What the GRM brought to music: from musique concre`te to ...

What the GRM brought to music 201of sequences. The software for temporal and spectralprocessing, are manifold and varied: they derive fromthe representation of sound in the digital domain, andthus are not transposed computer versions of conventionaltreatments.The practice of using computer programs has onlypartially modified this stance. Software manipulationdemands a form of coding of values. That very oftennecessitates notation specifying at least a pre-existingstate.TheGRM,afterhavingtriedtospreadtheuseofMusic V, chose to create an environment based ongestures.From the middle of the 1970s, research at the GRMled to the development of a program using a real-timeaudio-numeric system. This was the Syter project(système temps réel).With Syter, composers had access to real-time andinteractive control of processing programs for digitalsound. The software developed for Syter was thentransferred to platforms of personal computers with theGRM Tools program. This new package allowed thetreatment techniques in use at the GRM to becomeaccessible to a wide public of users.13. ENERGYA new phase of musical research was marked by thearrival of François Bayle as director of the GRM in1966, when Schaeffer devoted himself to otherfunctions. During nearly thirty years, Bayle was tomark the compositional direction of the Paris Schoolwith his imprint. In 1997 he was succeeded by DanielTeruggi. This composer, who joined the GRM in 1980,has put in place a clearly defined course of action,which, as this article is being written, gives a newdirection to the GRM.From François Bayle’s catalogue, one notes thatworks of chamber music without an electroacousticdimension were the most prominent up to 1970. In thatperiod instrumental works, of which only some involvedmagnetic tape playback, included traditional instrumentsas well as less traditional ones such as the glassharmonica, Baschet crystal, the Ondes Martenot andthe Hammond organ as instrumental sources thuswidened the spectrum of possibilities in orchestrationand of expression.Two works were to launch the next phase of Baylianwriting. One was the suite for tape Jeîta ou Murmure deseaux, conceived in seventeen movements; the other,more importantly, l’Expérience acoustique, between1969 and 1971. Several major works followed, of whichVibrations composées (1973), Grande polyphonie (1974)and Camera oscura (1976) are the most important fromthat period.Bayle rarely resorted to live sources; writing for tapebecame systematic for him. A new form of writingappeared, and one finds its source in the terminologyemployed at the time. New terms blossomed in thecourse of the 1960s. The majority referred to a sound’scause: bounces, rustlings, evolving gestures. Certain ofthem invoke the idea of flowing, or of surface: tissue,fluid, hesitation. Others again allude to discontinuities:fragmentation. Certainly, the idea of motion that waspresent in Schaefferian theory in that period wasevolved further. New terms are borrowed from subtitlesof works, or from the writings of the GRM’s composersat the time. These choices reflected a new attitudetowards conducting sounds. Rather than incliningtowards the object with a view of examining itsproperties, the sounds became forces influenced by themovements that cause them. Among the representativeworks are Bernard Parmegiani’s De natura sonorumwhich is frequently quoted as exemplary of this period.It breathed life into a new form of sonic analysis, and itstechniques of realisation as well as its stylistic assumptionsare exposed in the work. 73 The principle of thework is to ally concrète objects to electronic sources.Putting these materials into an intimate relationshipsometimes creates a vertiginous fusion of texture andtone, sometimes of radical contrasts. The magisterialessay by musicologist Jean-Jacques Nattiez has shownthe poetic categories of it: starting from Nattiez’observations, one understands better how, in a worklike De natura sonorum, the nature of the musical objecthas been transformed: the relations of energy are thedriving force of the constitution of objects. The soundobject became sonic material through a recordedfragment. Musique concrète, following the example ofthe cinema, would proceed by putting together individualsound sequences, usually short, especially the firststudies of noise in 1948. It was François Bayle who gaveform to a completely different conception. The vocabularyemployed by this composer celebrates hisinfluences but also introduces his own new models.One of the most important concepts in the process of therefounding of the Paris School is the idea of morphogenesis,which Bayle directs towards the question of theflow of energy that animates the sounds. Giving adirection to composition towards certain dynamicmaterials was for Bayle the means of generating sonicforms in motion. The sound was thus liberated and thestyle of composition at the GRM was completelychanged by this. Bayle made images of sounds emergefrom forms. These he named iSounds (iSons). Thethought around this concept, amply developed in hiswork of 1993, 74 is indeed a radical return to questionsrelated to the material, but also led to a deeply novel73Jean-Christophe Thomas, Philippe Mion and Jean-JacquesNattiez. 1982. L’envers d’une oeuvre. De natura sonorum deBernard Parmegiani, Paris: Buchet-Chastel and Institut nationalde la communication audivisuelle.74François Bayle. 1993. Musique acousmatique. Propositions …positions. Paris: Buchet-Chastel and Institut national de lacommunication audivisuelle.