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Portrait d​’​un glacier (Alpes - 2173 m) / 1998 ~ composition de musique concr​è​te

by Lionel Marchetti

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    Photographie de BRUNO ROCHE - 1995
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about

--- 1998 ---

« Glacier de Tré-la tête (2173m)

Ce matin, réveillé vers cinq heures
couleurs métalliques et vertes
lumière, force
tournoiement de l'esprit projeté
psychisme, sécrétion
lente humeur animale
soudain sonore
aurore en montagne
intelligence. »

L.M. (in Les fleurs tombent)

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Portrait d’un glacier (Alpes - 2173 m)

Musique concrète de Lionel Marchetti
pour une écoute acousmatique d'une durée de 28'53''

Composition musicale, conception et réalisation sonore, tournages sonores (instrumentarium du CFMI de Lyon, Université Lumière Lyon - 1999) et dans les studios du Groupe de Recherches Musicales de l’INA (Paris) en 1996/1998 : Lionel Marchetti

Tournages sonores - sur le motif - en août 1993, sur le Glacier de Tré la tête (Massif du Mont-blanc) et dans les Alpes environnantes, en compagnie de Bruno Roche

Commande du Groupe de Recherches Musicales de l’INA (Paris) réalisée dans ses studios

Remerciements à toute l'équipe du GRM (et tout particulièrement à Diego Losa), à Christian Zanési, Michel Chion, Bruno Roche, Hélène Bettencourt, François Donato et William Pellier

Création publique : Maison de Radio France - 2000

Une première édition CD de Portrait d’un glacier (Alpes - 2173 m) à été réalisée en 2001 sur le label Ground Fault Recordings aux USA

Une seconde édition CD de Portrait d’un glacier (Alpes - 2173 m) à été réalisée en 2010, dans le double album CD intitulé Une saison, chez MonotypeRec.

Copyright : Lionel Marchetti / SACEM

Photographie : L. M. et Bruno Roche par BRUNO ROCHE - 1995

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PRESSE :

À propos de Portrait d’un glacier (Alpes - 2173 m)
par Denis Boyer :

« Portrait d’un glacier (Alpes - 2173 m), musique concrète composée en 1999, publiée en 2001 par Ground Fault, […/…] montre les effets d’un oxygène rare.

Progression mentale autant que physique, la construction se solidifie autour de sons mixés bas, frottements, heurts sans suite, crépitements comme des pas dans une marche ardue. Les sons plus éclatants, pierre ou glace (ou verre ?), maintiennent la faible température, redoublant l’effet réfrigérant de l’infime onde cristalline, filet mélodique, qui stratifie la pente depuis son départ.
Ici encore les voix humaines sont croisées, vite dépassées.
C’est le glacier qu’il faut portraire et non ceux qui l’arpentent.
Et pourtant, sa réalité physique, son mouvement immobile, ses déchirures, obligent l’homme à mille contournements, y compris de lui-même.
Les craquements sont peut-être ceux de la neige, les flots assourdis ceux des ruisseaux glacés que traversent les hommes en route vers la langue de glace.

La composition est double, elle montre deux champs sonores simultanés, restitués dans un même déroulement, celui qu’entendent les hommes, celui qu’entendrait leur environnement pourvu qu’on lui prête les impressions.

Doter le ruisseau, la neige, le roc d’une ouïe, de cet étouffement qui déjà achemine vers la vibration lumineuse, c’est préparer dans toute sa douleur sourde la pleine sensation du glacier, occupant les cinq dernières minutes de cette pièce magistrale.

La vague dramatique qui survole le cheminement est peut-être l’anticipation de la sérénité mélancolique du glacier.
Cette musique, presque ambiante, aux reliefs tellement organiques, se conclut dans le gel le plus actif, la titanesque et imperceptible avancée des tonnes vers la vallée.

Un glacier qui, avec l’avion survolant ses 2173 m pendant les dernières secondes du disque, promet l’exploration prochaine de l’étage nival, de ses rocs et de ses neiges… »
Denis Boyer / Fear Drops / La Revue des Ressources

www.larevuedesressources.org/portrait-de-lionel-marchetti-en-montagnard,1423.html

www.feardrop.net

&

www.larevuedesressources.org/les-fleurs-tombent-1,2915.html

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PRESS :

by Ed Pinsent, www.thesoundprojector.com

"Another item overlooked for a shade too long is this double CD compilation of work by the excellent Lionel Marchetti. I can’t think of a single release where he’s let us down or ever short-changed the listener. All of his electro-acoustic compositions are significant updates on the musique concrète model, and he always displays strong imagination in his semi-narrative suites, while paying close attention to the tiniest of details. Even if his work sometimes borders on the mystical, and risks alienating the audience through its pretensions, Marchetti always continues with bold footsteps into virtual worlds rarely traced by others. On Un Saison (MONOTYPE RECORDS MONO036) we hear four pieces, all of which have been previously released elsewhere, but compiled together here with suitable alpine imagery on the cover photos, as there seems to be a conceptual unity among the titles if not the actual underlying themes of the compositions. For futher elucidation, I refer you to the sleeve note in the booklet by Michal Chion; he warns us not to think of them as “sonic landscapes”, but does admit that the “similarity of the titles…might intimate a certain landscape quality”.

On CD 1, ‘La Grande Vallée’ is a vivid assemblage of field recordings from the wilder side of nature, including howling wolves and other animal cries; the treated sounds are mingled with the voice of Hélène Bettencourt, and pre-composed clarinet music. Bettencourt may not say much, but when she does you could use her voice as an ice pick or piton. More than most who work in the phonographic area, Marchetti edits and assembles his field recordings in exciting fashion, to create a sort of “magical realist” portrait of nature, and to tell half-glimpsed stories. No wonder this was originally issued in the Cinéma Pour L’Oreille series; Marchetti would have made a great sound recordist for avant-garde cinema.

‘Portrait D’Un Glacier’ contains some field recordings captured at Mont Blanc with the help of Bruno Roche; this alpine work also uses plenty of electronic music and analogue synthesisers in the composition, and the final work achieves a seamless blend of all the materials. Highly ambient and mysterious (Brian Eno meets Messiaen), full of the baffling near-silences which Marchetti delights in, with punctuation provided by water splashes, shouts of men in the mountains, and a general sense that somehow the sweeping scale of mountain ranges has been successfully rendered in small and intimate sounds. Subtle, understated; yet compelling listening, and importantly it’s a zone still populated by human beings. One need only think of how F. López tends to approach the same subject matter; his soundscapes are generally unblemished by any sort of human presence, preferring the emptied-out beauty of nature’s sound by itself. This 1998-2000 composition originally appeared on Ground Fault Recordings.

On CD 2, ‘Dans La Montagne (Ki Ken Taï)’ has already been heard and reviewed by us in its reissue from Chloe Recordings in 2003, although it was composed in 1995-96 and first appeared on La Muse En Circuit. Again, it’s a rich mix of field recordings with electronic music, supplemented by performing voices and the voices of the Kendo teams whooping and shrieking and clacking weapons together as they enact their martial sport. The “mountain” theme here in the title always leads me to believe we’re hearing climbers swinging on ropes and coming to a terrible end, but it’s nothing of the sort. Leaping out vividly from the synthesised gloom and deep sombre tones, these uncanny yelps make this one of the most memorable and striking pieces on the set.

‘L’Oeil retourné’ has also been heard and reviewed by us when released on Selektion in 1999. It also involves some mountainside walking with Bruno Roche, and contains quotations from other records in amongst the gently fizzing and gliding electronic sounds – including Ralf Wehowsky (who was originally on the split CD), This Heat, Jospehine Leask, and others. Random radio station noise plays a part in this brittle and minimal music, as does the crisp voice of Hélène Bettencourt. It exhibits the “quiet and inscrutable” side of Marchetti; the listener has to play close attention to catch every nuanced detail of sound, as some of these events are so fleeting and near-imperceptible.

In all of this music, Marchetti presents a portrait of nature as something somewhat dangerous and frightening; it has a scale that defeats us; it seems to embody forces that cannot be fully known or understood. Through his intensive phonographic studies and compositional reworkings, Marchetti does not propose to diminish any of that power, but rather foreground it and heighten it with his subtle and ingenious art. In so doing, he manages to stir primal forces in the listener."
Ed Pinsent

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Lionel Marchetti is a French composer of concrete music
an improviser (electronics, various analogic systems with modified speakers, REVOX reel-to-reel recorder…)
as well as a visual-sound artist, a writer and a poet

Whether his music is composed or improvised
the body has an important role (Lionel Marchetti danced with the university company Relyanse between 1986 and 1991)

To define his music, one can borrow Kenneth White’s saying :

« Concrete or abstract ?
I like abstraction where a memory of substance remains, concrete refined on the frontiers of emptiness. »
[free translation]


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NB : for a complete bio & diverses web links
have a look here : Archives radiophoniques…
(below, in my bandcamp discography)

credits

released May 26, 1998

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Lionel Marchetti France

Lionel Marchetti (1967) : compositeur français de musique concrète, acousmatique & improvisateur avec instruments électroniques divers

...ses compositions musicales sont considérées comme
un véritable cinéma pour l'oreille…

"Concret ou abstrait ? J'aime l'abstrait où subsiste un souvenir de substance, le concret qui s'affine aux frontières du vide." (K.White)
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