for tapes “Music Promenade” was carried out in two times:

– one period of sound recording, from 1964 to 67

– one period of assembly, from 1966 to 69

« Music Promenade », composed in 1969, has been realized from a certain number of recording I have done on journeys in different European countries. The first purpose of this realization was an acoustic installation based on four independent tape machines unfolding the tapes in loops>. Thus this sound events scattered to the four corners of the hall met one another permanently in an aleatoric  (generated by random means) encounter. The duration of the piece was indefinite. So the issue on CD is an immovable version of a possible stabilized mix version.

Each of the four tapes was about twenty minutes long (each tape has a different duration so that the cycles can never encounter in the same manner). The structure of each tape consists of a succession of short characteristic an dynamic sequences alternating with blurred and slight, sometimes nearly silent sounds. When one characteristic sequence encounters by chance a slight sound, this one colors that one. On the other hand, when an event sequence encounters another one, they perturb each other, for their good or for their evil. Such is life.

When I consider this piece now, I notice that I am still working on the same principles of random variations that create encounters and superimpositions of cycles that combine themselves by alteration. This concept I called « tautology » in the 1960s is still present in my recent compositions.