This electroacoustic piece was composed in a time of my life where, having left all the institutions, I started to build up a personal studio. It was carried out with precarious means and falls under a concept of poor technology.

It forms also part of a family of portraits, which I developed in the current of the Seventies, portraits of society, of villages, people and places. The portraits of people call upon the techniques of report, while the places are rather suggested than photographed.

Like poems.

From where the idea of an intuitive analysis allowed to musically represent the impression felt in front of a landscape.

For Place des Abbesses, it is rather a question of evoking than to represent. It is a small Place of Paris, located at semi-hill of Montmartre, between the Sacré-Coeur of God and of his Saints, and Pigalle of the liberties and the sex. Pretty place, a little old-fashioned. I had many friends living the district. I crossed there furtive images, popular holidays, ambulant musicians, weddings at the small brick church, philosopher-tramps and of the Old Paris nostalgic people.

It is a bit all this that I wanted to insinuate in this composition where appear naïve poetic clichés, in a musical language devoid of any techno sophistication.

Paris, November 28th, 1997