à propos de ce concert, sur la liste de dicussion "Le Fennec" par Brian Olewnick (all guide music)

My favorite, all around, was probably the AMM/Formanex rendition of several pages from 'Treatise', though it was the subject of some degree of controversy and criticism. The performance was in three sections. The first was about 20 minutes by Formanex (a youthful French quartet) supplemented by theraminist Laurent Daillieu, taking what I later learned was a small fragment of one page of the graphic score and stretching it into a rather icy but, imho, very beautiful drone-filled slab. Next AMM and John White (who has been performing 'Treatise' since 1963, well before it was a completed score). AMM were _extremely_ spartan (wonderfully so) while White, on some kind of sampling device, intruded with all manner of awful-sounding blurts, cheezy synth tones, sheep baa-ing, etc. It was _very_ annoying and I found myself vainly attempting to mentally tune him out. The final 20 or so minutes was with the entire nonet, White still laying waste to the proceedings. Walking around a little disgruntled after the event, I was thinking that Rowe (who appeared to be the motivating force behind the concert's conception) must have known what White would be up to and probably had a reason for his inclusion (a musical one, that it, not just an historical one). When I cornered him a few minutes later, it turned out that indeed there was (that is, if you buy his explanation and don't think it was merely retrofitting; I find it of a piece with other ideas of his and don't have a big problem accepting it though I grant that I can be an easy mark for these sort of things!). He felt that 'Treatise' performances had a tendency to get overly somber and reverential and wanted to inject a "low" element that he thought of as the sonic equivalent to US rags like Weekly World News, to introduce "transgressive" sounds that "simply aren't done" at these types of events. For me, while this past facto explanation might not have made the actual concert any easier or less frustrating to listen to, it did cause me to (try to) mentally re-hear it in this better-understood (?) context. If nothing else, it probably caused me to _think_ more than any other show at the festival.

There were, of course, several brutally bad shows (I attended 22 in their entirety and poked my head into a few from which I swiftly withdrew) but that comes with the territory. All in all it was fine musical fun and great company. I hope to do it again.