Comment expliquez-vous l’origine de votre créativité

Musicoliste

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• Publié par: Thuwyer
• Nombre de lectures: 33
• Langue: English

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About musical creation

How would you explain the origin of your creativity?

Creativity essentially depends on the way one apprehends reality. The more its picture, the truth, satisfies

us, the less we feel the need for developing and deepening the experience of reality (passing through the

observation and the criticism). The subjective representation we have from reality is to a large extent

conditional upon culture, language, manners, habits and believes. All of these allow the assimilation of

norms essential to a functional relationship with our species and our environment.

But creativity

nourishes itself from an ability of assimilation that oversteps the functional frame, relative and reducing,

of any culture. My creativity originates from the relativity with which I consider the functional

representations characterized with the language, the culture, the History, etc. That sense allows me to

better reach what is common and absolute in the mankind. However, I am less interested in the shape

taken by music than in the meaning this shape gives. The more things appear to us in a relative way, the

better is our ability to assimilate and subsume them to reveal an obvious meaning. And to me, music is an

art of the obvious sense. I have been capable of assimilating the aesthetics of classical music, electro-

acoustic music, choral music, jazz, and more, simply by listening to it, by experiencing it. Behind all these

styles of music there are common feelings, common needs, an absolute language, and I can compose both

classical and electronic music due to this perception.

But what is this absolute language you are referring to?

The absolute language is the obviousness. Thus, there is a Socratic part in my search of aesthetics;

however, I believe in the virtues of obviousness only in the field of subjectivity.

Beauty is the name one

gives to obviousness when its representation is aesthetic. One may associate all kind of canons,

conventions, reasoning, interpretations, techniques, often linked to the History, an age or a fashion, to an

aesthetic representation but a work of art holds the formidable power of surpassing these contingencies to

absolutely deliver its beauty. When I saw for the first time

The Birth of Venus

from the painter Sandro

Boticelli, I was around 7 or 8, I ignored the origin of it, its meaning, and nevertheless, I was experiencing

beauty. I could not explain it, but I knew it. I knew there were things beyond the language taught at

school.

How do you associate this obviousness to complexity? A nursery rhyme has an obvious

character, but it remains childish.

One often associates obviousness and simplicity. But in most of the cases, obviousness solicits our

intuition, our ability to organize complexity. As soon as one perceives the solution of a problem as a

coherent whole, then the solution is obvious. In fact, for an artist, the obviousness is the ability of

organizing with perfection what escapes to the attention of most of us, either because we are disconcerted

with what appears highly complex, either because we are prisoners of a representation « conventioned »

with the culture and the customs. It is this ability that is named originality. A solution is more obvious as it

breaks a preconception or a habit. In

The Act Of Creation

(1964), Arthur Koestler claims that « the more a

discovery is original, the more it appears simple afterwards. The creative act does not create from

nothing, it dis-cover, mixes, combines, and synthesizes some facts, ideas, faculties, techniques that were

already existing. » I will not say that a nursery rhyme is obvious, because its shape is inherent to the

function it occupies in the social interaction qualified as infantile, and it is transmitted by the accepted

custom. Nothing of what a culture carries on is a priori obvious.

Do you contemplate learning musical notation, to improve your techniques of composi-

tions or to discover new ones?

Today computer music ensures a technically efficient interface between the musical notation and its

transliteration into codes as precise, and sometimes more intuitive to create with. Musical notation is

basically meant to retrieve an object of creation, and I do not feel the necessity of mastering this

particular mean of retrieval to create what I can create via the sequencer tool.

The function of any

codification applied to arts is to save the result of a creative impulse. Besides, a rich palette of digital

effects exists; sometimes these effects are extremely sophisticated as they simultaneously modify a

played sound. They introduce a new type of virtuosity on some sounds, which is impossible to restitute

through usual method of notations. Anyway, if I experience some limitations related to my lack of

knowledge of musical notation in my work of creation, I will not hesitate learning more about it. Time is

very precious. I am aware that the abstract knowledge of harmony, modulation and tonality, would allow

me creating more rapidly music. But I have the chance to create music rapidly enough by exploiting my

intuition and the immediate possibility of listening what I imagine from the software I use. Thus, I

compose very efficiently.

Don't you think you deprive yourself of a useful grammar, because any language has its

own grammar?

Numerous music professionals sees the acquisition of the musical knowledge (harmony, composition, etc)

as a grammar allowing to better structure a work,

as the grammar of a language allows expressing

correctly oneself. Music, as a vector of art that nothing substantiates in Nature, is not a language

comparable to other ones. And the analogy with a grammar is very abusive. Some composers have

conceived several methods of composition based on strict and abstract rules. By attempting to conciliate

music with something that surpasses human emotions and aspires to an abstract purity, they « compose »

by applying algorithms. Because they hope that by giving a musical shape to the mathematics of

numbers, what they dangerously call the purity of truth can be reached. Thus, they confuse the true

character of math with the musical aesthetics, which is situated in obviousness and not in some abstract

truth. The grammar is a set of rules codifying the language; it can be an end per se for those choosing to

play music, the professional musicians. Creation goes well beyond the codes, which are a possible

consequence of its manifestation, as technical elements of a representation (the making of a color, the

musical notation, the material used, the software used to design, etc).

To measure the distance between the grammar of the language and the way an artist formulates his

aesthetic coherence, let consider the case of a concerto. His creation obeys to some strict rules derived

from the sonata. These rules define the choice of the key, of the movements and their imbrications. They

have been proposed to reinforce the feeling of coherence when listening to such music and they also

enable the comparison between several composers. As they codify an expression, they also define a kind

of musical grammar. However, the analogy ends here, because this grammar does not allow introducing

notions of syntax and grammaticalness. The artistic content of a work obeys a grammar created by the

artist. From this point of view, one may propose a better analogy by considering a sport such as the

soccer (or any ball sports). Indeed, there are many ways to play ball, but by enacting rules on its

manipulation and by defining a frame within which one may apply them, one allows the public to better

appreciate the play and develop an interest increased by the possibility of drawing comparisons between

the teams (and support the most appreciated one, for reasons independent of the aesthetics). Besides, to

ensure the players an equal possibility of expression, there is a referee to promote the rules. Does this

mean we should assert soccer’s grammar exists? We all know shooting in a ball, similarly, we all perceive

the coherence of a chord. One may codify the way of shooting in a ball or of establishing chords. But

should we associate to this index, more or less descriptive although very useful, a grammatical value that

would be essential to know? That would be the case if the soccer was a virtual game as it becomes useful

in music as soon as a composer writes his score without having the possibility of physiologically testing its

contents. In fact, what we name a grammar is a codification intended to virtually play or create. But the

correct aspect of an expression (provided that it would be in accordance with some canons or rules) must

be dissociated from the obvious aspect of it. The art tends to obviousness, perfection, but does not comply

with correctness. That is the reason why, despite of the few 6000 human languages practiced on this

planet, we only understand those taught to us, whereas we are all able to seize the obviousness of a

musical work whatever its origin is. With regard to the rules of construction, unlike the commonplace, they

facilitate the expression or the creation. In art, the better a frame is defined, the easier it can be filled.

The rules indirectly help generating a coherence, But in the artistic domain, most of the time, the artist

defines the rules and the aesthetic coherence inherent in it. The originality of the rules the artist produces

is the reflection of his creativity.

So you believe talking about grammar to write or describe music would be too reducing?

I think that before using some terms one needs to understand how they apply and to which extent they

may apply. Today, in cognitive sciences, the classical ideas we have on the acquisition of the language’s

grammar are totally called into question. One considers that statistical analysis mechanisms would be

largely responsible for the language acquisition. Psycholinguists can model the formation of linguistic rules

from a simple connectionist network, reproducing a neuronal network, which reveals learning processes

only based on exploiting the language statistical regularities. I am profoundly convinced that acquiring a

musical aesthetic sense goes through the (assimilative) listening of music. This is what seem to be both

the most natural and the most efficient to generate a meaning that would be itself regulated by a

grammar, in the case of a language, or subjected to obviousness in art. In music, the obviousness we

perceive during a musical listening is actually linked to our perceptive capabilities, so that our brain can

recognize to the frequencies it treats mathematical ratios triggering a pleasant aesthetic feeling. But, as a

consequence of it, the ratios we perceive are « humanized » and thus rarely as precise as the absolute

reading of frequencies would suggest. That is why I am prone to favor an artistic development based on

intuition and perception.

Do you have the feeling your music evolves?

Yes, it constantly does. In 2001, I needed to artistically express a large part of what I had lived. The

music I composed was descriptive of a state or thoughts that were overwhelming. It was a mean to

express myself on topics for which I had meditated for a long time, and offer some genuine musical

paintings. One has to live enough to inventory emotions and memories inside an album, and I think the

experience of life will drive me to create music this way again. Today my music becomes more and more

abstract. Especially the classical music, although I always compose by having a clear mental

representation of my theme. The more my objective is precise, the faster I reach it.

Electronic music gets

more abstract too. This allows me to better focus on the creative process that is relieved of emotions

usually involved in its orientation. I am trying to get rid of the emotional path of inspiration to approach

new aesthetic expressions. Of course, I do not deny the way of composing I elected in 2001, and I may

adopt it again at any time (I only have to listen to an album again to create a new perfectly matching

piece), but I hate repetition and I prefer exploring possibilities which are not yet familiar to me. I have

composed many musical pieces that were abandoned when

Allegories of Light

was shaping up in 2003,

because they did not correspond anymore to what I was looking for. I have a bushing creativity that

prompts me to incessantly look for new ramifications to the paths I follow. However, sometimes I have the

feeling that someone has already followed some of these paths… I am more and more convinced that the

existence by itself of these paths does not depend on me, but on something else, which is related to our

human nature. I cannot understand it, but it happens to me to uncover the spoors left by some past

composers when I compose myself, without even looking for them. I think there is a profound unity in the

creative approach of all human beings, and I have often experienced and noticed the presence of such

unity in my works.

How do you abstract yourself from reality? By composing a more abstract music, do you

become more indifferent to the outside world?

It is clear that a state of creation is a particular state requiring some preparation. One must imagine new

objectives, get enough motivation for them, have an enormous self-confidence (this might be called

certitude), and abstract oneself from the everyday happenings to succeed in it. I can easily abstract

myself from the often tough vicissitudes of life. In fact, music is my universe of freedom, I can reconstruct

perfection according to my own criteria and I have the immense chance to do it with a lot of easiness. To

me, the highest comfort is not material, nor human; it stands on the easiness and the spontaneity with

which I create. I may appear selfish if I say that, no matter what, the possibility of creating one’s own

world of representation overrules the immixture of the real world or distort the latter. But that way, an

artist preserves his freedom of creation. It is very moving to explore a creation that no one else has the

power to extract from nothingness. It is an intense feeling of discovery and freedom. So many men have

dragged their kind into devastating utopias because they had the power to convince or oblige a large part

of humanity in the name of ideals and beliefs. The artist has the opportunity to pacifically bequeath to his

kind some representations lasting much longer than empires and so much useful to the fulfillment of

epigones. The creator is a conqueror of the unknown, not a conqueror of the power on nature. The man

and the artist are two distinct beings, and sometimes a necessary state to the first becomes a handicap

almost destructive to the latter. I always make a distinction between my artistic capabilities, which are

what they are, and my other human capabilities, which have nothing in common in most of the cases.

Thus, even though I aspire to perfection as a composer, I am not perfect as a man.

Your creations are very different from each other, how do you switch an expression with

another and why?

I consider a composer must learn how to express his creativity under different forms to rapidly evolve and

get a better control over his own work. In addition, I like all the musical styles because, as I previously

said, I am sensitive to the language of obviousness and to me, there are as many languages of

obviousness as musical styles and they all deserve to be considered.

Once a work is accomplished, it is

actually very difficult to modify the approach. By regularly passing from an electronic to a classical

expression I renew more efficiently my creativity. One beneficial consequence of this practice is the

maintenance of my ability to forget, of my ability to not turn round on what is accomplished, in order to

not always decline the same thing under poorly interesting variants. Music must remain a discovery and I

never play twice the same thing because repetition is boring and counterproductive.

In addition, to me, music forms a whole and whatever are the instruments or the sounds used to create it,

the composer remains subject to the same needs and impetus. We should especially get rid of all these

preconceptions, maintained by the radios and the TV, that keep us from considering classical music as

something that is not elitist or specialized. It is because these media are interested with or decorate their

contents with a certain type of music that the public is prompted to accept as a reference this music only.

Unfortunately, the picture of music we have is too largely reliant on the choice that a handful of individuals

impose to the public through the media they control. Yet, I observe that the public, as a non-specialist, is

nevertheless very enthusiastic when attending classical concerts, provided that it makes the effort of

breaking all these surrounding preconceptions (very often under some assistance). I must repeat music is

one, and those confessing appreciating just one musical style, or one single artist, do not make the effort

of understanding that music is not the natural instrument of sectarism, of nationalism, of a cause, of an

identity, etc.

Many people and the youngest ones especially, use music as an instrument of identity, for

the same reasons as those personalizing the sounding of their portable phone. Music is an art, not the

vector of a message, promotional or meant to serve an identity or an opinion. This may explain why I am

so skeptical about a song, which is less intended to promote the music than to deliver a musically

decorated textual or visual message. And I may hope that my modest contribution may help people

grasping the artistic essence of music and open up even more to other kind of music expressions.

Music is

a discovery as long as one makes the effort to remain free of searching for it, because to me, music must

remain a support of the individual freedom.

But an artist must often take a stand or express what he feels to create. If a composer

creates by need or by impetus, he must also reckon on ideas and opinions.

I do not question the fact that an artist instills a meaning to his inspiration or his productions; however,

one shall not mistake opinion for expression. Expression is artistic, opinion is human; it has a very relative

importance with regard to the existence and the evolution of an expression. We all need to relate art to its

history, to a frame of reference, to the life, the thoughts and the ideas of artists, but is the will to

rationalize something whose expression is both absolutely subjective and abstract realistic? Myself, I do

not create from opinions but themes ; notions more vast including the projections, the colors or the

intentions deriving from a need, which consists in discovering how I can express myself in a given

imaginary environment.

I am not insensitive to the world or things, but the opinion I have about it does

not condition my productions. I do not try to promote messages, to support causes, to defend an

expression to the detriment of another one if it is truly artistic. I rather try my best to nourish the

privileged link existing between my imagination and the desire to serve it. What I call impetus corresponds

to the movement of the will exhorting me to build up such link.

All what we may say

a posteriori

about a

work is just the reflection of that desire, which takes the glares that reason gives to it.

But one does not

create with reason, nor commitment or rightfulness. Creation cares nothing about all what may justify or

prevent its shapes.

When manifesting itself, creation dominates the reason and takes the paths that

nothing would be able to justify or predict

a priori

. A « committed » artist is in fact a committed being; his

artist status shall not overlap with what he is committing for. We have attempted to logically justify all

what exists and becomes for more than a century (essentially marked with the development of sciences

and the scientific or logical spirit), including any artistic productions, by some logical, justificatory,

utilitarian, materialist, humanitarian or moral reasonings. While the artistic activity and productions were

essentially justified through religions or faith prior to this period. The way we consider arts is necessarily

modified, as we intend to relate it to rational causes that can be identified and understood to better grasp

it, explain it, and likely also to package it and insert it as a product in the consumer society. As an artist

experiencing almost daily the creative process, I cannot agree with such drifting (either due to some

religious canons or some needs for rationalizing), indeed well characteristic of human nature, but totally

overlooking the reality of creation. The quest for a meaning cannot only be based on a belief or the truth

(that reason always fabricates on believes). This position can be compared to the theorization that a

scientist would apply to the manifestation of a phenomenon by only considering the causes that would suit

the best to his own expectations. Objectivity is a notion rarely used, but if we used it more often, we

would admit that most of what we consider as rationally or morally grounded is the fact of believes only.

Painting seems to influence your work and the way you represent music to yourself.

Could you precise the nature of the bindings you establish between painting, or some

other forms of art, and the musical composition?

You have put your finger on a very important aspect of my inspiration, the very sources of my artistic will

and my creativity. The avant-gardes of the early past century play a large role in the thought I have about

the musical creation. Paul Klee and Vassili Kandinsky were able to capture harmonic rhythms and

chromatic contrasts to produce abstract paintings from which obviousness delivered from its objective

elements could emanate. They have shown, with Mondrian, Malevitch and many others, that a

representation of the beauty may extricate from all the expectations generated from the knowledge of the

real by using abstract figures, imagined by the mankind, such as a triangle, a line, a square, a rectangle, a

circle, etc. Kandinsky is probably the one that has carried this concern to the most sophisticated level, by

using shapes (no more geometric) with contours totally subjected to the search of the sole harmony. As

music (here, I exclude the songs, ersatz of poor quality) is a particularly abstract art, the painters of that

period with the composer Arnold Schönberg were dazzled by the relation between abstract representation

and musicality. I am even more susceptible to this approach that art is what aims at obviousness in the

representation. Consequently painting exerts a strong influence on me. Today, music is associated with

the picture in motion (cinema, video report, and video clip) or the human movement (dance). The music

of a picture in motion has decorative values, « atmospheric » and totally interchangeable. Generally, I do

not pay much attention to it because it does not add to the meaning of a picture; it decorates the picture

like a wallpaper buffers the border between domestic objects and the materiality of the walls, it buffers a

container with its content, nothing more. On the other hand, the binding between music and dance

(classical or contemporary), is sometimes so intimate that one may live a truly aesthetic experience

during a representation.

I am especially fascinated with the links relating dance, in what makes it

abstract, with music. Somehow, it is astonishing.

However, in spite of all the bindings one may establish between music and some other forms of art, one

must keep in mind that music is both the most subjective and the most abstract art. It should be noted

that this is a paradox revealing the nature itself of any creative activity, in that one often associates

abstract and objective. It is the most subjective art because it diffuses the greatest originality and

nuances of feelings and human emotions, whereas it leaves to anyone the possibility to associate his own

representation (pictures, memories, projections) and sensitivity. It is also the most abstract because no

peculiar interpretation can unequivocally account for the nature or the meaning of any musical object, and

consequently, any explanation is pointless and arbitrary even though one cannot prevent oneself to look

for it. Although a musical object has an obvious and exact character that renders objective its existence,

we are unable to maintain that the words used to interpret his shape are appropriate or that our

interpretation is meaningful in itself. Thus, the link uniting music and representation of reality is

unfathomable but we need to generate such link to better objectively apprehend the existence of the

musical object. This is a paradox common to arts and sciences, and it is behind any creative approach.

That paradox is the most difficult to resolve in music. In painting, a square is a square; in sculpture, a

face is a face; in poetry, the meaning of a word is precise; in literature or cinema, a story, even fabulous,

sounds more concrete as words and everyday or dreamed situations support its development. The artist

must create from shapes and pre-existing meanings, from permanent entities, whose existence depends

on reality and culture. This is why all these artistic forms often have in common the search of beauty or of

verisimilitude. On the other hand, with music, one cannot represent the shapes we are the most used to,

but rather notions, and even if we claimed it, their perception would be too subjective to win unanimous

support. Music, as an abstract representation,

may not suggest beauty, but only perfection, especially

because it is a mean of representing notions particularly difficult to formulate in the usual language such

as will, love, compassion, joy, good, pain, etc. One may not appreciate the musical aesthetics of a work

but acknowledge its absolutely perfect character. These characteristics give to music a special and

unclassifiable position in the arts. The links between painting and music are essentially related to the

abstract structure of the elemental entities they organize.

In general, a color does not evoke anything in

particular as long as it is isolated; similarly to a note of music that does not awaken curiosity in itself.

Thus, abstract art, which consists in formulating a harmony from a composition of abstract entities, may

become common to both painting and music. Just as the human movement that has no particular meaning

in itself, becomes comparable to the note of music as soon as it organizes itself on the time axis. The

bindings between music and dance are mainly due to this parallelism.

I know that any meaning given to my own works, as intending to explain their genesis and what they say

to me, is absolutely subjective. And I do not think the music lover needs to know my thoughts to

appreciate the forms my music takes, he is free to formulate his own emotion. Music maintains tight

bindings with the notion of freedom; I do consider music as an abstract representation of it in all cases

(music, but not songs because they pertain to another category). This makes music a major art, enigmatic

and fascinating.

The representation of abstract notions is certainly not unique to music. Notions of temp-

tation, faith, love, charity or freedom have been the source of numerous works, in pain-

ting, sculpture and literature.

Yes, this is what we call allegories. One may quote the Dante’s

Divine Comedy

; the notion of temptation

represented by several painters and used in the famous

Temptation of Saint Antony

by Gustave Flaubert

after the work of Saint Athanasius;

Freedom guiding the people

by

Eugène Delacroix; The Rodin’s

Thinker

;

etc. All these works and many more have a suggestive power deriving from the use of an image to

represent something that does not have objectively any. But it is important to understand that such

allegoric or metaphoric representation uses elements referring to objects with unambiguous meaning. As I

previously said, these elements can be words, faces, movements or precise forms; the representation of

abstract notions necessitates the use of very concrete objects. A composer can attribute to his music an

evocative title, but its appropriateness with music would only be prehensible if it was based upon

allegories. Music does not allow associating unambiguously a specific image to one of its specific form. I

have myself created a work entitled

Allegories of Light

, based on the idea that the representation of light

by sounds may be possible, but the allegories thus depicted have only an obvious sense to me; I am not

sure anyone can uncover the images of light I have seen. In fact, if one aimed at associating to each piece

of work a unique word, one would realize that each individual would fabricate a dictionary resembling to

the expression of his own freedom, and that words would never have the same definitions for everybody.

The impossibility to unambiguously codify the meaning of music gives to this art a dimension that

surpasses the codes themselves and refers to the intimate use of freedom. What claims a composer is

sometimes intriguing but certainly not necessary to the specific existence of a work.

Once a work is

created, it does not belong to anyone.

Do you pay attention to the music of other composers and is that inspiring your artistic

expression?

Before composing music, I was just listening to it; today I assimilate it, I recompose it. I do not listen to

music since many years; I have neither the time nor the will for it. Besides, each time it happens that I

listen to a work, I cannot prevent myself from rebuilding it in my own way, in my head. The forms of

music that are less subjected to this reconstruction are most of the time classical. But in general, the

contemporary music I hear seem to me unfinished, it contains some interesting elements but organizing

themselves into a dubious, clumsy and noisy coherence. However, I love all kind of music due to my

abilities of assimilation and understanding. There are always few times to appreciate because of their

bright constructions. I am not inspired with what I hear even though I probably get influenced with it. My

music nourishes itself with so many influences and styles (classical music, sacred music, world music,

electronic music, jazz, new age, rock, hip hop, etc) that I feel difficult to draw up an exhaustive list of my

model composers. To some extent, it is rather the respect I have for some composers that prompts me to

resemble them through my approach and my style.

However, you are not prone to composing songs, why that?

A song has always been very annoying to me; I have never been able to listen to it without hopping up

and down with impatience. Music is never as beautiful as when it neglects the words, and, if it does not,

when it dissolves their meanings. The human voice stimulates the listening and modifies the perception

because we are more sensitive to its frequencies, but isn’t it more emotional when the voice turns into an

instrument and absorbs the meaning of words? A song offers, in a combo specific to its nature, an

eclecticism rarely releasing an artistic value. It is a mediocre mix of aesthetic entities that reveal many

more qualities when they are separated than when they are assembled. A word, by arbitrarily

appropriating the notes of music to express his meaning, detracts music to a level of simple support.

Besides, a word may eventually put up with their presence to be more tinged, but the emotional and

evocative color of notes played with an instrument is far superior to the color of the words a singer strives

to make intelligible. Thus music must content itself with providing accompaniment for words, by covering

them with too gaudy and ill-assorted touches, in a patchwork depreciating its aesthetic potential and

making it servant of a master that misuses its services. A master using gold thread while he does not

know weaving. But, if the masters of yesteryear tried to use the voice as a spit curl, a honey of soul,

capable of caressing the sensitivity and making it trembling, they are now less and less concerned about

it. Since the late nineties, one observes an evanescence of the melodic song, for the benefit of an

expression more and more mediocre, answering to the criteria of a consuming and affirmative

functionality, which grazes more than it stimulates. A song is a consumer good having the appearance of

music and the imperfections of a text adjusted to the poetic illusion.

The past century has been

characterized with its spectacular development, and our century will probably show its failure as its

substance will progressively become mainly commercial and « mediatic ». So the future songs are meant

to drive the attention of the youngest generations for a determined period of time (generations that are

the most concerned about affirmation, recognition and fashions).

How do you see the future or the evolution of music?

We live an era where anything becomes musical. Music (in fact, songs in most of the cases) becomes a

simple commercial object whose design obeys to consuming and standardized criteria. Just about like

these cars resembling each other because they aim at a same functionality and follow the same criteria to

comply with it. But the object of art is not in a functional formatting intended to answer to some

consuming expectations. By assimilating music with a mass consumer good, one despoils it from its value

and leads it astray from its mission. Today, turning to the past becomes a common reflex whenever one

desires listening to quality music. In addition, the quality of today’s musical works is particularly mediocre,

which generates an explosion in the demand and the expectations of music lovers. Fortunately, there are

some artists doing exceptional progress, in almost all the musical styles. However, there are still a lot of

efforts to make in order to integrate the immense electronic sound possibilities and go beyond the current

styles, which are making a too minimalist use of it by not sufficiently integrating the effects of signal

processing to the musical expression. I also regret the lack of classical composers capable of imparting a

new impetus to the classical music. The cinema industry attracts many composers in a style much more

lucrative for everybody but far from flattering the good taste. Some great composers have been able to

draw their inspiration from it to create some masterpieces, but how many of them are talented enough to

do it? Medias are interested in soloists, in conductors, in the voice of a lyrical singer, valued through the

repertoire. One knows many more names of interprets than alive contemporary composers, even

associations and official institutions are more supportive of interpretation than creation. Moreover the

interpret and the artist skills are confused because one admits, since the nineteenth century, that a player

instrument or a singer develops artistic talents comparable, or at least parallel, to those composing music.

This confusion of role likely originates from the fact that classical composers of the past centuries were

also highly skilled musicians. Today I am not sure the freedom taken by a musician in the technical use of

his ability to play (then, one says to interpret) a piece of music justifies the confusion made between

technician and creator. It should also be noted that a conductor directing the interpretation of an

orchestral work exhibits striking similarities with an electronic music composer mixing his tracks according

to an intuitive and subjective approach. But should we recognize the person directing the mixing, either by

directly controlling the expression of each musician, or by controlling the fabrication of sounds and effects

in his studio, as an artist or as a technician of sounds or of a work.

In sciences, the term scientific evokes the qualities of a scientist or a researcher by opposition to a

technician or an engineer, even though the latter manifest himself inventive talents demonstrating a great

imagination. Similarly, the reader of a literary work or a poem interprets the meaning of what he is

reading but does not take the title of artist. I think the term of artist has become too ambiguous by

covering fields of competences too vast, which have often nothing in common with the artistic creation.

However, we have never had so many artists in our societies.

This is exact; as a consequence, we have never been so many to claim a status of artist, although I note

the lack of audaciousness, itself related to the lack of originality. We should stop being obsessed with

money, career, rewards and Medias, and show we deserve our so hackneyed title of artist. Artists are

supposed to be unique phenomena, rare and prominent. If I look for some of them today, I only get a

ridiculous number of artists capable of marking my perception of the world. The unique characteristic of

any artist derives from his ability to associate to reality a set of meanings overstepping our condition, to

subsume what appears scattered, distinct and often uninteresting, to introduce in this world colors we do

not see without his help, to restore the ability for us to see these colors. Colors that are more and more

important to perceive in a world subject to the incessant assault of dispersion (news, advertisement,

sport, games, TV, etc).

In the past, we have never had the possibility of using our freedom to that extent,

when learning, being informed or entertained. But we suffer from a lack of structures and models. One

remarkable feature of an artist is that he knows how to obtain a form of coherence and a meaning that

allow people to live a better life. He knows how to stimulate a life without resorting to notions of interest

or profit; he knows how to bring enthusiasm. Our societies need and will need more and more artists as

the complexity and the freedom of action and thinking will engage people to build themselves their «

humanitude ».

Do you consider yourself as one of these rare artists you are referring to?

I try resembling them as much as I can, and I work a lot to succeed in it. I also spend a lot of time

thinking about what I do and the value of my creations (other than pecuniary). I know I have a huge

potential and some quasi-extraordinary gifts (not just in music), but it belongs to me to develop them,

protected from values not compatible with their fulfillment. Considering that the most productive artists

are also those for which no result is definitive, I hope to never get this feeling of definitive. Because the

day I will think: your work is achieved, you can rest now (on your success), I will not deserve to be

considered as an artist anymore. My motto is « walk to not fall ». I am very tough to myself, to the quality

of what I do; useless to precise I am also particularly critical and lucid with regard to the production of

anyone else and my appreciations are rarely indulgent. In all what I am doing of creative, including during

my researcher career, I always aimed at excellence, perfection. I have never been able to stand the

exploitation of my results by people imbued with their ego, manipulator, careerist, and only focused on

plagiarizing other’s ideas. I have quitted research due to this intolerable situation. Besides, in Europe, too

many decision-maker scientists feel harmed by the success and the creativity of juniors having the ability

to produce independently of their « helps ». To me, independency, freedom and creativity are the values

of any progress. So I have displaced my creative potential to music creation, and I do not regret it as I

can finally express freely myself without looking down in front of those developing as a unique talent the

one consisting to exploit and appropriate, by a breach of trust or a misuse of power, other’s talents.

How do you explain the attitude of some people towards yourself?

Myself and many others… In my professional relations, one has always tried to press me into a mould, to

oblige me to follow a discipline to respect the state of things, to file me according to a functional category;

whereas I could see how slanted and paralyzed this state was. One has interpreted my autonomy and

creativity as marks of arrogance, independence and rejection of the others, mainly because those seeing

the fruits of it were even more aware of their mediocrity or uselessness, and rather than holding out their

hands to follow my creative progress, they wanted me to stop distinguishing from them, hoping that I will

join them to not suffer the existence of something that escaped to their control and power. People have

never done the effort of understanding me whenever they were unable to follow my progress and, furious

about their frustrations, they hid behind suspicion, or any prerogative derived from their power and their

insincerity. In France and some other European countries, people are particularly trained at quashing the

creativity to appropriate all what may serve their career-oriented interests without any dignity and respect

for the human person. This recurring difficulty in freely expressing my creativity in Europe within a

professional frame inspires me this metaphor on the condition of people endowed with creativity. We

never look at the source of light allowing to see, too attentive we are to what the light captures in its field;

it is only the day it turns off we dare looking up to this source with a reproach assorted with respect and

astonishment. But what to say about such respect; is it sincere or circumstanced to the loss of what the

light revealed? I prefer not to know, but I am sure that nothing is as misunderstood and disgraced as an

artist or a creator (alive).

Can the music play a useful function in our societies?

We live in a society where the notion of usefulness is fundamentally materialistic. The value of things is

measured according to their material usefulness (objectively justified from economical considerations) and

we have the greatest difficulties in evaluating the value of an object or a benefit which is not material.

Nevertheless, an infinitesimal part of what surrounds us is directly useful to our material existence. Most

of the things and beings surrounding us have no direct influence on the comfort and the development of

our lives. Although negligible for us, their usefulness pertains to a more global functionality, both

ecological and economical. The notion of usefulness is intimately bound to the comfort it provides. Even

though the consumer society originates from the quest of an individual material comfort; it is nonetheless

true that the moral comfort and the psychological one occupy an essential position in our search of well-

being. A city exhibits an undeniable material usefulness; however as a tourist when we visit it, we turn

away from this usefulness. Affable neighbors have no influence on our material comfort; however they are

socially indispensable, as the people sharing with us spiritual values are. A sport, although useful to the

body and the « advertisement » economy, delivers a type of social usefulness that acts as community

cement. An art, that is qualified as useless, develops itself within a market economy because its

productions drive a non-materialistic support and interest. We need art to acquire a form of spiritual

comfort, to get the meaning of freedom, which is decomposed by a society taken it away or diverted it

from us. Whatever the type of material condition, music insinuates itself within the same interstices to

provide to anyone the right to feel free, the right to access a universe that no one owns. The art and

especially the music allow anyone to temporarily perform or experience a role, idealized, seen as perfect,

and which is ruled out by the society in the use it makes from us. Thus, listening to music is, to a certain

extent, experiencing the art of composing, identifying oneself with it, because music requires our

participation to reveal its full meaning. And the more one appreciates it, the more one measures how one

should have or one could have created it, as a loved being. Music enables anyone to freely experience the

creation, and, with its help, the spirit acquires novel capabilities and a will much stronger from the use of

that freedom. Music can make us better, as loves does, provided that it does not serve the purpose of a

functional materialism.