There are fascinating conversations with leading figures of contemporary music, such as Claude Ballif, Francois Bayle, Marius Constant, Antoine Duhamel, Michel Fano, Claude Helffer, Betsy Jolas, Yvonne Loriod, Francois-Bernard Lamb, Ivo Malec, Luis de Pablo and Martial Solal.

The video documents of this series are very high quality. Thanks to the INA to make publicly available those videos.

Musique Mémoires - INA

Focusing on the electro-acoustic music and electronics, I offer you to listen the webradio of GRM (I already spoke about GRM in the article on music concrete. There are many programs from documents with Schaeffer (1959) to interviews with Luc Ferrari in 1989. Also, "concerts reports" in 2005, 2006, 2007.

Les Ondes - Webradio of GRM..

Good listening, and please share your links by adding them on this page!

Deeply shocked by the German composer's death on Wednesday, I think that there's no need to revisit the extraordinary career of one of the most important personality in musical landscape after World War II.

If you want to learn more please go to www.stockhausen.org.

While musicians are generally not trained in this discipline, aesthetics becomes very important when you deal with contemporary repertoire. Aside from the fact that it represents one of the best tools for understanding and controlling easily "irreducibles" claiming that contemporary music is just noise, it allows us to better understand the way taken by the composer and to resolve some issues of interpretation in a music which does not benefit from historical interpretation and specialists.

The interpreter actually little arises a fundamental question of aesthetics: What is music? Questioning a bit about what the music is helps us to understand views of certain composers. For example, the use of noise in music may seem absurd, but finally does the beauty of music only resides in tonal harmony, in sounds of instruments? Why could the composer use only specific types of sounds and not others? It must be clear that when a composer uses quarter-tones, it is not an eccentricity but a aesthetic way which drove him to the use of so-called quarter tones. Understand why quarter-tones, of course, is interpreting the composer's music with a faithfull thought.

Of course, the aesthetics can renew "technical composition" or currents, by looking for, for example, the essence of music. If we take an emblematic figure of contemporary music that has a lot theorized as Pierre Boulez, you can easely notice that he had to develop a coherent system to counter to the attacks of older currents.

"The requirements of the current music go hand in hand with some of the mathematical currents or contemporary philosophy," said Boulez. Of course! Thinking music is a priority especially for its craftsmen. If I go on with quotes from Pierre Boulez I will also use this piece of interview by the Figaro:

"Le Figaro: What do you think about a certain "neotonal" aesthetic which now seems to have the wind in its sails?
P .Boulez : This is a total waste of time. We are celebrating this year the 50th anniversary of the Domaine Musical's first season: by consulting the works which were played at this time, I found that no major composer of my generation missed. And those I have chosen are still played. The netonal composers, who you refer to, prefer the Institute: it is their place. That does not worry me at all: their power can not exceed the ring road. These are ow-wage earner, unimpressive. Do you think that London or New York are interested in them? Who is invited abroad? It is not them, it's me. If at least this current gave us masterworks, as neo-classicism of the 20's, but there is nothing, it's vacuum. " 

From the side of the composer, the aesthetic will play a key role in his musical process. It is the way of thinking which influences the music he composes, and is used to justify what he writes. Neotonalism against serial writing, Boulez here stigmatises neotonal composers whose aesthetic is diametrically opposed to Boulez. More than a simple parochial quarrel, this debate is crucial for the future of musical creativity, and influences the younger generation of composers.

You understand that musical aesthetics plays a big role on the music stage, mainly in the contemporary world, and I deplore that only musicologists are trained in a discipline which is also necessary for musicians and composers or more generally to all music artists, not just the theorists.

Overview of the halls

Let us start with the largest one: Kongresového centra Praha

As you can suspect it, it is the largest hall of the congress center in Prague. It can welcome up to 2764 listeners, and its scene is enough large to produce large orchestras. It is said that its accoustics is very good (corrected in 2000). It does not have specialized equipment, is not flexible and really aesthetically repelling. And especially: this center have no vocation for music!

Obecní dům - Smetanova síň

Achieved in 1912, the "communal house" contains a large hall of 1139 places. This hall was not build to be exclusively a concert hall but more as a hall where could be held all types of public events. The accoustics is problematic there.

Third by its capacity:The Rudolfinum

Currently Headquarters of the Czech philharmonic, its large concert hall adds up 1100 places (Dvořákova síň). The Rudolfinum is a complex of three concert halls, a gallery and a bar. A smaller hall (Sukova síň) with a capacity of 220 seats and a lot of concerts are held there. The accoustics is excellent there and the quality of the instruments is remarkable. The principal trouble is its limited gauge and the absence of modulability. If it were possible to make adaptations at the time of the last resconstruction in 1992, this hall is far from the current standards of modernity and remains despite everything made for improvements an old concert hall.

Except this, the others halls have lower gauges (about 300-400 places even less). These rooms are not equipped, often not easely accessible or even impossible to find.

Let us speak about contemporary music: none of the halls is suitable. How is it possible to play Murail or Lindberg in a decoration or accoustics from the end of XIX^th centuary. Or how to play contemporary music in a room of 2700 places? If you enter concert halls of Prague, you realize that the majority of these spaces were not conceived in this aim, and assume only very badly the role of concert hall.

Why Prague should build a modern concert hall?

While all the big europeans cities are building important and modern centers for music, Prague ignores it. Despite several attempts in 1941 and 1996, nothing is planned today to improve the Prague musical life.

If Prague, like wants its mayor Pavel Bém, intends to reinforce its position as an European artistic center, it seems that the construction of a big capacity hall equipped with modern technologies is essential.

Invinting foreign orchestras is also one of the priorities of a important musical center. But this kind of invitations is expensive and is not profitable in halls of small gauge. In order not to slow down the frequentation rise by increasing the tickets prices, it is necessary to increase the number of sold places, which is currently not possible, and many of potentials spectators cannot get tickets because seats are lacking.

If we compare with the rest of Europe, Prague does not modernize its infrastructures, and for 1,25 million inhabitants city, a maximum capacity of 1000 seats is a bit too short. Let us take some examples:

Kursaal San Sebastián, Espagne. 2 auditoriums 1800 et 624 seats Donostia-San Sebastián: 183 308 inhabitants.	Matsumoto Performing Arts center. Matsumoto: 227 579 inhabitants.	The new philharmonic hall Paris, France. Concert hall with 2400 places, foyers et rehearsal rooms, offices for several orchestras, galleries, a restaurant, parking ...

After the new library by Jan Kaplicky which created a surrealistic debate because of its modernity, too "pronounced" according to governmental tastes, it should be time to build a concert hall if Prague does not want to show a cultural delay and lag behind.

Prague today could be a European artistic center, but must look towards the future and not draw on its knowledge and its past. It can take advantage of its tourist assets and find a place for cultural tourism, within the development of musical creation. But, above all, it must show its desires and its dynamism by building an adapted modern center.

Among sound pollution of our concert halls, you can of course find the same type of noises as in the everyday life. The noisiest pollution is undoubtedly the cellular phone. It appears all the same unthinkable to to me that the owners of these small diabolic machines can let them on during a representation. We saw flowering, a long time ago, (it is now a part of the ritual) the announcements at the beginning of each concert. I can understand that certain jobs require to be reachable 24H a day but there is also the vibrator mode, much more silent. Finally some artists stopped concerts and left stage after hearing a ringing cellular, so now people are paying attention to this and this plague almost disappeared.

Another noise very common: the coughing fit. If it is less controllable than the telephone, you can at least limit its effects. A website advises "to try to control your cough or your sneezes. If someone is prone to cough, to take cough syrup before going to the concert can help to solve the problem. A good way to reduce the noise of a sneeze consists in putting the mouth in the elbow; you can also try to wait till the sound volume is particularly loud". Without working up to swallow a complete pharmacy before going to a concert, certain English halls lavish illustrated advices in their programs: to cough in a pocket-handkerchief. Sometimes even the handkerchiefs are distributed at the entry of the hall. Indeed, to cough in a handkerchief makes it possible to reduce considerably the sound impact of cough. Yet, certain diabolic music lovers keep on coughing as if they were at home, which led Pierre-Laurent Aimard to stop a concert at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées and to address to public in those words: "Ladies and Gentlemen, I would like to remind you that a concert hall is made to play music and not to cough". Perhaps soon an announcement similar to those used for phone, and a film entitled "how to cough in a handkerchief?" will help us to solve the problem?

Another type of spectators poison the halls: candy eaters. Coughing drops eaters? It is the same for me, they had to anticipate! Who hasn't been confronted to these cruel beings who unfold their candy papers cautiously? Let's say it once for all: unfold quickly or, it's even better: do not eat candies! And afterwards, what to make with the paper? To fold up and put it into your bag? You want to make noise again? Thus throw it on the ground and wait for the interval! If you must absolutely take coughing drops, unpack them before the concert and put them in a box or a handkerchief, for godsakes! I won't speak about zips, velcros, and so on... it's all the same: do it quickly.

There are plenty of pollutions to quote like the applause at one inappropriate time, crackings of broken armchairs, but the list is long! Very often, people attributes to younger these misdeeds, whereas from the stage or room, I noticed that it is seldom them who are involved. I was often very surprised of the extreme attention of young people contrary to other spectators known as "adult" obviously accustomed concert, but not respecting anyone. Of course, I also saw parents sitting their children stirring up and noisy at the first rank, but I would rather show to finger in this case the parents. Could we think that the parents paying the most expensive seats, acquire at the same time the right to sit there their children without any shame for the inconvenience?

In a concert hall, there is in my opinion for the spectator only one rule: attention. Silence is a corollary of attention as well as a mark of respect towards the other spectators and the musicians, and is necessary to a concert. Only one rule, then let us respect it!

History of electronic music

The term appears music concrète for the first time in May 1948 in Journal de recherche of Pierre Schaeffer. The legend tells that Pierre Schaeffer would have, due to a broken LP, observed the capacity of to ear to extract from its context a sound. The ear would forget the cause of this one through repetitions and would listen to the soud for itself.

On June 20 of this same year, Schaeffer presents on Radio Paris the first "Concert of Noise", fruit of his work at the Studio of RTF. This concert is composed of 5 studies:

• Study n° 1 Déconcertante ou étude aux tourniquets
• Study n° 2 Imposée ou étude aux chemins de fer
• Study n° 3 Concertante ou étude pour orchestre
• Study n° 4 Composée ou étude au piano
• Study n° 5 Pathétique ou étude aux casseroles

Due to this first success, the French administration makes possible for Pierre Schaeffer to create his first studio at the RTF. In 1949, he is joined by another personality: Pierre Henry and it is on March 18, 1950 that in the concert hall of Ecole Normale the first concert of concrete music is given with one of the most known works of the duet Henry-Schaeffer: the symphony for a man alone. Indeed, if it had already appeared before, it is only in December 49 that Schaeffer uses officially the term musique concrète, in Polyphonie

The year 1951, sees the appearance of the denomination of the studio in GRMC Groupe of Search for Concrete music but the beginning of the Fifties also marks marketing in France of the first tape recorders with band. The concrete music was recorded before on floppy discs, which coutait very expensive in time and human resources. Indeed, one éxécutant by platinum, one which directs platinums and the controlling last platinizes it recording the mixing. The error was not possible, because the engraving of the vynil cannot be corrected, which thus required many repetitions. The magnetic tape will explode the stranglehold of vynil, using a material which composers can edit, but also can be played backwards!

In 1952, Schaeffer publishes the first conclusions of his experiments. The musique concrète resides then for him in the recording of the sounds on a tape and the montage of these "sound objects" in order to create "musical objects".

The composer are really interested by these development in the Fifties. Messiaen assisted by Pierre Henry composes his Timbres - Durées, Varèse composes in 54 Déserts, the first work mixing accoustic instruments and tape, and in 55, Boulez sign his symphonie mécanique, for Mitry's movie.

After 3 years, Schaeffer comes back to GRMC in 58, which he turns into GRM Group of Musical Research. Pierre Henry, at the same time, leaves GRM and set up his own studio of music electroacoustic: APSOME.

In 1966, after publication of Theory of the musical objects, Schaeffer leaves the GRM .It is then François Bayle who replaces him until 1997, François Bayle known for his famous acousmonium. It is in Theory of the musical objects of Schaeffer that appears for the first time the word acousmatic, "music of the invisible sounds" according to Bayle.

In 1968 is set up the Class of electroacoustic composition and musical research in Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris and as professors Pierre Schaeffer, then Guy Reibel.

Today in the hands of Daniel Teruggi, the GRM with its acousmathèque created in 1993 lodges more than 5.000 bands including 1.500 works carried out since 1948 by more than 200 composers.

A worldwide impact

If the first attempts of electronic music appears a bit frenchy, it quickly will be propagated to the whole world. In 1953, the first opera of Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry is created in Donaueschingen: Orphée 53, first trace of export abroad. Then Maurice Béjart makes the choregraphy of la symphonie pour un homme seul executed by the Ballets de l'Etoile in Paris in 1955 before a world tour.

Abroad at the beginning of the Fifties, studios appear a bit everywhere. The electronic studio of music of the WDR (Westdeutscher Rundfunk) in Cologne will be used by Stockhausen for its work Gesang der Jünglinge in 1956. Luciano Berio and Bruno Maderna set up in 51 what, four years later, will become the studio of phonology of RAI (Radiotelevisione Italiana) in Milan. In Europe, at Stockholm, at Helsinki, at Copenhagen and the B.B.C in London, studios dedicated to electronic music are also set up. In the United States, Vladimir Ussachevsky and Otto Luening also began in 1951 their research in their center inaugurated in 1959 under the name of Columbia Princeton Electronic Music Center (C.P.E.M.C.). And one should not forget, the studio of sonology of Utrecht (created in 1961) and the studio of Stockholm (E.M.S.) which will make research about interfaces for musician in the Seventies.

Some composers and some works

In conservatoires and universities, If you must study Beethoven's sonatas, Bach's fugues, romantic pieces, you're not forced to play Berio, Stockhausen, Manoury and so on... When exams are coming and a contemporary piece is in the program, students are stressed because they are not used to this music, or simply think that they can do what they want: nobody knows.

However, for us pianists, studying contemporary music is fundamental. It enables to get with anonther view onto piano, and especially to acquire all the possibilities of piano, of which precious little people are aware.

Teaching contemporary music, yes but how? There is the real dilemma. I'am against a special course for contemporary piano, because it would confine in its ghetto this music. But training teachers to sensitize their students, and guiding them in the way to play those pieces. But this big work upstream piano classes is missing. Indeed, rare are opportunities to read a contemporary text during theorical classes, and the piano teacher can't assume alone piano courses and sensitization to new repertoires.

If we can have some good examples (SBAM in Belgium), sensitizationis always punctual and therefore not so beneficial, and these target only students with a nearly achieved education. The problem requires us to get back to basics of the first years of education. Make listen to the youngest this repertoire, and Stop quarrels between teachers could enable a march. It is completely unacceptable that nowadays some teachers still consider a certain repertoire as unintelligible noise. We mustn't, as teachers, restrain the field of vision of our student, but widen it, guide and not impose. Today's music must be a part of studies as well as the others classical musics. It's up to students to like or not, we don't have to inluence them or truncate history of music.

The artist free of his choices disappeared behing the tremendous law of marketing. To reach a public not accustomed and indeed find a new opportunity for selling is well established in the ideas of our leaders. In our world of image, the important thing is not any more the contents but the container. In their race, the labels do not bank any more on one quality of interpretation or the quality of an artist but on his physique, and its actor's craft.

Anna Netrebko in a very snuffed television game is called a success according to Deutsche Grammophon, because the chief of international marketing and promotion points out that in the two months following the broadcasting, 70.000 discs were sold. But is this really a place for Anna Netrebko?

They now sell us the little face of Helene Grimaud, the lips of Renee Fleming, the plunging neckline of Angela Gheorghiu, the lock of Yundi Li. Arièle Butaux, producing in France Musiques, declared: “With an equal talent, a pretty girl with the blue eyes will take precedence over one ugly girl with the fatty hair. “ and, this is straightforwardly enormous: “And what is certain, it is that in XXIe century, Clara Haskil would not have made a career!”. This proves that with higher talent, a chubby does not have any chance of career.

In our perfect world, the musical reflexion left room to the boxoffice. It is of primary importance to sell discs rather than to build a thought. The time when the house of disc bet on an artist and let it develop fifteen or twenty years is indeed completed. People needs stars. A young singer enters on the market, Good, but he must sing all and straightaway. Producers make him believe that he's able to do it, and finally he looses his voice.

There is no time to wait today. Everything is going faster and faster, but towards where? What made the price of things, waiting, is not now any more in use. To build and develop a repertoire, we need time, if we want to do it well, but nobody wants to wait any more. “It becomes difficult to reflect within the meaning of a music when reign the race on contracts and planes. But perhaps we cannot mix any more the current life style with the interior rhythm of the serious music.” said Rostropovitch. But who still want to know if the music makes sense? Who wants to understand the music? Surely not a large majority of professionals, who only see in it one simple product able to bring them glory and wealth.

The great concern of much of my fellow-members is to find the program which will fill the halls, even if consistency misses it, to pay attention to a communication whiwh emphasizes them well, and of course that the fee is enough high to play. A new spirit has been developed, art is becoming a huge company, which must be adapted to the customer. I dare to hope that all is not lost and that art is not a company, because should it be otherwise, art is dead.

But what is this technique of composition? The spectral music is based on the discovery of the nature of the musical tone and on the composition of the spectrum - entity integrating at the same time the harmony and the tone - of a sound. It is a music which works on the transformation of sound material, thanks to continuous processes and by using techniques microtonales of orchestration which will allow an amalgamated perception (that of the tone finally). Tristan Murail, Gerard Grisey, Hugues Dufourt and Michaël Levinas developped this research, while incorporating the techniques derived from the analyze-synthesis by computer, which made possible to return to the details of the representation of the tone. They will apply thus to the writing for traditional instruments the techniques discovered in electroacoustics such as the compression of spectra, the frequency modulation, the loop of re-injection, or the reverberation. Stimmung de Karlheinz Stockhausen, Atmospheres of György Ligeti, Metastasis de Iannis Xenakis or Mutations of Jean-Claude Risset are works which basically influenced the spectral current by their ambiguity between harmony and tone.

Contrary to other compsers Gerard grisey theorized much on his school which he called liminal (limen: threshold), his analyses remain circumspect and the technical analysis prevails. Nevertheless one could release a leitmotiv which would reach its climax in its positioning towards the composition, composition which he brings closer to the Deleuzien concept of Splendeur du On. In Tempus ex machina, he writes: "The composition of process, writes it, leaves the daily gesture and by that even frightens us. It is inhuman, cosmic and causes the fascination of Crowned and Unknown, joining what Gilles Deleuze defines as Splendeur du On: a mode of impersonal individuations and singularities pre-individual. "

The doubt is thus thrown on the identity of the being sound and is accentuated with the following vision of Grisey: "The sound, with its birth, its life and its death, is similar to an alive being", which consequently raises questions of classical ontology: "From what the sound comes? Where does it go? Which is its way? Which are its junctions? In which direction does it go, here, there? ".

Much more than a closed current and a simple technique of composition, the spectral music is an attitude. An attitude resolutely turned towards the future, without dogma, opened to the world and the sound, which makes possible for the young composers to explore the plurality of the musical expression.

The contemporary music, is sometimes even been sulky by certain listeners, or worse by the musicians themselves which do not understand it and drop it before to have made an effort of comprehension. Because there the problem is. Our ear, little accustomed to this type of music, grew with the variety and the classical music and assimilated completely the music known as tonal, without really realizing it (by the cinema, publicity…). But this said, the gaps of our ear as regards music of today can be filled. By listening to contemporary music, one discovers unknown sound landscapes and of a very large variety, but this one requires on behalf of the listener an active listening and a small research.

To penetrate in the world of the contemporary music, it is to agree to enter the field of "unexpected". The listener can sometimes be diverted by the lack of melody, but this traditional structure of melody/accompaniment is called here into question by certain composers. I would say that the contemporary music is a research on the language. If this research seems to you ineffective or non-esthethic, initially calls in question your way of listening, and remembers, that at a certain time the sharps and flats did not exist, that the increased quart was regarded as “diabolus in musica”, and that all these elements which we now find in classical music and variety were regarded as noise and an atrocious cacophony. At their time, Wagner wrote noise, Mozart also.

Many works composed for more than fifty years by musicians of classical education could reach an audience larger than the current one. Fault of the keys which make it possible to appreciate them, the listener does not manage to enter this “unusual” world, but more serious, by being sulky he threatens its existence. Wonder about the composers, if the law of the market must manage musical research, therefore to know if the composer must write for the public, or if the composer is free to transcend the “law” to reveal his genius, whatever says the public which does not know this music.