Contenu du sommaire : Voir la musique

Seeing listening. For an iconography of the listenerIn the numerous studies of musical iconography that have been published, the image of the listener has hardly been considered. Even in painting it only makes its appearance very recently. What has encouraged this appearance, admittedly in a time when literary and poetic appreciation of listening was simultaneously developing, are a number of factors such as the influence of romanticism, the practice of chamber music in the home and the idolisation of star performers, including the accompanying caricatures these fads engendered. The realisation of the active participation of the subject aesthetic relations ultimately succeeded in eclipsing the performer in favour of the listener.

Listening to Paul Klee. Are things (also) bodies of violins?In the work of Paul Klee music is very present, whether visually represented or not. The paper interrogates the significance of this presence by examining in a few images the role of the instrument which accompanied the painter throughout his life; the violin. In the form of fragments in many drawings and paintings, the dismembered body of the instrument ultimately reconstitutes a musical body that enables us to reflect on the affinity existing between Klee's musical and painterly gestures.

Sounds and colours. An unfi nished marriageFrom Aristotle to Isaac Newton, from Pythagoras to Walt Disney, from Leonardo da Vinci to Goethe, the world of the vibrations of colours attempts to resonate in concert with the world of the vibrations of sound in the quest for a common wave band. At the beginning of the twentieth century the Russian pianist Alexander Scriabine achieved the first synopsis of his “symphony of colours”, based on the virtues of a “mystical accord” to be achieved in symbiosis with the audience of the musical ritual. Somewhat later, the composer and ornithologist Olivier Messiaen, drawing his inspiration from bird songs, ancient forms and Indo-European rhythms, bases the creation of his musical “stained glass” and his teachings on the principal of a coloured synaesthetic audition. On the basis of his own research and his experience as a conductor, the author seeks to take stock, with data from all over the world, of the quest for this relationship, one that, however, continues to elude scientifi c and metaphysical research.

Musical improvisation and computers Transcribing music in the era of animation The possibilities animating musical transcriptions in multimedia analyses of music are here illustrated by research on improvisation and computers carried out by IRCAM and the Lubat Company. Multimedia animation allows the synchronisation of piano-rolls with sound and the coupling of these transcriptions with videos showing simultaneously what is produced (the music) and the way it is produced (the musician in the act of playing). In more complex systems, such as those of computer based improvisations, the visual animation allow the musician in the very act of improvisation to follow in real time the display of the indicators calculated by the machine (for example harmonic sequences) and therefore enables him to modify his playing accordingly. Is there not something paradoxical in associating the “prescriptive” character of instructions displayed on screen and in real time with the supposedly “unpredictable” character of improvisation?

In Quichua Bolivian societies music is as much intended to be seen as it is to be heard. The multisensorial aspect of musical performance is not just a matter of the juxtaposition of sounds and sights. The analysis of the articulations that Andean peasants construct among sounds, movements and colours reveals an original organisation of musical experience that is as much characterised by its sensory depth as it is by the ways it is linked to other domains of knowledge. The forms of culturally elaborated intersections that occur in the very body of the musician lead to new perceptual configurations.

Mechanically produced music and hindu temple. he controversial history of a visual and sound device This paper recounts the history of the marketing of a musical automaton in south India from its invention by a Madras engineer, its use in Hindu temples to its recent removal from most of the regional religious centres of the region. It reflects on the hybrid character of mechanically produced music and on its relation to other visual and sound devices such as hand operated bells, recordings on CD's and other electronic devices. It shows how the controversy surrounding the automaton crystallised the debate concerning its intrinsic property, that is the ability to make music visible by non-human action. The ambivalent character of the machine becomes the source of controversies and negotiations involving the engineer, the temple priests, the gods, the devotees, religious authorities, the industrial producers and ultimately state ministers.

When music allows us to see The representation of the mountain in the initiation songs of the Itcha (Benin) The paper concerns the repertory of songs associated with the cult of the goddess Boukou Atchoko, an avatar of the great goddess Naa Atchoko, and more particularly the recurrence of the term oké (literally mountain) in the text of the songs. The aim of this paper is to understand the role of sung words in the worship of Boukou Atchoko. Because of certain characteristics of the musical and religious context, the act of enunciation of the word oké “makes us see” a mental image of the mountain and, through a kind of echo, the significant network of associations of the goddess Boukou Atchoko and even beyond of those of the mother goddess Naa Atchoko herself. This short paper is thus a deliberately limited and exploratory essay. It is based on descriptive data obtained in the fi eld of certain rituals, as well as on the analysis of the musical system and on translations of the songs of the initiation rituals.

Radioscopy of the readers The physiological aspect of readingLiterary heroes as well as writers and readers often use the register of illness in order to talk of their interdependence with the world of reading. Why is this use of a medical discourse so powerful and what is really hidden behind this talk of disease? If we take the point of view of readers, and more especially of those great readers who live almost entirely through their relation to books and to books as objects, we see just how important are the references to pathology and to physiology in what they want to tell us. By means of these continual assertions of the central role of the body in the act of reading and through these references to symptoms and infections, great readers are able to demonstrate their elite status.

Numbers and meat. Cows, breeders and inspectorsThis paper concerns what farmers have achieved in the way of animal identification for the purpose of tracability as a way of understanding the relation of farmers and their animals. It is based on an ethnographic study of the site visits made by inspectors employed by state agencies based at the local level. These give rise to drawn out manipulations over forms and other government publications. What is everybody really up to? What is at stake in these interactions mediated by dozens of documents? What relations between farmers and animals are really at issue? In order to present the raw data observed and so as give an account of the difficulties of the administrative work concerned with the identification and subsequent tracing of the animals, the article describes a case history of interaction between inspectors and farmers, the kind of event that usually takes place around the kitchen table. These involve both administrative documents and the farmers own records which were originally intended for the use of the management of the herds. The analysis of such a situation allows us to understand the relation of farmers to their animals. Responsibility but, in a more unexpected way, also by drivers explaining their own skill.