Jean-Christophe Thomas analyzes François Bayle's complete work in 52 recurring features (book augmented with 151 sound examples to download).
Diabolus in musica offers a guided and commented listening experience through François Bayle's catalog. Augmented with 151 sound files (examples), it can be approached in a non-linear way, through the listening or the concept it illustrates. The 52 thematics are characteristic traits or recurrences in the way he creates, conceives or organizes his materials—making his art unique. One of the major contributors to acousmatic music, François Bayle (born 1932 in Tamatave, Madagascar) strives to promote the GRM and its values, as well as pursuing the development of the acousmonium, a multi-speaker apparatus designed for the performative projection of sounds. As far as his music is concerned, he is known for his vast compositional cycles whose style unites articulation and fluidity, color, and energetic creation.
François Bayle studied with Stockhausen and Messiaen. He joined the ORTF Groupe de Musique Concrète in 1960. He later led the group when it became the Groupe de Recherches Musicales in 1966. Most of his compositions are electronic, and his first important work, "Espaces inhabitables" (1967) is suggestive of an imaginary world in which nature is distorted in a dream-like fashion. He later utilized natural and synthetic sounds in his compositions, such as the recorded sounds made in a Lebanese cave. He has stated that his purpose as a composer is to enable the listener to feel the motion and vibration of energy in the universe.
Jean-Christophe Thomas (born 1959), trained at the Paris Conservatory (CNSMP) electroacoustic composition class, is research associate at the Ina-GRM with François Delalande (perceptive analysis in music), in particular in charge of studying approaches in composition. His musicological studies concern acousmatic repertoire.
