Vox Alia brings together the whole cycle of five acousmatic works that Annette Vande Gorne devoted to the voice between 1992 and 2024, all composed at her Métamorphoses d’Orphée studio in Ohain. Each was conceived for 8 or 16 loudspeakers; the stereo reductions on this disc were made in Ambisonics by Julien Guillamat in January 2025. A choirmaster since 1965, Vande Gorne treats the voice as pure sound, scream, breath, sacred song or text scattered into the musical flow.

Vox Alia I: Affetti, commissioned by the GRM and known until 2022 simply as Vox Alia, is a suite of five vocal studies. Giocoso mixes the “alleluia” of Stockhausen’s Stimmung with Pygmy, Inuit and Tuva singing; Innocentemente uses an eight-month-old baby and his mother; Furioso ends on Maria Callas in Cherubini’s Medea; Parola volante is a tribute to Pierre Schaeffer, built on his own voice.

Vox Alia II: Cathédrales, dedicated to Folkmar Hein and premiered at the ZKM in Karlsruhe through the DEGEM’s Thomas-Seelig prize, unites sacred voices from many cultures in five linked sections, from an Alleluia to Sufi and Inuit trance. Vox Alia III: Vox intima is a choral reading, in the composer’s own voice, of a short poem by Werner Lambersy, paced on spectral moments of Tristan Murail’s Treize couleurs du soleil couchant. Vox Alia IV: Vox populi, in memory of Francis Dhomont, moves from children’s games to street protests and communal prayer, and Vox Alia V: Vox naturæ closes the cycle with animal calls sorted into flexions, iterations and melodic profiles.

Born in Charleroi in 1946, Vande Gorne studied with Guy Reibel and Schaeffer in Paris after discovering acousmatics through François Bayle and Pierre Henry. She founded Musiques & Recherches and the festival L’Espace du son in Brussels, and taught acousmatic composition at the conservatories of Liège, Brussels and Mons.

CD-R edition in OGpak, empreintes DIGITALes IMED 25196, 2025.