Francis Dhomont

Jalons (Milestones) is a survey of fifteen years of work by Francis Dhomont: eight fixed-medium pieces dated 1985 to 2001. He took the title from land surveying and calls the disc a mini-panorama rather than a retrospective, one that completes his more thematic releases and includes pieces rarely heard in concert. Several were made with the SYTER real-time system at Ina-GRM in Paris. The disc received the Prix Opus 2002-03 for record of the year.

Vol d’Arondes, dedicated to Annette Vande Gorne and commissioned by Musiques & Recherches, recalls a summer evening in Provence and the flight of swallows; it is heard in a stereo reduction of its 8-channel version and reuses material from Drôles d’oiseaux (1985-86), the only purely electronic work Dhomont ever produced, made from the analog synthesizer at the GMEB in Bourges and here reworked and abridged in 2001. En cuerdas, built from the plucked, rubbed and struck strings of the guitarist Arturo Parra, won first prize ex æquo at EAR’99 in Budapest, and Les moirures du temps, a study in sonic shimmer commissioned by Réseaux, first prize at Musica Nova 1999 in Prague.

Lettre de Sarajevo, dedicated “to victims everywhere”, was commissioned by the French State and premiered at the Festival Présences of Radio France in 1996: Dhomont wrote it because he could no longer content himself with formal games. Un autre Printemps recycles Vivaldi’s concerto, a viola, a dog and a stream for Uli Aumüller’s film Mein Kino für die Ohren. Two short pieces close the set: Studio de nuit, a nocturnal scene in the composer’s studio, and L’électro, a one-minute vocal game with Marie Pelletier.

Born in Paris in 1926, Francis Dhomont studied with Charles Koechlin and Nadia Boulanger. In the late 1940s he discovered on his own, with magnetic wire, what Pierre Schaeffer would later call musique concrète, and since 1963 he has composed only for fixed media. He taught at the Université de Montréal from 1980 to 1996 and is a five-time winner at Bourges.

CD in OGpak, empreintes DIGITALes IMED 0365, 2003.