1. Sur Incises (1996/1998) pour trois pianos, trois harp, trois percussion-claviers - Moment I 2. Sur Incises (1996/1998) pour trois pianos, trois harp, trois percussion-claviers - Moment II 3 - 6. Messagequisse (1976/77) pour violoncelle solo et six violoncelles 7 - 15. Anthèmes 2 (1997)

Performed by Jean-Guihen Queyras, Ensemble InterContemporain Conducted by Pierre Boulez

Música Eletrônica - Jorge Antunes

The work Auto-Retrato Sobre Paisaje Porteño, by the Brazilian composer Jorge Antunes, was composed in 1969 at the Electronic Music Laboratory of the CLAEM, Latin American Center of Superior Musical Studies of the Torcuato Di Tella Institute, in Buenos Aires. The piece, which has a duration of 14 minutes and 50 seconds, represents the search for an aesthetic definition and a domination of the sound material.
Antunes used an old-fashioned gramophone recording – a plate - with a tango by Francisco Canaro, purchased by the author in a junk shop in Caminito, in the La Boca district of Buenos Aires. In the second-hand store Antunes also bought an old gramophone. In the CLAEM laboratory, when he played the antique recording, Antunes perceived that the arm of the gramophone was heavy: the stylus nearly penetrated the acetate surface of the plate. A scratch would cause the sound track to repeat itself continuously. This defect became a special effect, providing the basic rhythmic element for the construction of a samba, which, when combined with the cell of the tango, opened the way for the composer’s integration with the Buenos Aires landscape.
This audacious innovation in using sounds from an old recording, together with the noise of the disk itself, sparked controversy in the musical world, since instutionalized electroacoustic music at the time was radically opposed to squeaks, called “suplido” in Spanish and “souffle” in French. Cleanness of the sound, without noise, was the rule. In subsequent decades Antunes’s original idea was imitated by other composers, who discovered sources of inspiration in noisy old recordings.
The desire to assemble a landscape, over which Antunes intended to paint a self-portrait, was motivated by the political similarity experienced by the two countries: Brazil and Argentina. The composer had won the fellowship from the Torcuato Di Tella Institute, which offered him exile at just the right moment: the Brazilian military regime, after the promulgation of the AI-5, was hounding him. Ironically, Argentina, the country that welcomed him, was also beginning to undergo a period of tough military dictatorship, under General Ongania’s government.
In the final section of the musical work, Antunes’s voice is used to inflect a speech whose words have no meaning. The key-words which are recognizable translate the composer’s concern with the political situation of Latin America in the late 60's. The speech ends with a vocal improvisation in which Antunes plays with the words “geral” (general) and “general” (army officer), referring to the powermongers at that time. This work with a strong political connotation generated controversy and problems. In 2009, during a visit to Buenos Aires, Antunes had access to the historical archive of the Torcuato Di Tella Institute and the Mary Reichenbach collection. He discovered that the work had disappeared from the archive, having been banned from the CLAEM archives in 1972. Antunes’s other pieces written at the time are there in the archives. But the controversial Auto-retrato had vanished. The end of the work forms, stereophonically, with vocal effects, something resembling a sound-signature of the author: JO-EU (Me-Me). Listen the original version

01 - Historia de un Pueblo (BRLXX3)

02 - Cinta Cita

03 - Auto-Retrato Sobre Paisaje Porteño

04 - Valsa Sideral

05 - Contrapunctus Contra Contrapunctus

Luciano Berio - Sinfonia

The Swingle Singers

New York Philharmonic

conducted by the composer

Sinfonia

1. Section I

2. Section II

3. Section III

4. Section IV

Pierre Boulez - Répons/ Dialogue De L'Ombre Double

"I take the title in the first place because it's vague. When you use words like sonata and symphony you are tied. Répons can mean many things - but not nothing! In its original sense it means responsorial singing, between a soloist and the chorus, in alternation, as in Gregorian chant. And this notion can be enlarged: for me, that's important, to go back to notions and to go further, to go beyond the idea of a dialogue between one and several, one instrument and many instruments. There are many conjunctions and dialogues in this piece: between soloists (there are six) and a central group, certainly, but not just in alternation. There are all sorts of ways in which the material can be proposed by the central group and taken up by the soloists, or vice versa, or the same music played by different groups of instruments and in different rhythmic patterns. But, above all, there's a dialogue between the instruments and the technology: a solo instrument plays and what it plays can be enlarged, expanded. Not only the sound itself can be transformed but what happens to it in time and space. The technology acts on the sound according to the programs I have established. No question of chance operations!" (Gramophone, March 1999)

Répons (1981 - 1984)

1) Introduction [6:26]

2) Section 1 [2:58]

3) Section 2 [2:04]

4) Section 3 [2:23]

5) Section 4 [5:40]

6) Section 5 [3:58]

7) Section 6 [5:23]

8) Section 7 [5:52]

9) Section 8 [3:12]

10) Coda [4:34]

Ensemble Intercontemporain

Pierre Boulez

Andrew Gerzso

Dialogue de l'ombre double (1985)

11) Sigle initial [1:05]

12) Strophe I [2:03]

13) Transition I à II [1:01]

14) Strophe II [1:26]

15) Transition II à III [1:43]

16) Strophe III [1:23]

17) Transition III à IV [0:51]

18) Strophe IV [1:55]

19) Transition IV à V [0:26]

20) Strophe V [1:07]

21) Transition V à VI [0:43]

22) Strophe VI [1:36]

23) Sigle final [2:54]

Alain Damiens

Andrew Gerzso

"(...) there is a metre, slightly irregular on one level but very regular on another. There are so many irregular things in this piece that at one point you need to have a regular metre as you say - a bass and a regular pulse anyway - but also a series of harmonies which are all symmetrical. The harmony always gives this impression of something followed by its inverse; there is always a centre - an axis of symmetry. This symmetry of harmony corresponds in harmonic terms to a regular metre. This is very important. There are three types of time. That which is chaotic and irregular such as you have in the beginning (in the speed I mean). Then you have, in the speed, the very regular rapid repeated notes - always in semiquavers. Finally at the end there is a regularity, a kind of metre - but with much ornamentation. The ornamentation is in fact very irregular, but the metre itself is very regular." Boulez, about Répons. (Peter McCallum; Pierre Boulez, "An Interview with Pierre Boulez" The Musical Times, Vol. 130, No. 1751. (Jan., 1989), pp.9-10.)