Gérard Grisey (1946-1998)

Started by Sean, June 28, 2009, 12:55:18 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

not edward

Our friend 5against4 has an interesting post up containing a recording of one of Grisey's earliest works. Mégalithes, a memorial to the victims of the Biafran War, is written for 15 spatially distributed brass instruments.

http://5against4.com/2014/06/07/gerard-grisey-megalithes-uk-premiere/

As you'd expect, a work written when he was 23 doesn't sound much like Grisey... except for the times when it does.
"I don't at all mind actively disliking a piece of contemporary music, but in order to feel happy about it I must consciously understand why I dislike it. Otherwise it remains in my mind as unfinished business."
-- Aaron Copland, The Pleasures of Music

Rinaldo

I've been listening to Les Chants de l'Amour lately

https://www.youtube.com/v/Qp7CHBF-V8U

and aside from being overwhelmed by its brilliance (and humour!), I really dig the TRIS-TAN, TRIS-TAN! part. One could read that as a shout-out to Murail as well :P

milk

Quote from: Rinaldo on August 21, 2014, 04:26:03 AM
I've been listening to Les Chants de l'Amour lately

https://www.youtube.com/v/Qp7CHBF-V8U

and aside from being overwhelmed by its brilliance (and humour!), I really dig the TRIS-TAN, TRIS-TAN! part. One could read that as a shout-out to Murail as well :P
It's frustrating that much of his work is not available for download purchase.

not edward

Figured I'd pop up a note that a lot of copies of the Accord recording of Les Espaces Acoustiques seem to have shown up on amazon marketplace:

[asin]B00004VMCL[/asin]

Having given it a couple of comparative listens against the Kairos recording, I think the Accord is greatly to be preferred (I even clearly prefer Gerard Caussé to Garth Knox in the Prologue, and I don't often prefer anyone to Knox in this sort of repertoire), and I've grown to like the work a lot more now. There's something very French in the way that Grisey builds up a rather elaborate construction (full of cross-references between the different sections), and then the four solo horns enter in the Epilogue--a moment that's pure Berlioz--and tear it all apart.

Now I just need to track down the Accord disc with Jour, Contre-Jour, a single disc of which is available for a mere $200 on marketplace and pretty much nowhere else.
"I don't at all mind actively disliking a piece of contemporary music, but in order to feel happy about it I must consciously understand why I dislike it. Otherwise it remains in my mind as unfinished business."
-- Aaron Copland, The Pleasures of Music

bhodges

Thanks much, edward! I don't have the Accord disc, and would like to, given how much I admire the piece - and now at this quite reasonable price.

--Bruce

Mandryka

#85
I too like the Cambreling Espaces Acoustiques.

Re Jour contre jour, I don't think I've ever heard it, I'll try to correct that today.  I came across what looks like a good paper about it here

http://whitechord.org/articles/grisey-jour.pdf

The Jour Contre-Jour from the Accord CD is on youtube.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

not edward

#86
Talking of alternative versions of major Grisey works, I found the following performance available as a Google Play mp3 (320 kb/s) download for $1.29:

Quatre Chants pour franchir le seuil
Barbara Hannigan, soprano
New York Philharmonic
Alan Gilbert
Recorded live, November 2011

https://play.google.com/store/music/album?id=Buv3zytjtemiz2vxehb3jpul3ju&tid=song-Tyi27jm3rjk5vbcakrkfua2w4ta

I'd much rather have lossless, and I don't much like Google, but Hannigan singing this work at this price? I'm in.


Edit: oh yes, this is a very good performance; I think it's going to largely supplant the Kairos in my affections (though they're different enough that I'd want to have both).
"I don't at all mind actively disliking a piece of contemporary music, but in order to feel happy about it I must consciously understand why I dislike it. Otherwise it remains in my mind as unfinished business."
-- Aaron Copland, The Pleasures of Music

CRCulver

Quote from: edward on June 28, 2015, 11:44:50 AM
Talking of alternative versions of major Grisey works, I found the following performance available as a Google Play mp3 (320 kb/s) download for $1.29:

Quatre Chants pour franchir le seuil
Barbara Hannigan, soprano
New York Philharmonic
Alan Gilbert
Recorded live, November 2011

https://play.google.com/store/music/album?id=Buv3zytjtemiz2vxehb3jpul3ju&tid=song-Tyi27jm3rjk5vbcakrkfua2w4ta

I'd much rather have lossless, and I don't much like Google, but Hannigan singing this work at this price? I'm in.


Edit: oh yes, this is a very good performance; I think it's going to largely supplant the Kairos in my affections (though they're different enough that I'd want to have both).

While I agree that the Kairos recording isn't the best that it could be, one thing that makes me a bit reluctant to explore this piece in other performances is that Grisey specifically based his spectral technique on a sonogram of Catherine Dubosc's voice, so there is supposed to be a unity between singer and instrumental ensemble in the Kairos recording that wouldn't be possible with other singers.

Mandryka

#88
Quote from: CRCulver on June 30, 2015, 01:45:54 AM
While I agree that the Kairos recording isn't the best that it could be, one thing that makes me a bit reluctant to explore this piece in other performances is that Grisey specifically based his spectral technique on a sonogram of Catherine Dubosc's voice, so there is supposed to be a unity between singer and instrumental ensemble in the Kairos recording that wouldn't be possible with other singers.

Can't they just sort of make a new tape to suit a new singer? Otherwise it's a bit like Wagner trying to tie in performances of Parsiful to Beyreuth.

Anyway I'd ne interested in hearing this 4 chants if it was a bit less oily and sentimental than the other one.

What's the seuil? I mean, is he a Buddhist? A Théosophist? A shaman?
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

not edward

Quote from: Mandryka on July 03, 2015, 11:52:17 AM
What's the seuil? I mean, is he a Buddhist? A Théosophist? A shaman?
Death. The title means Four songs for crossing the threshold.
"I don't at all mind actively disliking a piece of contemporary music, but in order to feel happy about it I must consciously understand why I dislike it. Otherwise it remains in my mind as unfinished business."
-- Aaron Copland, The Pleasures of Music

Mandryka

Quote from: edward on July 04, 2015, 04:45:35 PM
Death. The title means Four songs for crossing the threshold.

It's not a French expression I've heard before for death, francir le seuil. I wonder if it comes from any spiritual point of view, like "going to the other side" in English has connotations of The Ouija Board.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

snyprrr

Sding the day with 'Les Espaces...', the correct one of course ::), but I'm just not feeling all that so much at the moment, in the middle of 'Modulations'. Again, they were all "discovering" stuff in the '70s, so, I'm not mad, haha, but I'm starting to hear the "dating". Maybe it was watching 'Logan's Run' that did it?

Anyhow, singularly I prefer the Murail disc with 'Disintegrations' and 'Serendib', and the third piece...

CRCulver

I listened to the recording of Quatre chants pour franchir le seuil last night for the first time in several years. I still think it is a fine work, but this Kairos recording is just godawful. It's like there was one only microphone used and it was pointed towards the audience. Strange that no other label has taken this up. Does Catherine Dubosc have sole recording rights in perpetuity? (The spectrogram on which the first movement's music is based was taken from her voice specifically.)

lescamil

Quote from: CRCulver on September 16, 2016, 10:18:40 AM
I listened to the recording of Quatre chants pour franchir le seuil last night for the first time in several years. I still think it is a fine work, but this Kairos recording is just godawful. It's like there was one only microphone used and it was pointed towards the audience. Strange that no other label has taken this up. Does Catherine Dubosc have sole recording rights in perpetuity? (The spectrogram on which the first movement's music is based was taken from her voice specifically.)

Barbara Hannigan has performed the work often (and quite beautifully). One can hope that she takes it into the recording studio soon.
Want to chat about classical music on IRC? Go to:

irc.psigenix.net
#concerthall

http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,19772.0.html

-------------------------------------

Check out my YouTube page:

http://www.youtube.com/user/jre58591

snyprrr

Finished 'Les Espaces...'.eling better about it...

It's still kind of a lumbering, fat catepillar(?) of a piece, somewhat turgid and constipated, though it has many cool sounds... I don't know, it's sounds like Xenakis on delaudid(?)!! But, I know what Grisey was going for, so, there's really nothing to complain about, you either listen or not. I don't know how many more listens it will get...

SimonNZ

Just stated on the listening thread that Petra Hoffmann in this live recoreding of Quatre chants may be the best soprano I've heard in the work (unfortunately I'm less enthusiastic about the ensemble work):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pOvNkmLsOE

I'd be interested to get the opinion of other listeners here.

snyprrr

Quote from: Thatfabulousalien on September 16, 2016, 04:08:48 PM


I must asked, have you heard Norgard's Voyage of the Golden Screen and Georg Haas' music?
Other music in the same musical area includes Tristan Murail and Hughes Dufourt.

:)

Interesting- that Norgard and Haas are two examples of what I don't like. (I do like other Norgard, but that one piece yanked me). That very close thing...tight band of tones... Feldman's the closest I can tolerate of that... Haas, I have his SQs and a viola piece, I've heard a couple of the famous=er pieces, but I hear that same Xenakis-on-drugs sound, I don't know how else to describe it: slow glisses moving up and down in a gray and "dreary" manner, with an intense atmosphere of a European Doom Flick. It's that "Infinity Scale" thing... I famously dislike most MicroTonal Music, it's just all sounds like an oxycodon trip to me...or like the "blues"...

??

Murail and Dufourt I have no problem with. They're French, they know color.

nathanb

Oh boy, I get to get Xenakiboy into a lot more spectralism :)

snyprrr

Quote from: nathanb on September 16, 2016, 11:46:37 PM
Oh boy, I get to get Xenakiboy into a lot more spectralism :)

but I find "sprctRUMism" in Xenakis, maybe not "specTRALism"... There is a lot of the same concerns... IX's late piece 'Voile' for strings, has a very spectro-gramic sound to it.

I mean, 'Spectralism' per se, as Grisey sets it out, and a very limited lifespan, no? It's kind of like a manual phase-shifter, or graphic EQ...


anyhow... I can't focus right now, boss quit/work chaos- (me? party!!!)

GioCar

Ok, this is a question for real Griseyians  ;)
In less than one mounth I'll have the chance to listen to the below pieces, performed separately for this year's annual festival of contemporary music in Milan.

(Les) Espaces acoustiques (1974/85) - 14 October
Quatre chants pour franchir le seuil (1998) - 29 October
Jour, contre jour (1979) - 4 November
Charme (1969) - 12 November (afternoon concert)
Le Noir de l'Étoile (1989/90) 12 and 13 November
Stèle (1995) 13 November (afternoon concert)
Anubis et Nout (1990) 19 November
L'Icône paradoxale (1993/94) - 21 November

I have already planned to go for

(Les) Espaces acoustiques (1974/85) - 14 October
Quatre chants pour franchir le seuil (1998) - 29 October

If you have to pick no more than two other concerts, which ones would you choose? Thanks  :)