Jacques DUDON: 'Lumières Audibles.' Fleurs de Lumière (1995); Sumer (1993); Hexagrammes (1989). Jacques Dudon, photosonic instruments, flutabullum, voice, bells, percussion. Mondes Harmoniques, MH1 (TT=57:09). Released in 1996; newly available in the U.S. (via the Electronic Music Foundation, www.cdemusic.org or 888-749-9998).
When Jacques Dudon uses the phrase "audible light," he means it literally. This remarkable recording documents for the first time a type of instrument that, as he rightly puts it, is "neither 'acoustic' nor electronic." In his "photosonic" process, Dudon shines light through a series of semi-transparent, rotating discs that slow and modify the light waves' frequencies; the resulting waveforms are picked up by photoelectric (solar-power) cells connected to standard analog amplifiers.
The key to the rich, complex sounds Dudon produces via this process is the variety of patterns on the discs. Since the early 70s, he has designed more than 500 precisely painted glass discs, each of which modifies light waves in a different way; combinations of these discs, rotating at different speeds, can turn light into almost any type of waveform. If one or more discs are moved by hand while the others rotate mechanically, the slightest motion of the performer's fingers can produce complex timbral changes, while the stable discs fix the waveform at any frequency. (Dudon tends to work with the waves' naturally available overtones, i.e., with intervals in just intonation).
To this listener, the real wonder of Dudon's process is that the photosonic performer is physically modifying sound waves at the source, making this a conceptually perfect real-time performance system. Other "interactive" systems digitize human input and use the resulting data to modify digital sound information. Dudon's system bypasses this entire process, yet gives the performer a sonic palette vastly greater than that found in any other physical instrument; imagine, for example, a Theremin that could produce virtually any sustained sound. The photosonic instrument produces waveform patterns with mechanical precision, yet accepts real-time human control with degrees of responsiveness and flexibility that no mechanical system can yet match.
In the first recording to document a type of instrument so rich with new sonic possibilities, one might expect that the photosonic sounds would be allowed to stand on their own. In fact, purists will be disappointed to find six of the disc's eight tracks incorporate additional sounds produced by acoustic instruments and voice.
Fleurs de Lumière begins with a chanting voice, chiming bells and Balinese bamboo instruments that at first threaten to reduce the photosonic sounds to little more than atmospheric background for a bout of Eastern-inflected meandering. As the piece unfolds and the photosonic sounds take center stage, however, Dudon's music proves admirably free of trendiness and arbitrary stylistic conceits. In fact, Dudon writes, this initial instrumentation reflects the piece's harmonic construction around a mathematically ideal version of the Indonesian slendro scale. (Most of Dudon's disc patterns are based on mathematic structures from fractals to the Fibonacci series; his excellent liner notes include pictures of these discs with annotations in French and English.)
Fleurs de Lumière's second movement, the glorious "Tournesols," is one of the two tracks made exclusively from photosonic sounds. A study in manipulating difference tones, this movement unfolds with a rigorous beauty and overlapping-pulse structure much like those in Saariaho's classic Jardin Secret I. It also eloquently reminds us that, like any system that controls waveforms and how they overlap, a photosonic instrument is capable of generating not only pure, sustained tones but also phase interference patterns that we perceive as sharp 'attacks' and rhythmic figures.
Sumer uses additional sounds both from western percussion instruments and from Dudon's "flutabullum," a system for capturing acoustic flute sounds modified by water. The composer dedicates this complex, engrossing piece to the ancient Sumerians; in a Schwantner-worthy poetic rumination that emerges out of the blue in his otherwise highly technical notes, Dudon reveals that he found his musical inspiration for Sumer in "blurred images of a grand, luminous land" viewed "through the veils of time." Indeed, one primary focus in Sumer appears to be the process of blurring initially clear sounds, both in the flutabullum material and in the transitions from pure tones into thick swells of "desert wind." (This "wind" is produced by fractal-based discs that do a jaw-dropping job of organically simulating true white noise, better than this listener would have believed possible within such a system.)
Hexagrammes is the only track other than "Tournesols" to feature exclusively photosonic sounds. As a non-overdubbed, live recording, this delicate exploration of shifting overtones serves as a pure, and thus uniquely exciting, illustration of the possibilities available for live performance on these instruments.
Dudon's photosonic process takes a primal fantasy of the electronic musician -- to have richly varied, real-time control over waveforms physically at one's fingertips -- and makes it a reality. If a direct appreciation of this process is hampered somewhat here by the presence of additional instruments, the pieces remain musically compelling above and beyond their intellectual appeal. Historically significant as it is, this recording is first and foremost a lush, elegant feast for sensitive ears.