Francis Dhomont (1926-

[San Antone]

Francis Dhomont (born Paris, France, 2 November 1926) is a French composer of electroacoustic / acousmatic music.

From Wiki:
He studied composition under Ginette Waldmeier, Charles Koechlin and Nadia Boulanger.  In the late 1940s he intuitively discovered with magnetic wire what Pierre Schaeffer at about the same time came to call musique concrète, consequently conducting solitary experiments with the musical possibilities of sound recording.

In 1963 he decided to dedicate his time to electroacoustic composition utilising natural sounds.  Performances in public of his music are done using the French "diffusion" technique over multiple loudspeakers. His work consists exclusively of tape pieces using natural, or "found" sounds, exploring morphological interplay and the ambiguities between sound and the images it may create.

Some examples of his work include:

Scherzo (Giocoso)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvm86jVUBhM

Les moirures du temps,Yves Tanguy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7HFEJuHLBI

Citadelle interieure
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwC3sUPviYk

Chambre D'Enfants
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOZODAKvlBk

There are many more clips on YouTube.

[snyprrr]

Maybe like Luc Ferrari- but stuff is happening quickly? Very compositional, but not really what I would chooose to listen to. The kids of this that are fun to MAKE!

[San Antone]

Frankenstein Symphony


(image links to ourchasing option)

A hybrid thing in four movements, made of cut-up pieces, pasted, assembled, sowed parts that are alike and contrasted, and that I have named, for obvious reasons, the Frankenstein Symphony: an unusual electroacoustic adventure.

Armed with a scalpel and a splicing (operational) block, I sampled several morphological organs from the works of 22 composers and friends (many of whom were students of mine), and with their imprudent blessings (on a stormy night?), brought to life this little acoustic monster which I hold particularly close to my heart.

-- Francis Dhomont, Montreal, February 1997

https://www.youtube.com/v/k2HegAiymgk

Dhomont, a French-Canadian pioneer in electroacoustic forays, swallows the concept of a compilation and finds it unpalatable. Though Frankenstein is along similar lines, musically, as the Drones series on Asphodel (Storm of Drones, A Swarm of Drones, the Throne of Drones), Dhomont takes his curatorship one step further, working pieces by friends, students, strangers, into a continuous whirlwind, a sprawling symphony of an engulfing nature.

And in the stomach of the beast created? The symphony cobbles together pan lids, guillotines, the opened jaws of lions, digital thumps, bumps, squeaks, cars, trucks, trees, tubes, a brass band, German orators, a few scrappy plates, the clanking of bridles, accordions, harpsichords, kindergarteners with slide whistles, frogs, and the duck's-ear-view of a city.

[San Antone]

Espace / Escape
from his Cycle de l'errance

https://www.youtube.com/v/uo8FEhwLD4k

This acousmatic triptych recounts the Journey and some of its symbolic projections (escape, love, flight, space, the limit of disappearance, the loss of oneself) while merging natural images with pure abstractions; metaphors of a metaphor, since in music any tale is inherently a transposition.

Espace/Escape (1989)

"As soon as we become immobile, we are elsewhere, we dream in a vast world, immensity is the movement of immobile man.  Immensity is one of the dynamic aspects of peaceful daydreaming." – Bachelard, The Poetics of Space

Space.
Open, intimate, confused spaces. Broken spaces, whirling
Indecisive edges of the space
Space-refuge, enclosed, maternal, space of reminiscence and
of associations.
Tumult or murmur in the space of a thousand reflections
Escape.
The flight always engenders a vertigo of multiple elsewheres.
Here..There...
~ Francis Dhomont

[San Antone]

Francis Dhomont Turns 90 : Le Cri Du Choucas



I missed it last month, when on November 1st Francis Dhomont celebrated his 90th birthday.

Dhomont's most recent recording is Le cri du Choucas (empreintes DIGITALes IMED 16138, 2016).  It is a album of settings of texts by Franz Kafka.  Conceived in 1997 and left to mature slowly, Le cri du Choucas is the third and final installment in Dhomont's "Cycle des profondeurs" [Cycle of Depths], the first two parts of this long triptych (about three hours) being Sous le regard d'un soleil noir (1981) and Forêt profonde (1994-96), of which a few reminders are included in this installment.