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Francis Dhomont (see Figure 1), a pioneer in electro- made with computers, its still musique concrte. It
acoustic music, is renowned internationally for his used to be tape recordersit was always done with
compositionsattested by numerous awards and a support medium. Pierre Schaeffer used the flexible
prizes including the Magisterium Prize at Bourges disks with needles . . . that was the first thing. I
(1988) and the Prix Ars Electronica (1992). Mr. started around the same time as himwithout
Dhomont (b. 1926, Paris) recently retired to Avignon, knowing himbut I worked with a Webster sound
in his native France, after a long sojourn in Mon- recorder (an American brand) with a magnetic wire.
treal, Canada, where his work and teaching had a It was a wire made of very thin steel. I had a roll of
profound influence on the development of the local it. It sat over at the side, I would pull some out, and
world of electroacoustic music. In particular, his then I would record on it. Magnetic wire had been
scrutiny of Pierre Schaeffers work and his own ex- invented a long time prior by Valdemar Poulsen,
periments in the earliest days of musique concrte and this Webster was meant for businesspeoplean
resulted in a favored place for the development of early kind of Dictaphone. I found it in the years just
acousmatic music in Montreal. after the war; the Americans came over not only
This interview was conducted initially during the with guns but also with recorders! The uncle of one
Electroacoustic Music Studies 2005 conference of my friends had one; he worked with an American
(EMS-05) in Montreal, where Mr. Dhomont was the firm. I experimented a bit with it and thought it
keynote speaker. It was subsequently completed quite fantastic. So I started working with one, mak-
through electronic mail correspondence, and then ing musique concrte, without knowing that
translated from French by the interviewer. musique concrte already existed.
[Editors note: Audio examples of Francis
Mountain: When would this have been?
Dhomonts music will appear on the disc accompa-
nying the next issue of Computer Music Journal Dhomont: Lets see, it would have been between
(Vol. 30, No. 4). A list of electroacoustic composi- 1946 and 1948. I would have been 2022 years old.
tions by Mr. Dhomont is shown in Table 1, and a At the time, I was an instrumental composer.
discography and more information are available at
the following Web site: www.electrocd.com/bio.f/ Mountain: What was your instrument?
dhomont_fr.html.] Dhomont: I didnt really have an instrument. Well,
Rosemary Mountain: I remember that the first of course I played a bit of piano, but I started too
time I actually met you, at the Canadian Electro- late. I began the piano at a very early age, then I
acoustic Community (CEC) conference in Banff in stopped, and I began again when I was 15, but with-
1989, I said that although it seemed that everyone out any intention of becoming a performer; I was in-
was moving toward synthesizers and computers, I terested in composition. Of course, I would play a
still preferred musique concrte, and you said Me bit with my friendssome jazzI played some
too! I was very reassured! But its interesting that trumpet, some trombone, but I wasnt a competent
we are doing this interview for Computer Music instrumentalist.
Journal, because in the old days, musique concrte Mountain: Did you know any electroacoustic or
was considered quite distinct from computer music. electronic composers at the time you discovered
Francis Dhomont: One can produce musique con- this invention?
crte with any medium; despite the fact that its
Dhomont: No.
Computer Music Journal, 30:3, pp. 1021, Fall 2006 Mountain: So it was the technologyits potential
2006 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. for recording thingsthat attracted you.
Mountain 11
something was missing in my life, so finally, things ing records. I bought the Trait des Objets Musi-
seemed stabilized a bit, and I managed to find the caux, which I read very carefully and seriously.
funds to buy some recorders and set up a little stu-
Mountain: How did you know about the existence of
dio for myself in the middle of the countryside.
the Trait? Was that through the GRM radio shows?
The first recorders were really not very good, they
didnt work properly, and they gave me a lot of Dhomont: I dont really remember, but I was listen-
trouble, but then I was able to buy some Revoxes. ing to those shows all the time, and readingwell,
Now, they were old Revoxeswhat we call the really looking hard for anything that would relate to
G36not very well knownbig, old gray things this fieldand I bought the Trait in 1966, just as it
with tubes in them. Have you seen that kind? They arrived on the shelves. Solfge des Objets Sonores,
worked very well. with the three records, came out a year later. So that
was how I taught myself. And in fact I began writing
Mountain: Yes! And how many did you havetwo?
my own book about it.
Dhomont: Yes, two.
Mountain: Really? And do you have any trace of
Mountain: One can do a lot with two already. that?
Dhomont: Yes, surethough I did manage to resus- Dhomont: Oh, well, I dont know, I might have
citate one of the old cheap ones I had for a third, to some notes somewhere, or maybe at the Universit
allow me to do mixing and so on. de Montral.
Mountain: Were these two-track? Mountain: But that would be really interesting to
read, because if you were questioning the same is-
Dhomont: Well, you know, that was the most dra-
sues independently at the same time, you might
matic problem, because the first ones were quarter-
have different perspectives, different solutions.
track. I didnt know much about them, and the
salesman had told me they were excellent, and so Dhomont: Well, yes, I did have some different solu-
on, but it wasnt at all what I needed. So I con- tions, but those that worked, I remembered and
verted the quarter-track machine into half-track, used in my own work subsequentlyI think! The
which was an awful lot of very complicated work. I Trait was very important for me. I didnt know
had to buy new heads, and it never worked well. But Schaeffer at the time, but I bought all the records
in the process of taking these old ones apartyou that came out from GRM, including the first ones
know, I was in the middle of the country all by my- of Schaeffer, that came out on the Philips label,
self doing thisI managed to create a variable- called Prospective of the 21st Century, and at the
speed recorder. same time, I was reading. So that was really my
You see, I replacedthere was a metal disc, like schooling.
thisit had three speeds1, 2, 3, like this [he de-
Mountain: Did these GRM radio shows occur
scribes with his hands three discs of decreasing di-
weekly?
ameter, with the smallest on the top]and I took it
out. And since I was used to working with wood, I Dhomont: I think they must have.
was able to turn a little cone, and the rubber slid
Mountain: You know, in Canada right now, we
along it.
dont have much on the radio.
Mountain: Thats great!
Dhomont: Yes, thats true; it seems to be the same
Dhomont: Well, you know, when you have nothing, everywhere. In France, its really diminished
you need to have imagination! So, that was the be- through the years. Even I made some GRM shows at
ginning of my electroacoustic career. You know, I lis- one point with Christian Zansi, but now, there is
tened a lot to the radiothe Groupe de Recherches hardly anything. And its the same everywhere: only
Musicales (GRM) editionsand I also started buy- a few shows in the middle of the night, when no one
Mountain 13
kinds of music, as long as it was contemporary. thought it a good idea. So in 1978, I arrived in Mon-
Much of it was instrumental. But we had Bernard treal, and stayed a few months, and then I went
Parmegiani, and Franois Bayle, and Daniel Charles back to Provence to organize the festival for the
who spoke about John Cage, etc. next year. But I was really exhausted that time. So
then afterwards, I returned to Montreal, and we
Mountain: And did these people not find it a bit
married, Marthe and I. And I must say that at the
odd to find you making musique concrte in the
Faculty of Music at the Universit de Montral,
middle of nowhere, all by yourself?
they really opened their doors to me. They had a
Dhomont: Yes, certainly! But anyway, we soon en- studio therenot very sophisticated, but not bad,
tered into conversations, and they seemed to enjoy run by Louise Garipy then. I met her and we got
it. At first, they wondered, Who is this guy? But along well, and she said, You know, no one is re-
they quickly realized that I was quite serious, and ally using the studio much, so if you want, you can
frankly there were many who relied on me. And I work there sometimes. And so I worked there
did still know a few people in Paris. For example, most nights. And I made a long piece there, Sous le
when Ligeti and Xenakis came, it was through regard dun soleil noir.
Claude Samuel who was organizer of the important We gave our first concert there, with the premiere
series called (and still is) Centre Acanthes. And of the first version of that work. (The hall wasnt
every year they had a program in Aix-en-Provence where it is now, but rather on Cte-Ste-Catherine
called Compositeur Celebre where young com- the Pavillion Marguerite dYouville, where there is
posers could go for workshops. I had known Claude a hospital now. On the second floor was a space we
Samuel for a long time, and so we came to an agree- called Le 1020, where we gave the concerts.) And
ment where he moved the whole programnot Jean-Jacques Nattiez was there, and even the dean,
only the invited composer but also all the per- who wanted to make a record of the piece, to
formerto our festival for one day. He got a bit of which I of course said yes. Then the dean pulled
publicity for his program out of the deal, and I bene- back a bit, but Jean-Jacques Nattiez urged me to
fited from excellent performers who played the talk to Franois Bayle at GRM, whom I knew of
work of Xenakis and Ligeti, so it worked well. And course a bit from the St-Rmy festival days. He
then I moved to Canada. was quite enthusiastic, and we made the recording
with them.
Mountain: What prompted that?
I was then invited to go to GRM and work for a
Dhomont: Ah, well, thats a personal story, but I short time to produce some supplementary mate-
can tell it. You see, at one of the festivals, there was rial, so I ended up creating an additional movement
a composer in Marseilles called Marcel Frmiot for the work. And from that point, I started working
who is still there, in fact!and he wanted a Cana- more closely with GRM, working in their studio,
dian singer to perform a piece of his. And I said, giving talks there, and so on. At that point, I had
But I dont have the funds to pay a singer to come completely abandoned composing for acoustic in-
from Canada! He said, No, its okay, shes cur- struments.
rently in Paris because shes working on her doctor-
Mountain: And when you arrived in Montreal, did
ate, so we only need to bring her from Paris, so of
you feel that it was really a different culture?
course I agreed.
So she came and sang Mr. Frmiots work, and we Dhomont: Well, yes, but the most notable differ-
got along very well. This was Marthe Forgetper- ence for me was that between the anglophone and
haps you know her? She was professor at the Uni- francophone cultures. You see, when I first arrived
versit de Montral for many years. And things in Montreal, I met composers like Yves Daoust,
were not going so well for me there, and she sug- Philippe Mnard, Marcelle Deschnes, who had all
gested that I come to Montreal for a bit, and I worked in France already, at GRM or at Bourges.
Mountain 15
itI was very happy to develop these courses, be- Dhomont: Well, Im always thrifty! When I worked
cause it was an area that I knew well, and on the with tape recorders, I didnt have the most expen-
other hand, it was not at all known here in North sive ones, and I work on the basis that to make good
America. music, it can be done relatively simply, as long as
Sometimes I had arguments, for instance with the technical quality is good.
Jean Pich, because he came from a different back- As far as software goes, as you know, I work with
ground, but I said, Listen, I know Im not teaching Pro Tools, and also GRM Tools and a few plug-ins.
all aspects, but I am teaching something that is dif- What else . . . oh yes, I have also kept some of the
ferent, so maybe I should keep going. But it was of old digital audio machines for reverberation and ef-
course important to have diverse points of view. fects, such as the Lexicon PCM 70 and 60a very
good machine, it wasand I still use it.
Mountain: What about computer music? Did you
have any links with Vladimir Ussachevsky, people Mountain: And to create the sounds, did you al-
like that? ways record them?
Dhomont: No, not at all. Nomy training is in Dhomont: Not always. Way back in the early days,
that of musique concrte. I never used a computer I actually bought a synthesizera little AKS, just
at all until tape recorders became a thing of the past. when it first came outand I still have it and use it
Of course, I knew something about it; I was very from time to time. And then I also used lots of elec-
aware of the difference between the German elec- tronic sounds, which I went off to different studios
tronic school and the Paris musique concrte one to createat Marseilles, at GRM, at Bourges, etc.
. . . but I was clearly of the latter. There was one as they had machinessynthesizersthat I didnt
guy, very well known in France, who right from the have. So I recorded many sounds there.
beginning was working with computers; his name Mountain: So you would go there, record sounds,
was Pierre Barbaud. He really worked a lot in the and then take them back home where you would
field. I didnt know him; I knew his music a little manipulate them?
bit, but I wasnt very enthusiastic about the musi-
cality of it. What was good about it was that there Dhomont: Exactly. I always work that way, except
was finally a little bit of real music that started be- for once at Bourges, when I created a whole piece in
ing producedlike the ILIAC Suitethe first steps their studios because I had to. Actually, twice I
towards actually using the computer to produce worked like that. But mainly, during all the time
music. It showed that it could in fact be done. But it that was allotted to me, I would just collect sounds.
wasnt my specialty at all; I didnt feel connected to I would get to know the machine well. For example,
it. Its true that it seemed to be a tendency that was I worked on the first Synclavier at Marseilles. You
more explored in Western Canada and in the States. see, I knew Jon Appleton very well, so I went to
visit him at Dartmouth College, and learned a bit
Mountain: Yes, its truethe Universit de Mon- about the Synclavier from him, and then I was in-
tral didnt have so many students working with vited to spend a month at Marseilles, where they
computersperhaps even now? had one too, and recorded lots of sounds with it.
Dhomont: Well, now its changed quite a bit. For Similarly, at Bourges, they had some extremely
example, theres Jean Pich, who is quite open to high-quality analog oscillators, so I was able to
computersand now of course everyone uses them, create many sounds there too. Also, at GRM, I
but at the time, I seem to recall, back then, we did worked with the SYTER system. So I would record
make a couple of attempts, but I cant remember all these sounds onto tape, in the early days, then
much about it. Anyway, its not my field! later onto DAT cassettes, so that I would have a
huge collection of sonic materialand then I
Mountain: Now you use the computer, though. would take it home, because I always preferred to
What software do you use? work at home.
Mountain 17
Mountain: It seems to me that the majority of your herence of a musical discourse. The work must
works are based on narrative forms, giving the function at two levels: that of the concept and that
idea of a voyage or story, more than an exploration of the musical syntax used, in the same way that a
of sounds or textures for themselves. Do you think verbal narrative must transmit ideas through an un-
of it this way? derstood language.
Mountain: Do you normally start at the beginning
Dhomont: I have long thought that my body of
of a work, adding fragments in a more or less
work was made up of two main categories: on the
chronological way?
one hand, the rather abstract works (that is, where
the music is there just for its own sakedevelop- Dhomont: I take a long time to construct my narra-
ments, variations, permutations of musical parame- tive worksmonths or years. I gather documents,
ters or morphologies, etc.), and on the other hand, ideas, readings, notes, sketched-out diagrams, lists
more figurative works that include extra-musical of sounds to find. I also reflect on the form and lis-
ideas (poetic, romantic, philosophical, psychoana- ten to previous works, simulations, etc. The dura-
lytical, social, etc.). But, as time goes on, I have no- tion of this preliminary phase varies, but is often
ticed that the majority of my works belong to the proportional to the work itself. Afterwards, I can
second category and that many of them do obey nar- then begin to organize the chosen materials, with
rative forms or rise from extra-musical arguments. the inevitable hesitations and regrettable bits cor-
Some do this in an obvious way, by using texts bor- rected through an attentive listening. It is ex-
rowed from works of writers, poets, philosophers, tremely rare that I build a work in a chronological
psychologists, spoken by various voices; others are way. In fact, that has happened only once, for Sign
inspired by specific situations, events, or ideas that I Dionysos, which was a sort of linear narrative. In
try to express through the music. general, I need to know from the beginning how the
I chose to abandon instrumental writing around work will end, and where the principal points of ar-
the mid 1960s to focus on my study of electroacous- ticulation for the musical discourse are. However,
tic composition, because I was convinced that this as these long works have separate sections, I may
new and very open domain, practically free of well work on those that are related to each other
ruleswhere the poetic image could be freely asso- but dont follow one another in the final piece.
ciated with a musical vocabularywas capable of I work a bit like a filmmaker, because I use a
drawing on very diverse creative fields. The idea story board to figure out how the piece should
stayed with me when I noticed that I was often posi- evolve. Also, like a filmmaker, I can improvise dur-
tioning myself just at the edge of narrative, and that ing the shooting. Lots of details can be modified,
I was in search of a kind of musical dramaturgy, adapted, or abandoned during the production, de-
close to opera, but an opera free of singers, tradi- pending on the problems encountered and solutions
tional instruments and all the conventions of lyric discovered. But the overall form and the generative
art. Its therefore not surprising that, 45 years later, I idea dont change.
realize that I remained faithful to my intentions
Mountain: Can you give some examples of names
first and that behind my music there is often some-
of composers who have influenced you the mostif
thing else. I could almost say that music is for me
there are any?
the language that I use to speak of aspects of being.
However, not all my works belong to the narrative Dhomont: Its clear that musique concrte had a
domain, and some could be considered pure music. crucial influence on my work. Of course I am think-
I should add that, for me, all musical organiza- ing of Pierre Schaeffer, but also Pierre Henry,
tioneven that which illustrates something Franois Bayle, Bernard Parmegiani, Luc Ferrari,
needs to follow musical criteria. This means that Michel Chion, and, in general, the composers of
the logic of a narrative alone does not ensure the co- GRM in Paris. But naturally, composers like Stock-
Mountain 19
Figure 3. Mr. Dhomont in
Paris, 1999. (Photo: Michel
Lioret, Institut National de
lAudiovisuel.)
Mountain 21