SUBJECT : The interactions between the contemporary music and the contemporary art (>1945)

AUDIOVUSUAL AIDS :

• Music : "Trois visages de Liège (l'air et l'eau, voix de la ville, forges)" from the belgian composer Henry POUSSEUR
• Art : pictorial productions and creations from the pupils

1. Henry POUSSEUR

   Henry Pousseur was born in 1929. He completed his classical studies at the Conservatories of Liège and Brussels. Since 1951 he has been active in new music research, collaborating closely with other composers who can be considered as the founders of serial and alectroacoustical music (Boulez, Berio, Stockhausen...). He has worked at the electronic music studions of Cologne and Milan. In 1958 he contributed to the foundation of the Brussels sudio. During this period Pousseur developed a rather personal concept of serialism which led to a collaboration with the Frech writer Michel Butor. Back in Belgium , he founded the "Centre de Recherches Musicales de Wallonie à Liège" (1970). Also, he tocok up teaching at the University and the Conservatory of Liège. In books and several articles Pousseur has contributed in a substantial way to the evolution of modern music and its theoretical foundations. On the field of electroacoustic music Pousseur started his first esperiences with synthetic sound production and serial structures. Pousseur's works are published by Universal Edition (Vienna) and Suivini Zerboni (Milan).

   
   

2. Trois visages de Liège

   Composed and realized during the spring of 1961 to accompany the projections of the spectacle "Forms and Light" coneivec by Nicalas Schoeffer for the Congress Palace of Liège, this work has immediately been removed by the municipal authorities of this town and replaced by some "milder" music. It must be said that in view of what seemed to me a too decorative aspect of the visual part of the spectacle, Henri Pousseur took care of respecting consciously the precise chornometric program which was impsed on him. Moved by observations about the "realist" possibilities of the electroacoustic material which he had made during previous years, he intended to realize highly "evocative" musical scenes; not only for what concerns the physical nature of the sound but also in relation to history, even the most recent one from the surrounding region. In this way it was not difficult to assign three rather precise titles to the different parts : "Air and water", "Voices of the town" and "Smelting-Works", and to send into this world this musical and socio graphical trptych for an autonomous existence : it defended itself rather well. The record, made in the USA has had a solid success.

   Produced by : BV HASST RECORDS

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   BV/HAAST - CD 9010 ADD