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ABSTRACT
This paper examines Éliane Radigue’s ‘musique sans fin’ (endless music) of 1968–1970. The period marks her development of acoustic feedback techniques for free-duration performance, where two or more tape loops are set into asynchronous, continuous mechanical playback. Drawing on interview material with Radigue, critical analysis of her ‘endless music’ works and my own study of audio feedback to identify technical details of her studio practice, I argue the importance of this short, relatively under-researched, but formative period of her composition. In the creative, musical use of acoustic, or ‘Larsen’ feedback, musicians control sounds that resonate in the space between a microphone and a loudspeaker under certain acoustic conditions and there is a thin point of balance between pure feedback tones and distortion. A similar fine balancing point is the basis of Marcel Duchamp’s concept of the ‘infra-thin’ which refers to an almost imperceptible gap between two fluid states or experiences during the creation of a work of art. I have chosen to employ elements of Duchamp’s ‘infra-thin’ to guide my analysis of Radigue’s feedback techniques which are similarly based on an atomic, transformational fluctuation between different sonic conditions.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Reunion was performed as a chess match between John Cage and Marcel Duchamp using an electronic chess board designed by Lowell Cross, so that certain board moves triggered either a signal for musicians to play live, or playback of Lowell’s pre-recorded tape compositions. Hand and arm movements across photoresistors in the board triggered amplitude and panning between loudspeakers. In the event, which was supposed to last many hours, Duchamp, a professional chess player, beat Cage in half an hour, so Duchamp’s wife, Alexina, took over and the match between her and Cage lasted late into the night. Compositions by Gordon Mumma, David Behrman and David Tudor were performed.
2 Intermodulation occurs in a non-linear electrical system that generates frequencies or artefacts surplus to the original source.
3 When two close frequencies are sounded simultaneously, a wavering vibrato effect occurs that speeds up as the gap between them narrows, as heard when tuning a conventional music instrument.
4 The Italian composer Teresa Rampazzi also referred to her electroacoustic composition as sound proposals. Her sound research studio Nuove Proposte Sonore (New Sound Proposals) was formed in 1965 (Zavagna Citation2007, 413).
5 Accromega and La Noire = 40 were never performed.
6 European scholars of electroacoustic music analysis tend to differentiate between Larsen feedback where tones appear in acoustic space, and electronic or tape feedback, where the tones emerge from the inter-connection of input and output signals within an electrical system.
7 Dominic Lash is a double bass player who has frequently performed contemporary acoustic works by Éliane Radigue, especially from the OCCAM series, with harpist Rhodri Davies and violinist Angharad Davies.
8 Shepard tones are an audiological illusion that gives the impression of continuous rising or falling in pitch. It is derived from layers of sine tones, each an octave apart fading in and out within an octave glissando.
9 Glass keyboard instruments/sculptures designed by brothers artist François and sound engineer/designer Bernard Baschet who took over as the acting director of Schaeffer’s GRM studios 1960s–1970s in Paris during his absence abroad.
10 In 1998, Labyrinthe Sonore was eventually performed in full at Mills College, Oakland and in 2015 in Paris in collaboration with Laetitia Sonami (Eckhardt Citation2019, 176).
11 A small loudspeaker or component for emitting high frequencies.
12 A larger loudspeaker or component for emitting low frequencies.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Jo Hutton
Jo Langton/Hutton is a writer and researcher in electroacoustic music with a background as an audio Technical Producer for BBC radio and music since 2000. She completed her PhD at Surrey University in 2020 on the work of electroacoustic experimental composers Beatriz Ferreyra, Éliane Radigue, Delia Derbyshire and Teresa Rampazzi, focussing on their methods for creating new electronic sound material in the analogue studios of the 1960s and 1970s. She has contributed to Organised Sound and is a regular reviewer for The Wire and Electronic Sound. She founded the Technecast academic podcast forum in 2017 and now teaches broadcast and audio editing and recording skills for post-graduate researchers. She is also a sound designer/composer of experimental music and sound art. Her works and research have been heard at the Museum of London, Tower Bridge museum, Tate Modern, BBC Radio 3, Channel 4, ‘Terror on Tour’ at HEAD Geneva, WDR Berlin, and Radio Bavaria.