Luc Ferrari

and from WIKIPEDIA

Another turn in his music was for Ferrari: Presque Rien ou le lever du Jour au Bord de la Mer - almost nothing or daybreak at the sea -. This piece illustrates or rather suggests unconsciously a minimalist process, about which one will speak much in the following years.
[edit]Concept of the Unit
Indeed, Presque Rien ou le lever du Jour au Bord de la Mer, from between 1967 and 1970, is a composition which materializes the break with the practices of the classical electro acoustics. Still more directly than what was called after Hétérozygote, anecdotic music, he requires for himself clearly the continuous sequence and the fixed sound image - like a slide - offering a slice of real as a work method and as means to escape from the habits. " « At the beginning the concept Presque Rien does not have anything to do with the music. One must carry oneself back into the time; in the sixties one said: noises on a side, music on the other one. » " Ferrari did not get involved in this play. He was concerned with making something coming from a deep desire without worrying whether this something fits into a category. The concept in his opinion cannot be defined as genre, as aesthetics or as technology, but only as idea. That means that the concept at the beginning cannot be seized physically, but rather as a general impression, which one lends to a body. This concept consists of: only one place - only one time - a certain acoustics - components, which he continues to develop from one Presque Rien to the other.
[edit]Concept of narration (Presque Rien No. 2 - ainsi continue la Nuit dans ma Tête multiple) - and the night continues in my numerous head -
One of the main characteristics of the Presque Rien is the narration, Not in the sense to tell a story, rather to make observable the time suggesting that something occurs in a place. Against the sound landscapes, where the place is perceptible, the elements he uses, and which he calls everyday life sounds should, by the concept of a minimal and not eventful story stimulate to a journey in the time; the coincidence of the everyday life noises belonging to the daily gestures and consisting of substance, is the element that constructs the time. The intention to tell is there, but remains blurred.
[edit]Concept of the Lie or the Perversion (Presque Rien avec filles) - almost nothing with girls
The concept of the lie stimulates Ferrari, and to name it, is almost a provocation. He uses the term of the perversion precisely in this sense. A concept is relatively abstract, however it becomes alive with the change of time. This is exactly, what he calls Perversion. But since it’s his invention, he has no reason to remain loyal to his concept. If loyalty should be, so only that of the search for certain acoustics.
[edit]Concept of the Beauty (Presque Rien No. 4)
Ferrari believed for a long time, and the time helping, that beauty was a concept of the past, like a somewhat mallow and superfluous attribute. He believes from now on in the contrary that we should be concerned with the beauty, that it is indispensable for our reflection. Or don't we have the time any more to be in charge of beauty because hideousness exasperates us? He lived since some years in a suburb, where everything is ugly, inharmonious and wrong on its place, thus the harmony and the beauty appear to him as a necessity and not at all a trifle or a secondary matter.
[edit]Concept of the Disappearance (Presque Rien No. 5, - almost nothing with instruments -)
Indeed, the Presque Rien are in search of the beauty of the sound, the harmony of the sound. In the search for the harmony of relations and the times. Disappears the narration. Disappears the recording as memory of a place or a situation. Remains a kind of report, the presentation of some fewer elements, like a dilution and, how these find their place in the time. The matter In Presque Rien No. 5 is the play of the objets musicaux - musical objects -.
[edit]Exploitation of the Concepts
« Since autumn 99, I have undertaken the composition of a new series of pieces with the general title Exploitation of the concepts. My purpose is to use those concepts I experimented in the course of my life as a composer and to use them in all possible directions. »
Archives sauvées des Eaux (2000)
Exploitation of the concepts 1 - archives saved from the flood - (for 2 CD and Vinyls - 48 ') "The thought to use my archives resulted from the necessity, to update my tapes of these memories - which suffered in my studio a damage caused by water -. I have indeed analogue tapes with all recordings I made since 1960, and which I have used or not. While copying this material on CD I felt the need to convert this boring work into creative work. And instead of copying I began to compose with them. "
Cycle des souvenirs (1995–2000) - cycle of the memories -
Exploitation of the concept 2 (installation with 6 CD and 4 video projectors) - (duration: endless) "To use the memories is not new to me, who are always backdue regarding the autobiographies.What is different here is to manage together as well the sound as the picture. In the same way as I am a sound taker-composer, I am a here a picture taker-composer. Also the cycle of the memories means that all components are structured in cycles, which produce random encounters by their overlay. Therefore everything is rotating. "
Archives Génétiquement Modifiées (2000)
Exploitation of the concepts 3 - Genetically Modified Archives (memorized sounds) - (25') "While listening to my recordings from the seventies I suddenly felt the need, without nostalgia and without allegiance on the past, to make new from it. Also I took very large freedom and easiness concerning the concepts while exploiting them. Indeed, if I speak of it, the question is not to make recognizable the concept, as that was usual at that time, rather to recover this idea thirty years later, how it rubs against the other earlier experiences, how it deforms or takes differently form. Or disappears. Perhaps I like also to use the word „exploitation“ in a provocative sense - although a little frivolously - as a concept. Also I claim the right to use my ideas exactly the same way as my sounds. I listen and I make from it a present that is rich of memory.Thus these archives are fundamentally and even perhaps genetically modified."
Tautologies et Environs (2000–2001) - Tautologies and environments -
Exploitation of the Concepts 4 For 14 sound-amplified instruments and memorized sound (25 ') The Exploitation of concept 1. 3 and 4 use the same elements for the memorized material, but differently assembled and deeply changed. Here the composition for orchestra, using the ideas of the tautology, gives a completely new aspect to the memorized sound. Also one encounters as new the idea of the tautology used in the composition for orchestra, particularly if one refers to the earlier Tautologos."
Exploitation of the concept of the Autobiography
"Since the beginning I composed as many works for instruments or orchestra as electroacoustic or acousmatic pieces. In other words and, in order to approach more precisely my topic, I would speak here only of the electroacoustic pieces or those developed with technology. First unconsciously, then more and more aware came up to me that I worked on the field of the autobiography. Thus I can only retrospectively speak about the time that led me to this concept. This happened about 1962, while I worked on the project of an electroacoustic piece: Hétérozygote. I thus want to try to explain, how significant the simple gesture was to go out from the studio searching sounds outside. I went out with portable utensils, which were my property, i.e. with my microphones and my tape recorder. This was my equipment, and it was I.Whether one wants or not, I was here in an original situation of presence and instrumental recognition making of me without being conscious, a manufacturer of the autobiography. I was present, I held my microphone, I put on my tape recorder as soon as I considered it was good, I took the sound that occurred front of me at the time I decided. This sound was my choice, my moment of the life stored on my equipment. In other words, should the last sentence not be clear, this compositional gesture in the recognition of the even indistinct sound, recognizing the found object as the first condition of an emotional attitude, was the inevitable introduction of the composer’s present in real time and thus as an autobiographer. " In this sense were realized the radio compositions for the German broadcasts Südwestfunk and Hessischer Rundfunk,
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