Francis Dhomont

Images Nomades is built in two parts of roughly equal length, all realized by Francis Dhomont in his studio in Avignon except one piece from Montréal. The first half holds three works he places among his “abstract” compositions, music with no subject but itself, unfolding through rhythm, density, material and space, as opposed to his “figurative” works drawn from poetry, literature or psychoanalysis. The second half, Ami-versaires, gathers nine short tributes composed between 2002 and 2020 for the birthdays of fellow composers.

Phoenix XXI, dedicated to Inés Wickmann, and Perpetuum mobile (Pluies fantômes), for the musicologist Christoph von Blumröder, are twin versions of one project: teeming clusters and rainfalls of sound, contrapuntal in stereo for the first, mostly harmonic in eight channels for the second. Phoenix XXI gives new life to very old source recordings and disguised excerpts from instrumental works; it premiered in 2016 in the GRM’s Multiphonies series and received an honourable mention at Musica Nova. Between them sits Machin de machine, a pastiche for the centenary of Conlon Nancarrow in which a machine explores rhythms too complex for the human hand.

The tributes are often humorous and frequently quote the dedicatee. Dénaturé Parmé sons opens and closes on the first sound of Bernard Parmegiani’s De natura sonorum, Glank-50 on the opening of Jonty Harrison’s Klang, and La Bayle Music parodies a passage from François Bayle’s Tremblement de terre très doux. Others are for Miguel Azguime, Adrian Moore, the sculptor and composer Oscar Wiggli, Pete Stollery, Beatriz Ferreyra and Annette Vande Gorne. Mastering is by Gilles Gobeil.

Born in Paris in 1926, Francis Dhomont studied with Charles Koechlin and Nadia Boulanger, and in the late 1940s discovered on his own, with magnetic wire, what Pierre Schaeffer would call musique concrète. Since 1963 he has composed only for fixed media. He taught at the Université de Montréal from 1980 to 1996 and has lived in Avignon since 2004.

CD in OGpak, empreintes DIGITALes IMED 20167, 2020.