Bernard Parmegiani

Features 3 works: "Capture Éphémère" (1967); "Sons-jeu" (1987); "La Mémoire des Sons" (2001). "Excepting some rare mixed pieces, Bernard Paremegiani's works as a whole take the form of music for 'fixedsounds', coming within the scope of the immense repertoire of electro-acoustic music. From his training in the art of mime and his experience as a sound engineer, Parmegiani has retained a taste for a hand-to-hand approach (sound/embodiment, as we could be tempted to say) with various sound mate-rials which he has developed throughout markedly diverse works." RE: "Capture Éphémère": "The beating of terror-stricken wings, gliding ascents, rockets, dull explosions: the fission of the fine powder of the sound is then recovered, in layers of 'captured', beating time: impossible stases of reso-nance ('fleeting' by their very nature ...) which however persist, beating out their miraculous cohesion: a magical effect even today: proof that it is not due to technique.

Or: a sequence of utter loss, waste: an accumulation as Schaeffer would have said ('reiteration abounding in brief elements'; 'like a shower of stones dispersing'...), having the fluidity of a waterfall, with one hundred thousand elements interwoven in discontinuity, 'eccentric', generous, suffocating... Or: this furious vibration, which in its steep ascent, is imbued with a triumphant appearance of tireless virtuosity... And so many intimately interwoven composite sequences, as they advance, hurtling through space (and the Russian mountains ...) with seemingly inexhaustible energy; and marked several times, just before a silence, by the same small elegant asterisk.

However, all of this (deafening volubility) is finally calmed by a short coda: where a movement to reduce and rarefy particles splits this mass in extremis into an ethereal shower of sparks, having the effect of a prolonged pause