LAST COPIES, already out of print: Préludes à la vie (Preludes to Life) combines pieces from 1972 to 1991 in two electronic operas. In Le prisonnier du son (The Prisoner of Sound) a single human voice tells the story of a lone character trapped in a world of manipulated sounds. The title piece is a series of technical exercises in the possibilities of musique concrète.
This second album on empreintes DIGITALes, as with the first one, consists of very different works which are quite separated in time: Le prisonnier du son (The Prisoner of Sound) from 1972, my first “melodrama” and my first long musical work, and the 24 préludes à la vie (24 Preludes To Life), 1990, a more formal and technical work which, I hope, is also poetic. Despite everything, these two musique concrète pieces are connected, like the two sides of a vinyl album, and their final moments form an echo.
- The final words of 24 préludes à la vie sound in effect like a response to the question posed by Le prisonnier du son: “The Wall of Sound, when will we overcome it?,” the prisoner asks of the future to which the voice of Cécile Sacco responds at the end of the 24 préludes à la vie, by an affirmation of the present: “We are alive.” - Michel Chion, Paris (France) [i-95]
"Le prisonnier du son", a concrète melodrama in two parts, was commissioned by the Groupe de recherches musicales, and written, realized and performed by the composer in the studios of the INA-GRM in Paris.
"24 préludes à la vie", a work in two books, was commissioned by Ministère de la culture and the INA-GRM, and realized in the latter's studios.
