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BUTSUMYÔE
SAPPHO HIKÈTIS
Presse (Français)
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MUSICA 91, STRASBOURG
(September-October 1991)
ELOY’S VOICES
Philip de la Croix
*
DERNIÈRES NOUVELLES
D’ALSACE
Wednesday, October 2, 1991
(Latest News from Alsace)
Musica
Tonight at Pôle Sud
The Far-reaching Quest of Jean-Claude Eloy
Antoine Wicker
*
DERNIÈRES NOUVELLES
D’ALSACE
October 4, 1991
(Latest News from Alsace)
"Musica 91" Festival, Strasburg
Emotion in Eloy's voices
Jean Wittersheim
*
SPANDAUER VOLKSBLATT
February 9, 1992
Half of "multiculturalism"
(02/07/92 Concert)
Matthias Reissner
*
LIBERATION
Saturday Nov 23 and Sunday Nov 24, 2002
CONTEMPORARY.
Eloy's Spirit
By
Eric Dahan
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BUTSUMYÔE
SAPPHO HIKÈTIS
Presse (Français)
________________________________________________
MUSICA 91, STRASBOURG
(September-October 1991)
ELOY’S VOICES
Jean-Claude Eloy likes
women. And so do we, even more so when their extraordinary voices belong
to Yumi Nara, Fatima Miranda, Junko Ueda ...
Outside norms, outside conventions, outside
fashion and even outside time. Top awards in piano, student of Milhaud,
Boulez and Scherchen, professor at Berkeley. Fascinated by classical instrumentation
and electro-acoustics. Captivated by the Orient. For thirty years...
In one evening, Jean-Claude Eloy brings together five pieces devoted to
philosophical and cultural chapters, all of which feature women, under
the unifying title of Libérations. Rest assured: this will not
be a political speech or a philosophy lesson. But an opportunity to hear
what Sappho, the Hindu Upanishads, Native Americans, the Japanese writer
Ihara Saikaku or Rosa Luxembourg had to say about women. And too bad if
we don’t understand Sanskrit, ancient Japanese, modern Greek or Cherokee
because beyond even the poetry and the musicality of these writings, there
is another language, a musical language, the language of Jean-Claude Eloy.
Revolution, religion, eros. And four remarkable voices that have come
from Spain and Japan. Among them are two longtime participants in Jean-Claude
Eloy’s musical and philosophical adventures. The superb Fatima Miranda,
who has assimilated flamenco singing, Indian dhrupad and Japanese kabuki.
The incredible and excentric Yumi Nara, accustomed to confronting any
audacity that emerges from contemporary creation...
A phenomenal exploration of timber and color. Every register of the female
voice, from the lowest, in the manner of Japanese Buddhist monks, to the
most incredibly high, like a metallic wire. In this work, the composer
achieves with his performers what is usually produced by studio equipment:
two of his pieces, for that matter, do completely without the computerized
instrumentation that is so dear to Eloy’s heart.
The journey goes to the core of vocal music’s most extreme limit.
What Woman wishes, God wishes; and so does Jean-Claude Eloy...
PHILIP DE LA CROIX
Strasbourg-, Meinau, Pôle Sud, Wednesday,
October 2, 8 :30 P.M.
________________________________________________
DERNIÈRES NOUVELLES D’ALSACE
Wednesday, October 2, 1991
(Latest News from Alsace)
Musica
Tonight at Pôle Sud
The Far-reaching Quest of Jean-Claude Eloy
Fatima Miranda, Yumi
Nara, Junko Ueda… Absolutely remarkable voices and a new musical
poem by Jean-Claude Eloy. A far-reaching quest for timber and color…
Jean-Claude Eloy comes back to Strasbourg
and to Musica with obvious pleasure. He loves it and regrets once again
not being able to truly enjoy the town or the festival. All his time will
be devoted to rehearsing "Libérations", an ambitious
creation whose last stage he is presenting in Strasbourg. Already three
hours and thirty minutes worth of music. "I enjoy settling into the
duration. I need to experience a sound in its duration..."
The festival’s regulars can recall a long night spent in one of the
town’s school gymnasiums in 1985, sprawled on the floor, at times
drowsy and yet wakeful. All through the night... Fascinated by the Orient
and enthralled by magnetic tape: Jean-Claude Eloy’s itinerary is
among the most remarkable and radical of these last decades.
With the cycles created or programed in "Libérations",
he comes back to solo vocal expression and builds on a new relationship
with literature. Sanskrit texts, the fate of a prostitute recounted by
the Japanese Saikaku, poetry by Sappho, letters from Rosa Luxemburg to
Sonia Liebknecht, Californian eco-feminist writings: revolution, religion
and eros compose Eloy’s active meditation.
He constructs his work based on the concrete material of instruments,
languages and voices, using a set of scrupulously applied principles –
high standards, concentration, patience...- all of which he implements
with absolute strictness and natural ease. As for the languages, he obviously
doesn’t speak them : "But I work on, I study, I probe each Sanskrit
or Japanese word so that each word carries..." And as for the instruments
? "The problem with contemporary music is that too many composers
have never touched an instrument..." And voices ? "I compose
each of my pieces after concretely studying the resources and vocal characteristics
of every performer..."
And around each vocalist, he builds spectacular volumes of sound: I construct
my sound masses in the electro-acoustic studio. It guarantees my freedom.
Resorting to a full orchestra would make me a slave to institutional policies..."
He wants nothing of it. If the roads he takes seem to lead him towards
the creation of an opera, Jean-Claude Eloy doesn’t for a second see
himself bending to conventional institutional rules: he will act only
if an inner need tells him to, he says. The composition will grow out
of his work, from patience and perseverance, not from an order of any
kind.
It will spring from a deep familiarity and complicity with his performers.
Eloy says he is "stupefied" by the behavior of orchestra musicians
who, a second before playing, give off the impression of being distracted,
absent, bored to be there, as if fulfilling a chore or some form of drudgery:
"Music loses its value by cultivating only the virtuosity of its
performers, when it has no other end in itself. The Occident should learn
once again how to concentrate on a sound, and to sustain it properly..."
It is just this intensity of concentration that we appear to be lacking.
This sums up Eloy’s passion exactly, and underlines once again the
obvious ritualistic dimension of his music: "There is certainly something
sacred in the act of making music..."
ANTOINE WICKER
* Tonight at 8 :30 P.M. at Pôle Sud
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DERNIÈRES NOUVELLES D’ALSACE
October 4, 1991
(Latest News from Alsace)
"Musica 91" Festival, Strasburg
Emotion in Eloy's voices
The theater was full for two hours. Some
stayed past the midnight hour after the intermission. Eloy's voices were
at the Pôle-Sud Theater. Every year, the Festival organizes a marathon
night dedicated to the fans or even the Stakhanovists of new music. One
remembers the nights spent in the pool*, of the gigantic string quartet
cycles, of piano performances...
Despite a five-tier cycle reduced by one episode, "Libération",
by Jean-Claude Eloy, held a few die-hard listeners breathless for more
than three hours...
The idea of the cycle entitled "Libérations"
emerged during the preparations of the events celebrating the 200th anniversary
of the French Revolution.
Variations around a theme, combinations of ancient and modern texts. Poetry,
Revolution, Americas, Asia... jostle together.
One is already familiar with Jean-Claude Eloy's peculiar electro-acoustic
work. He is able to bring us into an obsessive atmosphere, sometimes disconcerting
sometimes infuriating.
He is also able to trigger a genuine state of hypnosis, a compelling and
disquieting fascination.
Eloy does not fling sounds– in all their splendor – to our ears
like an accumulation of information of a clever complexity. Instead, he
makes them live and breathe.
He studies, searches for as many ways as possible, for the many timeless
extraordinary horizons opening to a dimension leading to dizziness and
intoxication.
Jean-Claude Eloy combines electro-acoustic sophistication with a variety
of voices for evocations presented in Sanskrit, Japanese, English, and
Greek... and creates a piercing or lyrical voice.
A split or whispered voice. Here again, Eloy pushes his perfectionism
to the limit, offering soloists an interpretative palette of extravagant
richness. The refinement easily finds its place. So do rage, nostalgia,
and charm.
Eloy's planet is definitely difficult to outline, but retains an intact
power of fascination.
JEAN WITTERSHEIM
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SPANDAUER VOLKSBLATT
February 9, 1992
Half of "multiculturalism"
(02/07/92 Concert)
Jean-Claude Eloy presented parts of his
Libérations cycle to the Academy of Arts (Akademie der Künste).
He considers himself a composer creating an exchange between various world
cultures without destroying their identity.
Hence, it is not surprising if Sanskrit, Japanese and Greek texts in the
first cycle adjoin the electro-acoustic pre-transformation/modulation
technique initiated in Europe. In any case, it all boils down to the same
for the listener who does not have a broad linguistic knowledge.
However, the vocal technique of Yumi Nara, Junko Ueda and, most of all,
Fatima Miranda is exceptional. An astounding diversity of expression modes
is bogged down as the composition progresses in a mostly monotonous way.
The second part of Libérations, Butsumyôe, relates the story
of a Japanese prostitute in a sort of excited musical and dramatic speech
only interrupted by the sporadic intervention of drums and a second voice.
[…]
The first part, which moulds the audience with powerful opening infrasonic
vibrations, provides us with an outstanding electro-acoustic experience.
In Erkos, Junko Ueda played a Satsuma-Biwa, a sort of mandolin, with a
virtuosity only matched by the enigmatic character of the whole work.
The multicultural composer is there. The only one still missing is the
multicultural listener able to easily see the relation between the Japanese
vocal technique and Ancient Greece aesthetics.
MATTHIAS REISSNER
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LIBERATION
Saturday Nov 23 and Sunday Nov 24, 2002
CONTEMPORARY.
Eloy's Spirit
By
Eric Dahan
The French electro-acoustic
composer, nourishing a passion for Asian music, is celebrated at the Why
Note Festival in Dijon, France.
Electro-acoustic, Fatima Miranda, voice,
Junko Ueda satsuma-biwa, Yumi Nara, soprano. Saturday at 6 pm ("Butsumyôe",
"Sappho Hikètis"), 8 pm and 9:30 pm ("Erkos",
"Galaxies"), at the Feuillants Theater of Dijon.
A tower at La Défense, the afternoon
is fading. Paris seems to be at his fingertips; however, Jean-Claude Eloy
has learned to live on the fringe. Cut off from institutions, the system
and current events. One letter too many to Pierre Boulez in the late 70's,
and the student who could not bear to see the anti-establishment leader
accept the exercise of power became persona non grata at the lrcam (Institut
de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique). Has it taken a toll
on him? He would rather discuss his passion for elsewhere and his point
of view on modernity. From the hundreds of books dealing with various
forms of mysticism to the different digital samplers whose cords intermingle
in the middle of what used to be the living room: the interior design
is not typical of a Mandarin home, but rather that of a techno-kid. Except
that Eloy was trained at the Schola Cantorum, became a student of Darius
Milhaud at the Paris Conservatory, then a student of Boulez' – who
will conduct his musical piece Equivalences in Paris, Donaueschingen,
Los Angeles, and Darmstadt.
Shock
The son of a consulting engineer, Jean-Claude
Eloy, born in 1938 in Rouen, France, has composed music since the age
of 12. A noteworthy fact at the time, he is under the influence of Olivier
Messiaen, the composer-ornithologist using an eccentric language based
on plain song metrics, Hindu deci-talas and the use of non-retrogradable
rhythms, among other things. That passion for music of the future composer
of Saint François d'Assise will cost Eloy his harmony competitive
exam at the Conservatory that leaves little room for these new modes of
limited transposition, which the student dares use. Even though Milhaud
is very liberal, few people welcome and promote contemporary music at
this time.
When Gilbert Amy brings Eloy to a Domaine musical concert at the Petit
Marigny, it is thus a shock. In addition to his own Marteau sans maître
(The Hammer without a Master), Boulez, founder of that unique concert
association, conducts other atonal or serial musical pieces signed by
Stockhausen, Nono, and Webern.
The famous clean sweep by those who only swear by the Vienna School (i.e.
Schoenberg, Berg, Webern) fascinates the young composer thirsty for anything
new, even though he simultaneously nourishes a passion for audio documents
available at the Centre d'Etudes de Musiques Orientales (Academic Center
of Eastern Music).
Crossroads
Before his trips to Japan, he frequents
Darmstadt, a crossroads of European vanguard movements ("At the time
it was still an effervescent research center, not the institution that
it has become"), then attends the Bâle Academy where Boulez
teaches him microstructures while Stockhausen introduces him to the science
of great forms.
At the age of 27, appointed Professor at the University of Berkeley, California,
he escapes Paris and its "narrow-minded attitude", but soon
becomes disillusioned as the American university does not have an electro-acoustic
studio.
Stockhausen's assistants talked to the Guru of Kâmakalâ, an
orchestra-based piece written by Eloy, however sounding like electronic
music. Consequently, the young Frenchman finds refuge with his hero in
Cologne. Driven by excitement he composes Shânti, a two-hour musical
piece. Boulez' serial combinatorics and abstract formalism no longer interest
him. Now the way an acoustic activity fills time is what stirs his creativity.
The Science School lab of the Censier University in Paris opens its doors
to him, followed by Japan via NHK (the national radio network) and the
National Theater, which is looking for composers for its gaguku ensemble
(Royal Court music of Chinese origin).
Why is he fascinated by that non-modulating music so "bare"
to the Western ear? Because "the acoustic body is constantly fluctuating
thanks to the fine ornamental science of Asian musicians and singers".
He develops a graphical notation for them, as they do not know Western
music theory, and it works.
Since then, he has not stopped turning abstract sounds into concrete sounds
and vice-versa, and demultiplying the human voice or a satsuma-biwa note
to create a telluric rumbling noise without going through the Ircam programs.
"The use of electronics in popular music has led the industry to
develop a host of equivalent software applications", he explains.
Modulator
After Grenoble last year Dijon is now the
one to pay tribute to that great modulator of the infinitesimal. He still
remembers 1977 when the Paris Orchestra sabotaged the execution of one
of his works at the Palais des Congrès. To him, everything is a
matter of time: "Electro-acoustics can still evolve and become the
piano of the 21st century."
ERIC DAHAN
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