Browse by Artist: POUSSEUR, HENRI

Artist:	POUSSEUR, HENRI
Title:	Paysages Planetaires
Label:	ALGA MARGHEN (ITALY)
Format:	3CD BOX
Price:	$68.00
Catalog #:	ALGA 051CD

"In year 2000 Henri Pousseur was asked by Philippe Samyn, architect of Brussels who likes to work in association with other arts, to lend his support to the plan for the construction of a business complex by one of the most important building enterprises in the country. There were four low buildings arranged like different parts of a medieval castle-village, grouped around a kind of large open central court. Leaning on the suggested image, Pousseur immediately suggested that the first spinal-column be composed of an electronic carillon, sounding in variations every hour, thus making the hours between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. Henri Poussuer imagined then a connection between the time of Nivelles (a city 40 km south of Brussels, where this large project will be situated) and the time of the entire planet and the more or less metaphoric sonic and musical realities attached to it. He made on the one hand the 16 hours of a theoretically complete day of work (from the cleaning service up to the last researches in the office) correspond to the 24 hours of a complete terrestrial revolution. And divided the globe into eight large north/south 'slices', themselves divided into three perpendicular 'rings': north, center, south, with the understanding that only inhabited lands were taken into consideration. To each of the 8 'great hours' of the total duration, Pousseur associated three regions, one of each ring (north/central/south) set out as far apart as possible on the terrestrial globe. Over a background of a fairly continuous variety of noises which are perpetually evolving: sea, fire, city, swamp, industry, forest, etc. there are ethno-musical samples from one region or from several regions involved, more or less worked over by all sorts of numerical methods which vary their capacity to be recognized and their effectiveness as quasi-traditional music. This work once finished (realised in the Studio of the composer's son Denis), Pousseur made a synthesis on three discs by superimposing the landscapes (a bit in the manner of the previous Etudes paraboliques) in 16 Paysages Planetaires. The titles of the landscapes expresses by their contraction the simultaneous or alternate presence of several regions; for example, 'Alaskamazonie' is self-explanatory. Something like 'Gamelan Celtibere' brings out a play; between the West Coast of Europe with the Indonesian archipelago and even the northern part of Australia. Continuing like this you could find it amusing to reconstruct the circum-planetary movement of the work. Michel Butor, for forty years accomplice of Henri Pousseur, has been willing to write the prose-verse alternating poetic structure, very luminous, which makes a global accompaniment to the procession of these landscapes. His text is included in the 60 pages documentation booklet, also featuring two long essays by Henri Pousseur: 'Paysages Planetaires' and 'Athmospheric and Cultural Sources for Each of the Landscapes'. Finally, by this work, Henri Pousseur renders homage to all the singers and instrumentalists, sound engineers, ethnic musicologists and editors who have either produced, or gathered and transmitted, all the marvellous musical invention which inspired and nourished the work and which, with the sounds of the world, of nature, of society and of industry, are supposed to represent a kind of formal summing-up of life's multiplicity on this sailing Earth as she travels through cosmic space. All the images, obtained through extensive digital treatments, were conceived and manipulated by Henri Poussuer. Heavy cardboard slipcase with 3CDs and 60 page booklet."

Artist:	POUSSEUR, HENRI
Title:	Liège A Paris
Label:	SUB ROSA (BELGIUM)
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	SR 117CD

"Created in 1977 for the Centre Pompidou foundation on the stage of Paris's Beaubourg, at the instigation of Luciano Berio, 'Liège à Paris' is a fifteen-part composition lasting one hour, where Henri Pousseur takes us on voyage of exploration, mixing the voices of travellers of diverse languages and accents, with the sounds of planes, trains, the atmosphere of streets and Iranian restaurants, noises of every sort, cries, ritournellos, nursery rhymes, fragments of former compositions ('Trois visages de Liège', 1961) -- a polyphonic story through with the voice (and texts) of Michel Butor -- leaving Paris for a world air tour... The Belgian composer Henri Pousseur studied composition at the academies of Liège and Brussels. In his early period he wrote in Webern's serial technique style and then turned to electronic and aleatoric music. He has translated Alban Berg 's written."

Artist:	POUSSEUR, HENRI
Title:	Musique Mixte 1966-1970
Label:	SUB ROSA (BELGIUM)
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	SR 231CD

This is the fourth Henri Pousseur CD in Sub Rosa's Early Electronics series, exploring the work of this Belgian theoretician and experimental/avant garde composer. Along with previous releases in this series, Musique Mixte will cover all his electronic music and his most radical works between 1953 and 1988 -- 35 years of research and experiments. These recordings are a continuation of Sub Rosa's earlier releases, namely: Liège à Paris (a piece composed thanks to Luciano Berio and premiered at the grand opening of the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, in 1977), the 8 Études Paraboliques box set (over 220 minutes of music realised in Cologne, 1972, at the WDR's studios -- the last étude featuring Stockhausen's participation) and 4 Parabolic Mixes, (four takes on the work by Henri Pousseur himself, Robert Hampson, Philip Jeck and Markus Popp). The two pieces featured on Musique Mixte (voice, pianos, various electroacoustic devices) are magnum opuses in Pousseur's body of work, though they are seldom heard -- "Jeu de Miroirs de Votre Faust" has been unavailable for a long time, while "Crosses of Crossed Colors" is released here for the first time ever. "Already for 'Couleurs croisées,' my initial idea was to add an amplified voice to the orchestra, a voice that could stand up to it and would clarify and explain the meaning of the piece, in the form of a black Baptist minister-style preach. So, besides the voice ('black,' if possible), we have: five pianos, whose assembled parts re-use almost all the harmonic-rhythmic contents of the orchestral piece." --Henri Pousseur

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Artist:	POUSSEUR, HENRI
Title:	Acousmatrix -- History of Electronic Music IV
Label:	BVHAAST (NETHERLANDS)
Format:	CD
Price:	$16.00
Catalog #:	BVHAAST 9010