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The Listener in Franois Bayles Works: A resonant subject in a living space

Edith Alonso
Organised Sound / Volume 20 / Special Issue 03 / December 2015, pp 308 - 315
DOI: 10.1017/S1355771815000230, Published online: 16 November 2015

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S1355771815000230

How to cite this article:
Edith Alonso (2015). The Listener in Franois Bayles Works: A resonant subject in a living space. Organised Sound, 20, pp
308-315 doi:10.1017/S1355771815000230
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The Listener in Franois Bayles Works:

A resonant subject in a living space
EDITH ALONSO
International University of la Rioja, Gran Va del Rey Juan Carlos I, 41, 26002 Logroo, La Rioja, Spain
Email: edithalonso@yahoo.com

Bayles aesthetic radicalism is based on a conception of a living

space in which there is not an opposition of an inner space to an
outer space. This idea will be discussed by looking at the
morphology creation, temporal evolution and sound spatiality
on Franois Bayles works. Sound events as images-of-sounds
are characterised by a philosophy of dynamic production and
energy transformation which creates a space in movement.
However, the organisation of time structure in Bayles works
can be divided into three categories (discrete time, time based
on independent moments and circular time) corresponding to
three periods of his creative life. We can conclude that this
organisation led him to realise how important the active
behaviour of the listener is for the construction of space. As a
result, the spatial experience does not create a constructed
space but rather a subjective one in which the listener is a
resonant subject with the space surrounding him.

1. DYNAMIC PROCESSING OF ACOUSMATIC

MORPHOLOGY AND ITS COSMIC
DIMENSION
After a detailed study of the compositions of French
composer Franois Bayle (Tamatave, Madagascar
1932), follower and reformer of Pierre Schaeffers
teachings, we can conclude that sound events not only
refer to real images but also go beyond a gural
representation and tend to an abstraction of the main
features. Franois Bayle considers acousmatic sounds
to have special characteristics because one does not
see the source production; a sound coming from a
loudspeaker is an image-of-sound or i-sound (Bayle
1993) and it is characterised by its faculty of movement
and its power to deform original sound traces. We
can establish a correspondence between the imageof-sound and some of the ideas of French philosopher
Gaston Bachelard (18841962) (to whom Bayle often
refers). First, in Bachelards writings, imagination, as
well as an image-of-sound concept, is the faculty to
deform images, not to create them. The imagination is
considered as an organising dynamism related to that
which is imaginary and not to the images themselves.
Due to this, imagination is open, is evasive, goes
beyond images and is an imagination without images
(Bachelard 1943), which is what denes its mobility.
The image-of-sound also reects this imagination
without images since there is one continuous itinerary

from the real to that which is imaginary through

movement and without specic images. This movement of the images-of-sound, from both a spatial and
an acoustic level to a mental level, contributes to the
creation of their own specications; it also constitutes
the typical register of poetic forms because, in our
opinion, both in acousmatic music and in Bachelards
theory, it is a matter of replacing a cinematic description philosophy with a dynamic production philosophy:
to constitute the self as both moved and moving, as
mobile and engine, thrust and aspiration (Bachelard
1943).1 The dynamic value of duration can bring
together the past and the future. Acousmatic music is
dened by its mobility, its continuous ux generation;
the being is pure movement. The importance of the
dynamic production of the i-sounds contributes, as will
be discussed below, to the creation of a living space.
However, this dynamism is reected in the transformation processes of i-sounds. Sound images do not
remain unaltered but rather undergo transformations
as they appear. At the end of his Tremblement de terre
trs doux, in Climat 4, Bayle creates some sound
distortions, changing the points of view of the sound
object; the electronic sounds are repeated and altered
in different ways by means of acceleration, transposition, superposition and accumulation. These operations also have an impact over the projected
signicance and the sense of the image; there is a
semantic modication.2 When Franois Bayle transforms certain human sounds (such as a voice, a cry, or
a murmur), he usually hides a number of features
or characteristics, leaving little clues behind so that
they can be recognised. We can identify a sound but we
remain uncertain. A dialectic game is established
between knowledge-recognition and pure discovery:
this state between the two movements leads to a certain
tension. As we listen, we can also create an axis of
source recognition (Smalley 1986). The origin of this
axis can be found in the sounds the listener may
1

All translations are mine unless otherwise noted.

Bayles theory about the signicance of the music is inuenced by
Ch. S. Peirces semiotic. The concept of image-of-sound is dened by
the icon, index and symbol, which represent a progression from a
concrete to an abstract level. See previous articles for more on this
subject (Alonso 2014).
2

Organised Sound 20(3): 308315 Cambridge University Press, 2015.

doi:10.1017/S1355771815000230

The Listener in Franois Bayles Works

unambiguously identify as coming from a real source

in the world. The further away we get from the origin,
the less recognisable the source of the sounds will be.
For example, in Voyage au centre de la tte (19803)
we can feel the presence of someone using a coffee
machine but the sounds around the person (a monastery chant, someone opening a door) make the
listener doubt when identifying the object. In fact,
what counts is the effect: the character leaves a
trace that evokes undened situations. However,
what matters is not what these situations are but the
evocation (the logic of evocation shall be discussed in
the last section of this article) that has occurred, the
imaginary worlds they create.
Researcher Jean-Christophe Thomas (Bayle 1993)
points out that in Bayles music there is always one
itinerary between two opposite ends of transformations: between diffuse and clear, continuous and
discontinuous, informal and formal, banal (noise) and
unusual (form), stability and movement. By exploring
these opposite ends, a range is generated whose
scales are conceived as attempts to give new values.
However, from our point of view, the most important
thing is not the opposite ends in the scales, but the
passage from one value to another, the minimal
variations or gradations that occur between the
different states of perception.
The dynamism of images is also reected in Espaces
inhabitables, a piece in which the static position of the
sound objects disappears and electronic sounds seem
to overlap organic lines. There is a process of energetic
transformation, a metamorphosis from one energy to
another. Reality is no longer a xed entity but becomes
mobile; it is conceived in a dynamic way. The rst
movement, Jardins de rien, is organised by an energetic
criterion that goes from uid to solid taking into
account the different dynamic processes. These
processes are based on the creation of gures resulting
from the metaphorical elaboration of the imagesof-sound: By process or dynamic species I designate
the various gures that appear in the temporal
development of sound phenomena (Bayle 1967).
Finally, I would like to point out that the imageof-sound theory is part of a philosophical and
cosmological approach through which Bayle wants to
understand and to experience the world:
Music (to me) in its current state rejoins from within the
romantic project of describing the world. Not to portray
it from the outside but to penetrate the mechanisms,
internal constitutions, shapes of emergence, of
disappearance, of resurgence. (Bayle 1993: 77)

This can lead us to Franois Bayles evolution towards

the idea of a spiritual union of humanity and cosmos in
which the image-of-sound carries out the fusion
between the former and nature, and through which
mankind gets in touch with the universe. The image-of-

309

sound holds in itself the union of the spiritual and the

material and helps humanity get closer to the most
basic primary forces. This theory of i-sounds is also
inspired by Bachelards thoughts on how poetic images
draw mankind closer to the basic and deepest forces of
the universe:
every image is an operation of the human spirit. It has an
internal spiritual principle, even when we think of it as a
simple reection of the outside world The task of the
poet is to gently push images to be sure that the human
mind operates on them with humanity, to be sure that
they are human images, pictures humanizing the forces of
the Cosmos. So we are led to the cosmology of the human.
Instead of living in a nave anthropomorphism, we return
man to basic and profound forces. (Bachelard 1943: 6;
Bayle 1993: 242)

The cosmic dimension of Bayles works appears in his

work Jeta represented by the cave sounds, which,
recorded and transformed, are the intermediaries
between nature and humanity. Outside and inside are
united; the man and the cave become one. While we are
listening to Jeta, the cave does not reveal itself in an
abrupt way; it is rather the different sonorities that
evoke its presence and let it speak. The caves absence
is present and shows its reality: there is a presence of an
absence, in which the object the cave is transformed
into a subject. Additionally, Bayles interest in the
cosmic dimension of music is evident if we carry out a
thematic analysis of his works titles. They are essentially based on nature, humanity and movement, all of
which together give us a vision of the Cosmos.
Examples of the rst topic nature would be: Trois
rves doiseau, La forme de lesprit est un papillon,
Jardins de rien (Three Bird Dreams, The Form of the
Spirit is a Buttery, Gardens of Nothing). Titles related
to the second topic humanity speak of body
movements, such as Respiration (Vibrations Composes) (Breathing Vibrations Composed), human
activities or emotional situations such as Faim,
peur, amour (Hunger, Fear, Love) from Aeroformes
(Aeroformes), Le sommeil dEuclide (The Sleep of
Euclid). The third topic movement is expressed by
the following words extracted from some of Bayles
titles: spinning top, trembling, vibration, velocity, etc.
The meeting of man and nature in a joint movement is
revealed in one of his last works: Univers nerveux
(20045) (Nervous Universe).
In this way, the images-of-sound generated by
acousmatic music recover a romantic vision of music,
considering it something inextricably linked with
Nature and Humanity. In acousmatic music there
would be a union of body and world and these, in turn,
would enter into resonance with other unknown
universes: An acousmonium would be an agreed
process of listening to worlds that are unknown to us
and from which we are separated only by the virtual
thickness of a vibrating membrane (Bayle 1993).

310

Edith Alonso

2. TIME CONCEPTIONS
A gradual change in Bayles way of understanding the
temporality of music can be observed when analysing
his career. His rst works are characterised by a linear
time conception with ruptures that break the
continuity (inuenced by Ren Thoms catastrophe
theory). With Son Vitesse-Lumire (19803) (Sound
Speed-Light), however, Bayle introduces a time
conception based on the circle and in a continuous ux
that will reach its full realisation in La forme du temps
est un cercle (19992000) (The Form of Time is a
Circle). Although in his rst works the successions of
sound events were characterised by the presence
of catastrophes that fractured the musical discourse
as happens in Tremblement de terre trs doux (1978)
(Very Soft Earthquake) where a horizontal time is
vertically cut by catastrophes there are also signs of a
circular treatment when, for example, in Substance du
signe (1972) (Substance of Sign), he tries to create perceptual states that refer to a suspended and hypnotic
sense of time. In these states, past and present are
mixed and listeners do not know if what they are
listening to has already appeared or not, because they
are in a xed and eternal moment in time. The fact that
the change in the conception of time is more obvious
in Son Vitesse-Lumire raises the question on the
inuence of technological tools in the process of
composition, since it is precisely in this work that
Franois Bayle began to use digital tools, giving up
analogue ones. Between these two time conceptions, that
is, the discontinuous and the circular one, the moment
form of Stockhausen will also play an important role.
We will now analyse the evolution in Bayles
time conception by looking at some of his works:
discontinuous time in Tremblement de terre trs doux
(1978), the moment form in Espaces inhabitables
(1967), and, nally, circular time in La forme du temps
est un cercle (19992000).
2.1. Discontinuous time
In Tremblement de terre trs doux, there is, in my
opinion, a conception of time constructed by means of
breakpoints in the continuity. This work, composed in
1978, was later included as a second movement in the
cycle entitled rosphre (197880), a work inuenced
by the surrealist movement (as was the case with
Camera oscura). Just as Surrealism explored the free
associations carried out by the subconscious, in
Tremblement unexpected relationships are emphasised
(between sounds with a realistic nature and sounds
without a direct causal reference), making us think of
an imaginary universe in which reality and dream are
intermingled. In Paysage 3, the sounds of a persons
footsteps moving from one place to another bring us
closer to a real universe but, being as they are mixed
with electronic sounds, it is difcult to know where the

person is going; an imaginary space is created in which

transformed voices betray the presence of someone.
However, Bayles afnity with Surrealism is also
obvious in the works title, taken from Max Ernsts
1925 picture, LAn 55, tremblement de terre fort doux.
The image of an earthquake is taken as a model for the
works structure: as is the case in an earthquake, there
are jolts produced by crashes which bring about an
energy release. The unstable sound material shifts
searching for stability and creating displacement.
The most remarkable feature in Tremblement de
terre trs doux is its continuous to-and-fro between
stability and instability, regularity and irregularity,
continuity and rupture. In spite of its fragmentary
nature given that it has 11 movements (divided in
Climats, Transits and Paysages) it is, in fact, a piece
with a unitary nature surprised by critical points of
rupture. The dramatic quality of this piece is brought
about by ruptures and tilting states, or catastrophes.
These ruptures occur amongst movements or within
the movements themselves. In the rst case, the change
from movement Climat 1 to the next one, Transit 1, is
revealed by the sudden rupture of a door noise leading,
in turn, to the sound of a lift which opens Transit 1; in
the second case, when the ruptures are within the
movements, as happens in Transit 1, the spring noise
and the voices are abruptly cut off by silence and the
sound of footsteps. In Climat 4 there is a stream of
sounds produced sometimes by an accumulative
process achieved by means of a feedback loop that
keeps on moving closer to us. However, despite this
continuous ow (which brings to mind repetitive
American music), there are some blows that mark the
discourse and little crashes which resemble catastrophe
points. In some other occasions, these ruptures are
clearly exposed by the use of gestures: sonorities that
redirect us to the action of the person producing them
for example, in Climat 2, we can hear somebody
making a hitting noise. Another example of a strong
gesture is the beginning of Transit 2 where we can hear
a noise made by glass that reminds us of the beginning
of Grande Polyphonie (appel). However, besides the
ruptures, there is also a continuity between movements
created by gliding sounds: the change from Paysage 3
to Climat 3, for example, is carried out by the ascending and descending glissando of a ball moving.
Through these dialectics between continuity and
rupture, stability and instability, a longer listening time
is created without returning to the procedures used in
Lexprience acoustique (1972) (The Acoustic Experience). Whereas in Lexprience acoustique there is a
horizontal time, in Tremblement de terre trs doux the
continuous, horizontal time is cut by vertical moments.
All the hypnotic shaking of Lxprience acoustique is
sweetened by the sound of steps or female voices.
A sweetness, however, which does not prevent the
existence of moments of strength, the ickering

The Listener in Franois Bayles Works

movements are disturbing because they seem small but

they are actually strong.
2.2. The moment form
Besides the ideas of a discontinuous time and a circular
time, we must consider the concept of moment form (as
proposed by Karlheinz Stockhausen) which inuenced
Bayles way of composing. Stockhausen developed his
idea of moment form in works such as Kontakte (1960)
or Momente (1969). In these works the form does
not aim for a climax or a group of climaxes already
prepared and therefore expected, and nor does it
provide the usual phases of introduction, intensication, transition and resolution:
I wonder if an auditor feels compelled to listening beyond
his or her limits; especially when a composition does
not have a continuous story, is not composed following a
red wire that must be followed from the beginning to the
end in order to understand the whole that is, when there
is not a dramatic form with an exposition, intensication,
development, peak effect and end effect (not a closed
form), but each moment is linked to all others and can
survive by itself. . (Stockhausen 1988)

Therefore, every now is not the result of what precedes it and the exit of what goes after it, but something
individual, autonomous, that can exist by itself.
Stockhausen called it eternity, an eternity that can be
expected within every movement. We are talking about
musical forms in which he searches for the explosion of
the concept of time, or its overowing, in order to
achieve a certain timelessness.
Franois Bayle does not explicitly develop the concept of moment form but we suppose that he rather
takes it as inspiration in order to reect the autonomy
of the different movements that compose many of his
works. For example, in Espaces inhabitables (1967)
(Uninhabitable Spaces), every movement is considered
as an independent moment with its own personality
(Desantos 1997). Each one of them is independent,
contains the past, the present and the future in itself,
and is different to the others because of the context in
which it appears; duration is only one of its attributes.
Also, in works such as Toupie dans le ciel (1979)
(Spinning Top in the Sky) the directional and linear
temporality is cancelled since it is impossible to predict
when the work will nish. This allows us to interpret
Toupie dans le ciel as a moment stopped in time where
there is no past and no future, only a perpetual present.
2.3. Circular time
When analysing the temporal structures in Franois
Bayles works, we nd that the conception of circular
time appears in those pieces composed from the 1980s
onwards (Son Vitesse-Lumire, Motion-emotion) and is
also developed in his later works (La forme du temps est

311

un cercle and La forme de lesprit est un papillon). In

addition, Bayle used to group his works in what he
called cycles: a cycle gathers several movements, the
last of which takes up again elements from the beginning of the piece. Thus, the formal structure can be
represented with the gure of a circle since there is a
continuity with no beginning and no end but only
a sound trace that returns over and over again.
The feeling of an endless work is generated, a work
that could begin again an innite number of times.
Furthermore, the structure of circular time not only
appears in each individual piece but also could be used
to explain all Bayles production as a large circle in
which the same questions are considered by means of
different approaches. Also, over the last few years,
Bayle has created new versions of earlier pieces: in
Petite Polyphonie au jardin (2008) he took the
sound material of Grande Polyphonie and created an
octophonic version and in Espace, etc (2007) he
created an octophonic remix of several works.
Circular time can be found in nature, in the seasons
and in the movement between night and day. Bayle
wants to reproduce a time closer to that of nature and
rejects the chronological or historical time based on a
succession of events following a certain order in the
past, present and future. The time of life is a cyclic time
in which everything is renewed; in La forme de lesprit
est un papillon, the buttery is used as a metaphor of
change, life regeneration and music. We would like to
point out that this concept of time, closer to that of
nature, is linked on another level to what we discussed
earlier as Bayles intention of bringing humanity and
nature together in a unied movement.
Musicologist Gianfranco Vinay (2001) considers
that the history of Western music can be explained as a
ght between two temporal principles: a Chronos time,
linear and dialectical, and an Aon time, circular,
pagan and repressed but always present in the collective subconscious. Chronos time is at the origin of the
rhythmic regularity coded by music and the harmonic
tension/release dialectics. However, Aon time opposes
this rhythmic regularity with all kinds of ights.
For Gianfranco Vinay, time uidity, the circular
characteristic of images and the linking of sonorous
metamorphoses of Bayles last pieces show the latters
vocation (as well as that of acousmatic music) to bring
Aon time back in an age where Chronos time prevails.
These thoughts on the two conceptions of time also
appear in the writings of philosopher Gilles Deleuze
(192595) who, in his book Logique du sens (1989),
points out that in Chronos time there is only a present
in time, past and future being two dimensions relating
to this present; in Aon time, however, there would be
only one past and one future continuously dividing
the present. Aon is the instant without thickness
that subdivides every present into past and future,
unlike the vast and thick present of Chronos: In short,

312

Edith Alonso

two times, one of which consists only of embedded

presents, the other merely decomposed into elongated
past and future. One is always dened, active or
passive, the other, eternally innitive, eternally neutral
(Deleuze 1989).
When examining Bayles works, especially those
created after 1980, we realise that time is not thick but
rather disappears in a million particles; it is an Aon
time that moves continuously from one instant to
another. There is a pure, non-identiable and immeasurable development in which time never stops dividing itself into a before and an after. Every sound event
is mobile, restless and, unable to stay in the same place,
always replaced by another: The entire line of the Aon
is run through by the instant which is endlessly
displaced on this line and is always missing from its
own place (Deleuze 1989). Chronos time is the time of
material succession, the time of the action of bodies,
while Aon time is the extra-temporality that acts on
the surface of bodies. Bayles music also acts in this
temporality that reects the lightness of sound events
which are continuously escaping.
Aon is populated by effects that haunt it without ever
lling it and is unlimited like the future and the past, but
nite like an instant. That is what happens in a way with
Bayles works: they are full of impacts and sensations
which, instead of occupying all the time, allow it to
breathe. At the same time, each one of his works is nite
but also unlimited because the sound material appears
to be never-ending, as if there was a perpetual natural
reserve ready to offer us its sounds. In the instant of
Aon, singularities and points projected to the past and
future are extracted. Likewise, in Bayles music there are
some gures that stand out from an innite circular line.
Aon time is close to the time of pleasure and desire,
the time of ecstasy and of the listening-experience
(as happens in Lexprience acoustique); it is a time in
which the listener gets closer to the sound events, as a
resonant subject (as will be discussed below). Bayle
himself insists on the relevance of the ow of desire: It is
about the precise organisation for a different and
specic system of listening, thought of like the ow
of a movie. Or, of desire (Bayle 1993: 193).
The idea of time as a circle leads to the idea of a nonnished time. Time evolves through the evocation of
one image-of-sound to another image-of-sound in an
unnished process which is different every time. There
is a development marked by non-linear parameters
and, even though there is an ending, the listeners
feeling is that everything could begin again an innite
number of times. In this innite time there is a space
proliferation caused by an absent space positioning
itself in a present space; different temporalities are
blended accounting for this ambiguity. These
compositions could be considered as open works in
the sense that we cannot foresee the sound events
that will appear.

La forme du temps est un cercle (19992000) shows

an interesting interpretation of this circular time. This
work was inspired by La cifra, Jorge Luis Borges
collection (18991986) of 45 poems written between
1978 and 1981. In one of these poems, Borges shows
how Pythagoras taught his disciples that time is shaped
as a circle and that everything happens for the rst time
but in a way that is eternal (Borges 1996). In fact, the
idea of a circular time is common to all of Borgess
production and can be found in other poems such as
La Noche Cclica (The Cyclic Night) with the poem
ending in exactly the same way it had begun, and
where the suspension points imply an indenite
repetition. Another early work in which Borges wrote
about circular time is the essay included in his Historia
de la Eternidad (La doctrina de los ciclos). This
rst idea of a circular time, based on innite cyclic
repetition, is related to the image of the eternal return;
an image not taken as a set-back but as an innite
progress towards the departure point, moving along
the nite circumference in order to return to the same
point. The concept of a nite matter implies that time is
not an absolute concatenation in which a before and an
after can be recognised, but rather a cyclic concept. In
the same way, sound material in Bayles work returns
indenitely but always in a different way. In La forme
du temps est un cercle, he studies possible time states
corresponding to a sensation of ux. The last of the
ve movements of this work, Cercles, is made up of
sonorities close to those in the rst movement so that
the pieces form is that of a circle in which everything
could begin again several times. Here, Aeolian sounds,
electronic cracklings, innite glissandi and circular
images that never stop in their trajectory also
express uidity.
2.4. The inuence of technological tools
Technological tools have evolved as much as ideas in
the history of electro-acoustic music (Racot et al.
1999). As these authors suggest, in a rst phase, the
change from analogue to digital techniques inuenced
all the composers who arrived in the electro-acoustic
music scene in 1970. A knowledge of digital techniques
led to the discovery of the power of precision and
the accumulation of treatments, keeping the sound
quality. The rst digital studio of GRM (Groupe de
Recherches Musicales, founded in 1958 by Pierre
Schaeffer and directed by Franois Bayle from 1966
onwards) was 123 studio. Here there were some
programs in non-real time which, despite a monotonous and slow ergonomics, obtained very original
results. Later, with the Syter system it was possible to
make music in real time, and the simultaneous
manipulation of several parameters was made possible
by their interpolation in value sets within a
bi-dimensional space. After that, with GRM tools,

The Listener in Franois Bayles Works

all algorithms were claried in their presentation and a

graphic explanation allowed the beginner a quick
understanding of what was going on. From then on,
the path was opened for the search of new ergonomics.
Bayle was aware of the inuence these tools had had on
his musics aesthetics and he classied his compositions
in three historical periods (Bayle 2003: 50):
1. The use of editing techniques and stereophonic
mixing with a magnetic tape from 1963 to
1994 (some works from this period are:
Loiseau chanteur, Lexprience acoustique, Grande
Polyphonie, Camera oscura, rosphre).
2. From 1980 onwards: computerised processing and
the rst digital audio tools in non-real time. Later,
in 1988 the launch of Syter and in 1994 of
MIDI Formers (works such as: Eros, Son
Vitesse-Lumire, Thtre dombres, Fabulae).
3. Around 1995, he adopted the dynamic medium
and the digital multiprocessor editor with GRM
tools plug-ins (in, e.g., La main vide, Morceaux de
ciel, Si loin si proche).
Taking Bayles technological auto-analysis as a starting point, we can take a step forward and associate
these periods with important changes in his compositional ideas. At the beginning of the second period
(since the 1980s), Bayle modies his way of conceiving
time (from a linear development with ruptures to a
continuous and circular time); the third period (around
1995) corresponds to his growing interest in adapting
old stereo works into multichannel ones. Thus,
consciously or not, Bayle brought onto his career the
circular time he applied to his very work. We can say
that in Franois Bayles works there is a mutual
bidirectional inuence between the technological tools
used and the temporal structure emphasised within
each work. At the same time, as will be discussed
below, this evolution in the conception of time leads
Bayle to consider space as an expressive place in which
the subject lives the sound experience.
3. A RESONANT SUBJECT IN A LIVING SPACE
The study of the use of space in Franois Bayles works
takes as its starting point the denition of acousmatics
as the art of projected sounds (Bayle 2003). From
Bayles rst works the sound position in space is a
fundamental parameter in the composition process.
Each sounds itinerary is registered in the medium;
space is dened in the work and is, at the same time,
a consubstantial part of it. This allows us to speak of
a composition of space.
French musicologist and composer Michel Chion
distinguishes between an outer space and an inner
space in acousmatic music (Chion 2001). The outer
space is related to the listening conditions of the work
(acoustic prole of the concert hall, the number, type

313

and position of the loudspeakers) as well as to the

social space of the work. However, the inner space is
xed on the recording medium and is characterised by
the different layouts of presence of the sounds, the
xed or variable distribution of the elements in
the different tracks, the nuances of their reverberation
or absence, or other characteristics typical of the
composition. Bayle denes the inner space as a
psychological volume (Bayle 2003) which is
developed in the composition time expressing the
velocity and all the differences that structure the
space. The problem with the interaction of these two
kinds of space is clearly presented by Bayle (1998) and
raises not only an acoustic problem but also a
philosophical one: we have hic et nunc sound
productions which do not belong to the same reality.
At the concert two spaces are present: the real space, in
the sense of an actual space (outer space), and at the
same time, the recorded space from the medium itself
(the inner space). Our mental space is disrupted
because there is an uncertainty related to spacetime
parameters: inside the real world (the concert hall)
another world is built (the one created in the medium).
Also, the real world recorded from the outside is
inscribed on a technological device; it is a matter of
bringing the outside into the inside. Therefore, we
listen to sonorities that do not actually exist but existed
previously: there is the presence of an absence.
However, we cannot clearly distinguish the difference
between a real sound and its projected simulation, that
is, we cannot distinguish whether what we are listening
to is really happening or is recorded. This clearly shows
the big gap separating the presence from the absence
by emphasising the perception of a difference of spaces
which is difcult to retain. As a consequence, we are
aware of the presence of a space that comes from
another place. Thus, according to Bayle, what we are
listening to is a space hole, a void; we are listening to a
space that is not there.
From our point of view, in Franois Bayles music
there is not an opposition of an inner space to an outer
space: against the pure interiority of music itself or of a
music that refers only to the outside, acousmatic music
appears as a wild being (as French philosopher
Merleau-Ponty would say) between the two states.
Acousmatic music unfolds itself onto outside and
inside, it is visible and invisible. In no case is there a
fusion of these two aspects but a continuous reversibility of both, a reversibility that is, at the same time,
not complete. The auditory perception is possible in
the continuous metamorphosis that goes from one to
the other. As French philosopher Merleau-Ponty
shows about the others presence:
It is necessary and sufcient that the body of the other that
I see and whose word I hear, which is given to me as
immediately present in my eld, shows me in its own way
that which I shall never be present for, which will always

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Edith Alonso

be unseen to me and which I shall never be a witness of, an

absence. (Merleau-Ponty 1964)

In the same way, we would like to point out that

Franois Bayles music always shows us what remains
absent for us: it makes us aware that music is not
limited to what we are listening to in a specic instant;
there is something that is hidden but present. The
invisibility of acousmatic music, far from being an
obstacle to the feeling of the music, becomes the
appropriate way to establish and to create its own
specicity. Acousmatic music makes us keep in mind
the places where the music is composed. MerleauPonty declared that the invisible is not opposed to the
visible: the visible has an invisible context and the
invisible acts as compensation for the visible. Equally,
the absence of the spaces where sounds were created is
not the opposite of the presence of these spaces. At an
acousmatic concert we feel the presence of the spaces
where sounds were recorded and, at the same time,
we perceive that in the actual space of the sound
movements the physical space where they were created
is missing: the absent space has a real presence and
the present space reects an absence.
Following Francis Bayers thoughts on space (1981),
we can say that the space created in Franois Bayles
works is fundamentally a living space and not a
constructed one. In fact, the auditor (and the composer)
feels the place of the projected sound like a reality that
lives concretely and not as an abstract category. One
can feel the material and carnal presence of the concrete
audible. This sound space corresponds to an aesthetics
of an intuitionist type in which there is a supremacy of
the plastic over the tectonic, of the expressive value over
the structural one. Intuitionism leads us to a more
specic representation of spatiality, one answering the
requests made by our sensitivity and our intuition. It
focuses on sensitive qualities as they can be expressed in
the living aspects of the listening experience.
This said, we cannot deny that there are no characteristics of a constructed space in Bayles work. This
space, corresponding to a formalist aesthetics, shows a
supremacy of the tectonic over the plastic. It guides us
towards an abstract conception of spatiality that
satises above all the logical request of our formal
intelligence; it emphasises the objective and intelligible
values of the spatial construction. Bayle occasionally
uses space with a structural value that organises the
work: in his octophonic compositions, for example,
the distribution of the sounds implies a willingness of
organisation that makes the listener give a different
signication to the front-to-back and left-to-right
displacements. Several of his writings show drafts of
the spatial layouts that he considered appropriate for
his works, and sketches of the movements for the
projected sound. In Thtre dOmbres, for example,
he introduces a program of automatic projection

(Bayle 1993) with an implementation diagram of the

position of the loudspeakers. It includes instructions
on the intensity level of each one of the 11 loudspeakers
and on the sound displacements. At the beginning of
the piece, the sound of loudspeakers one and four is
distributed in a medium spatial plane, located between
the left and the right; however, as the work draws on
there is a movement to the right or to the left (generally
if loudspeaker one moves left, loudspeaker two moves
right). However, in a live performance, the possibility
of moving the sound gives some reference points to the
structure of the piece: starting the sound projection from
afar and bringing it gradually closer to the audience
helps in the understanding of the pieces introduction.
Yet in most of Bayles works, spatiality refers to
plastic properties that dene an expressive value and
allude to aesthetic signicances. Unlike formalism, this
is not about imposing a form to the sound material from
the outside but rather about discovering a form inside
the material itself. The sound space promoted
by intuitionism makes a continuous demand on our
physical sense of space, joining in with our deep feeling
of a spatial experience. The intuitionist, taking a phrase
from Bachelard, uses a material imagination that leans
towards the discovery and promotion of new sonorities.
In this way, the space experience produces new sensations in the listener. For example, distance can provoke
feelings of calm or loneliness, the proximity of sounds
can reect the now as well as something private,
whereas vast or huge sounds might imply immensity or
eternity. A semantics of music linked to spatial feeling is
created making the listener give a bodily answer to the
connections between musical contents and space
(Smalley 1988). The spatial experience depends on the
contents and the context; it is the product of a collaboration of factors that cannot be considered as isolated
parameters. At the same time, the composer cannot
systematically control this experience; it has to be felt.
From this point of view, the feeling of space will be
different depending on the type of person taking part in
the listening, but in all cases, it can be suggested that
the subject stops being an intentional subject to
become a resonant subject. Pierre Schaeffer introduces
the importance of intentionality in the construction of
a sound object: there is no object without a subject who
listens to it and has the intention of listening to it.
The intentionality discovered by Husserl through
Brentanos analysis is considered as a fundamental
aspect in the perception of concrete music. The sound
object appears as an object of our perception and is
entirely contained in our perceptive conscience
(Schaeffer 1966). The sound object is linked to a
subject, a continuous gliding between them. Listening
is not a passive act, it implies a tending towards, an
intention. However, even if we accept the importance
that Schaeffer bestows on intentionality as essential, in
our opinion, what we nd in Bayles acousmatic music

The Listener in Franois Bayles Works

is an openness to the subjects resonance, to the joint

re-sounding of the listener and the sound. The
conscience is intimately bound to what it constitutes
and the other way round. We can distinguish what is
constituted from what constitutes it but they are still
closely related: there are features or characteristics of
the subject in what is constituted; also, the one who
perceives is joined to what is perceived because they are
in the same world. Both belong to each other and
resonate one another. So, the phenomenological
subject is transformed into a resonant subject. There
would not be any intentionality in the listening, the
sound is not what we are pointing at, but what invades
us and what we communicate with. These ideas bring
to mind the words of French philosopher Jean-Luc
Nancy who expresses this transformation thus:
It is a question of going back from the phenomenological
subject, an intentional line of sight, to a resonant subject,
intensive spacing of a rebound that does not end in any
return to self without immediately relaunching as an echo,
a call to that same self. (Nancy 2002)

In our opinion, there would no longer be a logic of

manifestation but a logic of evocation. Since there is an
invisibility of their sources, sounds are neither presented
nor revealed; their presence is recalled. The listening
opens to the resonance and the resonance opens to the
resonant body and to the resonance itself. Acousmatic
listening is an active process in which the music comes to
us at the same time as we go to the music. Music enters
our body and we both feel inside the same world. There is
no ideality in acousmatic music because it becomes esh,
it possesses us: precisely because musical or sensitive
ideas are negativity or absence circumscribed, we do not
possess them, they possess us (Merleau-Ponty 1964).
4. CONCLUSION
The most radical contribution in the aesthetics of
Bayles works is the listeners transformation from an
intentional subject into a resonant subject who
experiences the sound space. This idea has been
explored through an analysis of Franois Bayles
works from the point of view of morphology, temporal
structure and spatial conception. We can state that in
his music, the imagination of the sound forms works
without images, that is to say, even if the original
model might be a visual image, there is a process of
abstraction in which what matters are the qualities of
dynamic production. The continuous movement of the
sound forms consists of a permanent modication
where it is the tiny variations or gradations that are
produced which are important. We are talking of a
universe based on a continuous transformation of
energy and not on discontinuous extremes.
We can also appreciate a change in how Bayle built
the temporal structure: from a discontinuous time

315

marked by events that break the musical discourse, to

pieces based on temporal moments in which every
instant of time is suspended and xed, to, nally and
since the 1980s, a temporal sense based on continuity
and associated to Aon time. This conception of time,
related to the extra-temporality of the instant, is connected with a time which is closer to the pleasure and the
willingness of listening distinctive of a resonant subject.
Franois Bayle has always been interested in
conceiving new tools of sound projection, like the
acousmonium, which has led listeners to increase their
spatial sensitivity. It is, above all, a living space, in which
the most important thing is the experience of such space,
its expressive value, and the feelings it provokes, the
content. In this space, the subject is not an intentional
subject that controls every sound movement but a
resonant subject that establishes links with the space
around him.

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