Espace Fiction – Cinemasonor series #16

Great science-fiction-themed library music LP by uncredited French composer, released in 1969 in the Cinemasonor library music series published by Véga records in France. Cinemasonor included several collections like “Bruits de la Vie” (everyday & household noises), “Bruits de la nature” (nature sounds), “Machines et Engins” (engine noises) or “Espace Fiction” (library music for films).

♫ From the “Espace Fiction” series, this LP is a collection of radical electronic vignettes inspired by spacecraft launch sites, space station or interstellar travel. The music is based on highly abstract, metaphysical electronic sounds a la Pietro Grossi, where noisy sonorities distill a tangible feeling of fear and paranoia. Often extremely minimal and skeletal, some tracks also include radio static, machines noises, sound collage and sound treatment.

32 tracks, from 27s to 2mn24s

Total time 37:30

LP released by Véga, France, 1969

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Betsy Jolas – D’un Opéra de Voyage

Born in 1926, French contemporary music composer Betsy Jolas was a Domaine Musical associate during the 1960s and her first compositions were interpreted by Boulez’s Orchestre du Domaine Musical – see official website–, yet she remained an independent composer and did not adhere strictly to the Serialist dogma. Recorded in 1969 by the Domaine Musical conducted by Gilbert Amy, this disc was Betsy Jolas’ first record release, published in the highly collectible Impact de la Musique Contemporaine collection of 7inch singles, appearing on Disques Adès between 1969 and 1974 (see gallery and discography here). Adès was Pierre Boulez’s record company during the 1960s and published his Schoenberg Pierrot Lunaire LP in 1962 and the Marteau Sans Maître LP in 1964.

♫ Composed for a small orchestra of 22 instruments, D’un Opéra de Voyage was premiered in 1967 at the Festival de Royan by the Orchestre du Domaine Musical conducted by Michael Gielen. It belongs to a series of orchestral and chamber music works Jolas calls “opera” (also including D’un opéra de Poupée en Sept Musiques and Frauenleben, both 1982) despite the absence of singer. The imaginative instrumentation of D’un Opéra de Voyage recalls the Stravinski of Renard or L’Histoire du Soldat, in part due to the use of isolated percussion and reeds, while hints of Klangfarbenmelodie point to the influence of Webern on mid-century European composers.

D’un Opéra De Voyage (side 1+2) (9:40)

7in single released by Disques Adès, France, between 1969 and 1974

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Jean Françaix – L’Insectarium

Composed in 1953, the short harpsichord cycle L’Insectarium (The Insectarium) by French composer Jean Françaix (1912–1997) was premiered in 1957 by the legendary harpsichord player Wanda Landowska. It is here interpreted by Marga Scheurich, a Johan Sebastian Bach specialist and member of Stuttgarter Collegium Instrumentale, and later Stuttgarter Kammermusikensemble and Stuttgarter Kammerorchester. German label Da Camera (founded 1962) published several harpsichord records with Scheurich in the 1960s, including Pachelbel’s Hexachordum Apollinis 1699. Scheurich plays a German harpsichord with a specifically German Baroque sonority, not without its own charm, but not the kind of instrument one would expect in French harpsichord music. Anyway, her playing is lively and contrasted, as required by a colorful score inspired by the world of insects, as each part of L’Insectarium is named after, and inspired by, an insect.

Marga Scheurich, harpsichord

Total time 10:30
7in single released by Da Camera, Germany, between 1962 and 1969

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Salon des Composants 1970 flexidisc

This flexidisc is a promotional record for the Sescosem French company, a Thomson CSF subsidiary, to be given to visitors of the 1970 Salon des Composants, or Electronic Components Fair, a professional convention for micro chips and integrated circuits of the time, I guess. On the first side, a female hostess welcomes the listener to the Sescosem showroom with an exceptionally cheesy way of speaking, detailing the Sescosem products and naming each engineer involved in their various projects, all this on a background of chiming notes from a marimba. The flip is an electroacoustic composition courtesy of 1970s French library music stalwarts Nino Nardini and Roger Roger, recorded in their Studio Ganaro near Versailles – I posted another of their 45rpm oddities a while ago. The track blends electronic sounds with lots of sound effects, backward running tape, musique concrète sounds and real instruments like percussion. The title Structures électroniques is of course a portmanteau name based on Structures Sonores (Baschet Brothers) and Poème Electronique (Edgar Varèse).

01 Sescosem aux Composants 1970 (4:35)
02 Structures électroniques (4:15)

Total time 8:50
Flesidisc 7in single released by Pérez Publicité, France, 1970

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Renaud Gagneux – Musiques sur la Place

Another single in the Sonoriage series on Le Chant Du Monde (see previous post), with the same motto of “Pour une initiation active à l’écoute et à la lecture de la musique d’aujourd’hui née de l’attention à l’environnement sonore quotidien” (or, Introduction to today’s music based on special awareness to everyday sounds).

♫ This disc is played on one of the best Parisian carillons at Saint Germain L’Auxerois church, near Le Louvre museum – the exact adress is 2 Place du Louvre, hence the title Musiques sur la Place. Renaud Gagneux (pictured right) is the titular carillonist player there since 1970. The music on this disc integrates environemental sounds like street noises, passers-by, car engines or regular monthly alert sirens, with carillon strokes and carillon music by Gagneux, Louis Couperin and Olivier Bernager. French contemporary music composer Renaud Gagneux, born 1947, studied with Stockhausen, André Jolivet and Olivier Messiaen, among others. In 1970, he became a member of Pierre Mariétan‘s Groupe d’Etude et de Réalisation Musicale (GERM) along Jean-Yves Bosseur, Gérard Frémy and Philippe Drogoz, and in 1972, he integrated Pierre Schaeffer’s INA-GRM institution. In addition to being an educator, Gagneux composes electroacoustic music, string quartets, chamber music and opera.

Musiques Sur La Place, side A (5:50)