, organizes
concerts and radio broadcasts and still supports the development of technologically
advanced musical instruments (Syter — Grm tools — Midi
Formers — Acousmographe).
In 1993, he founded the Acousmatheque, a repertoire of some 2000
works composed since 1948, and that also organises symposiums and composers’ portraits.
Upon leaving the GRM in 1997, he created his own studio and the record label Magison.
To date, he has composed 97 works.
Recent compositions include Fabulae (1990-91), La main vide (The empty hand)
(1994-95), Morceaux de ciels
(Pieces of heavens )(1996), Jeîta –retour (1985-99), Arc, pour Gerard
Grise (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).
Releases:18 monographic CSs ) Magison Cycle Bayle (1 to 18)
Musique acousmatique, propositions ... positions — Buchet/Chastel, Paris,
1993.
Parcours d’un compositeur— M. Chion/Mssiqees et Recherches, Brussels,
1994.
L’image do son/Klangbilder— lmke Misch - Ch. v. Blumroder/Lit verlag,
Munster, 2003.
François Bayle, portraits polychromes — M. de Maule/Ina, Paris,
2004.
Distinctions
SACEM Grand Prize for Composers, 1978— National Record Grand Prize, 1981 —Ars
Electronica Prize, Linz, 1989
City of Paris Grand Prize for Music, 1996— Homage by the CIME of Sao Paolo,
1997— Charles Cros Presidential
Grand Prize, 1999.
Currently. President of the Symphonic Music Commission of the SACEM (since 2001).
 to the ideal listener...
Our conscious attention fluctuates, flutters like a butterfly, escapes our control,
It lacks penetration.
Penetrating intuition results from thought’s expectations
This is the secret of attention.
according to A N. Whitehead - Process arid Reality—1929
It is pleasant to find this rather zen observation from the pen of an austere
philosopher! Can consciousness, in its thwarted stream, breached with silence,
fluctuations, neutral time lapses auspicious to forms’ invasions (or ingressions,
according to the term coined by Whitehead), through a fortunate lack, open itself
up to the presence of things? and to the spirit of sounds
And if it were precisely from this same suspension of thought that intuition
looms up by surprise, whereas musical thought, not being formed (deformed) by
language, better proves this by functioning freely, like in nature, through coherency
and implication.
So we believe that water flows naturally, following capricious meanderings: merely
an apparent fantasy! Rather, the carefree expression of the gradual and rectilinear
rigor of a down ward path, and one that ignores hesitation. This is how the sonorous
self-organizes.
Although a butterfly in flight isn’t unaware of this, this animal dimension
of restlessness by which consciousness is derived from an imprecise memory of
effort and of a vague hope: its reward. It is due to either one or the other
of these uncertain whims, even though they are cast by desire and ideas, that
musical figures function, those flowers conceived for (or stemming from) deep
listening.
Yet the ‘perishing” as well as the “becoming” of any
form — which auditory entities express so fully
—also affect memory, that place of valorizing metamorphoses.
Hence proceeds emotion, with the joy of losing and of finding (oneself).
F. B.
n°95 — 2002-04 — 35’35” - octophony
-ombrages et trouées (shade and gaps)
-couleurs inventées (in vented colors)
Ombrages et trouées (Shade and gaps)
22’30” — 2002-04
Slip into a spark’s timing Like under a tree, settle in there
A large quiver will cover a rustling zone with its boughs, breached with light
and colors.
The multi-resonant continuum emits forms. Markers, figures, signs are concealed
there. Here or there, entangled dynamic entities emerge. Sometimes these “markers” rather
reveal movements of the orchestrated hand-ear; elsewhere, some figures are born
of meaningful will.
These listening ranges intend to maintain a meta stable balance, ready to create
in the listener’s immediate memory an instantaneous precipitate at the
first glint of attention.
It is indeed its own interest that will suddenly determine the shortest path
among the configurations that join the constellations of outbursts perceiving
them as accents of desire.
Accidents of attention circulate among the calls or rather “flit about
like butterflies” from one
to the other in a spiky, halting, multi-polar dance.
Five moments follow, one after the other, latticed with reminders, extensions
- formes espacdes (epars /dispars) spaced forms (scattered/ vanished) up
to 230”, and also
- formes resserrees (resonances internes) constricted forms (internal resonances)2’30” to
516”,
- formes enchevbtrees (ec/ats d’intensites) tang/ed forms (bursts of
intensities)5’ 16” to 1014”,
- formes contrastées (k/angfarben / troudes) contrasted forms (k/angfarben
/gaps) 1014” to
1711”,- formes ondu/des (liens/ritourne/le) undulated forms (/inks/ritorne//e) 1711” to
2237”.
13’05” - 2002-03
Two aural sensitivities, two conceptions of the butterfly-like form are expressed
in this diptych : extended polymorphic space — in ombrages et trouées
(shade and gaps); polychromatic time held in abeyance — in couleurs
inventées (invented colors).
After the previous intensity, a moment of calm arises here. Only the “concrete
immateriality” of the multiple image of colorful and shapely resonances
is offered here for listening, only to let its volumes and brightness play (like
red placed on well-drawn lips). The listening experience (already for more than
twenty minutes !, under pressure by what preceded, suddenly depressurizes and
dilates like a hot, rising gas.
In order to guarantee free anarchy and to maintain it as much as possible, figures
of lines and points capture part of the attention and array five “micro-climates” on
successive surfaces -couleurs claires (light colors) up to 31 3”,
- couleurs sombres (dark colors) from 31 3” to 4’22”,
- couleurs nocturnes (nocturnal colors) from 422” to 537”,
- couleurs graves (solemn colors) from 537” to 6,1 2”,- couleurs
e’clatees (bursting colors )from 61 2” to 6’58, up to
a quasi-central moment, couleur-cristal(cristal-color) from 6’58” to
749”. The colorful listening then shifts to a dynamic listening, that takes
over by its hammering up until the end with couleurs-mouvements (movement-colors)
from 749” to 1157” and couleurs-temps (time-colors) from
1157” to 12’”.
Looking back, we see that these markers of the hand-ear gathered here constitute
the generative core from which several aspects of the entire diptych originate.
Scattered here and there, one finds traces, remote pre-echos that reveal the
work’s organic thrust.
Hence the mind is nourished by fantasy (even to absurd levels) and will draw
upon the innocent disparity of circumstances of that which germinates, bolted
to the feverish flash of an idea’s invention that takes form and takes
to flight, itself swept away in the wind of indifferent gods and demons.
n°48— 10’— 1963-71
— moqueur — triste — zen
(— mocking — sad — zen)
Moqueur (Mocking), a remix of the third of the Portraits do l’Oiseau-Oui-N’existe-Pas
(Portraits of the Bird-that-does-not exist) — n°1 5— 1963, originally
conceived for the beautiful animated images of the painter Robert Lapoujade,
is a “vintage”, an archive from my earliest years : my first work!
Instrumental figures written “for the microphone” (meaning, close-ups)
are jostled, broken propelled in voluble bunches, incorporating true birdsongs
with electronic ones, laughing and accents. The scene progresses in rebounding
forms and in colorful strides that merge and land in cascades.
Triste (Sad) emerges, opposing dark and slow trajectories with irritated jabberings,
achieved by a “hand-made” work method, directly on the turntable
(a few decades before DJs’ common practice !.
The whole is balanced out by the third dream Zen, serene and silvery, appending
on an harmonic tremolo the unreal lines of a real uirapuru, the Brazilian bird
that announces a peaceful death (this moment is taken from l’ExpdrienceAcoustique
(The Acoustic Experience)
—n°1O.
r.B
This colourful assemblage was created following a request from the choreographer
Vittaro Biagi, who premiered it at the Opera de Lyon on January 22, 1972, along
with Espaces inhabitables (uninhabitable spaces), P. Scbaeffer’s Etude
aux Objets (Object Study) and B. Parmegiani’s L’Oeil écute
(The listening eye)
1984 — 1989 — 1O’46” -
revision 2004
No, this is not a reference to some fabulous bird stemming from Borges’ chimera,
nor an exotic offertory at each break of dawn l
If “meta” refers to later, or beyond, or around or remote,
that is only a partial clue either on the choice (that may be surprising(
of “classified” harmonies, but whose internal illumination,
whose spectral granulation, provoke another perception. . or on the unfolding
of a central melisma, that appears to be smoke, rising, indefinitely
removed.
And with this “mi”, which could well announce the start of “micro”,
whereby “ma” who designate “macro”, those two
categories known for being irreconcilably symmetrical. Is that not enough
already to nurture its interpretation?
Premiered in Sao Paolo, Brazil, November lOBS — commissioned
by the Biennale des Arts
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