Radiguian Explorations

ABSTRACT

In this text, I explore aspects of Éliane Radigue’s electronic works. Based on long standing exchanges and collaboration with Radigue herself, and 20 years of experience and involvement in the field of musique concrète, I aim to share a personal and problematized look at Radigue’s unique approach. I will first examine the traditional musique concrète techniques that Radigue learned from Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry, her own idiosyncratic explorations of these techniques and finally the extension of these techniques as carried out on her ARP 2500 synthesizer. I will then trace how this evolution emerged from Radigue’s formative listening experiences—experiences, which led her to pursue a phenomenological approach, directed towards the listening to sounds rather than a structuralist one directed towards the apparition of sounds. This countercurrent approach can help illuminate the unique position Radigue took, and is still taking, in the electronic-experimental music landscape.

KEYWORDS:

• musique concrète
• phenomenology
• feedback
• composition
• listening
• making-hearing

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Examples include Accroméga (1968), Usral (1969), ∑ = a = b = a+b (1969), OMNHT (1971), and Vice-Versa, etc. (ad libitum) (1971).

2 In particular, techniques of micro-editing on magnetic tape, which, by her own admission, Radigue had become weary of, having done so much while assisting Pierre Henry.

3 See Bonnet (2016), where this twofold destiny of sound, which can be apprehended both as event and as phenomenon, is developed in more detail. As event, sound conveys its physical reasons and the origins of its generation. As a sound-appearing it signals, as it were, the objective side of its existence. And yet a sound is always also a perceived phenomenon, a sensory manifestation which appears to an auditor and reveals itself to a listening. As a sonorous appearance, it establishes a formal, affective, sensory dialogue with a listener, without the need of any reference to an objective third party (sonic hallucination, then, would be an example of a pure appearance).

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Notes on contributors

François J. Bonnet

François J. Bonnet is a Franco-Swiss composer, writer and theoretician based in Paris. He has been a member of INA GRM since 2007 and became its director in 2018. He has published several books: The Order of Sounds, The Infra-World, After Death (all published by Urbanomic) and The Music To Come (Shelter Press). He is the co-editor of the SPECTRES book series (Shelter Press) and the Recollection and Portraits GRM record series. He also produces a radio show for national radio France Musique. His music has been performed in renowned venues and festivals all over the world.