Le Balcon

Interview with Othman Louati and Augustin Muller

Your adaptation of Dracula began in 2015. What was the genesis of the project?

Augustin Muller: The Balcon team first met with Pierre Henry at his home to understand what he envisioned for an orchestral version of Dracula. His piece fascinated us, resembling the music of an imaginary film, composed by Wagner, accompanying a horde of demented characters, surrounded by a multitude of strange sounds…

Othman Louati's Dracula is composed of large orchestral passages without any vocal gestures, other than a kind of scream. This aesthetic of the large German orchestra without voices gives it a cinematic feel.

A. M. Pierre Henry was therefore thinking of a large orchestra, in a very large hall. He wanted Wagner's music to be played as is by the orchestra, and for the electronic sounds to be diffused over it.

That's not what you did.

A. M. Indeed. Besides the question of the number of performers and the size of the performance venue—the Théâtre de l'Athénée—there was one major reason: for us, it wasn't a question of a collision between two musics, that of Pierre Henry and that of Wagner. For us, there was only one music, that of Pierre Henry, from beginning to end. This idea guided our work. Dracula works not with the medium of the orchestra, but with that of the recorded orchestra. We wanted to remain faithful to this principle in our orchestration.

O. L. The beauty of this piece lies in the filtering technique, the telescoping of the two bands, which creates a unity that takes us beyond the Wagnerian world.

How is this manifested in this adaptation?

O. L. We tried to make the boundary between the two sound worlds increasingly porous as the piece progresses. In the fifth "episode," to use Pierre Henry's terminology, the relationship is reversed: the orchestra "plays" the sounds assembled by Pierre Henry, and Wagner is broadcast through the speakers.

A. M. In the fourth episode, there is a passage evoking a winter atmosphere. We can hear the crackling of a fire, as well as a Wagnerian passage played on the clarinet. Listening to the mix of the original version of Dracula, we realize that the sound of the fire is much more present than that of the instruments; this is a very strong choice Pierre Henry made, and we tried to convey it. We tried to recapture this malleable and free aspect of the relationship between the orchestra and the sounds. Wagner becomes like a memory, the acoustic relationship transmitting a strong nostalgia.

How did you choose the ensemble?

A. M. With Maxime Pascal, we decided to link Dracula to Edgar Varèse's Déserts, because Pierre Henry was at the console during the premiere in 1954. Furthermore, there are excerpts from Déserts in the play. So we started with the ensemble from Déserts, which was a good fit for Le Balcon. Pierre Henry disagreed but didn't stop us from completing the project.

O. L. I requested the addition of a double bass to create a light bass. I needed it in particular for the prelude to Act I of Die Walküre. I also used the presence of the grand piano as a kind of "wild card," a sort of romantic microcosm within the Wagnerian fever.

A. M. On Die Walküre, we cheated a little, adding a string tremolo recorded by You Jung Han, concertmaster of Le Balcon. It's a transformed violin track that creates a layered effect in this particular passage. It's our only addition. For the rest, we used all of Pierre Henry's sounds and a number of Wagner recordings, to preserve the string textures and play on the balance between the tape and the orchestra.

O. L. Hearing these Wagner recordings in the distance creates a poetic 10-scansion. It opens up the space. In his note of intent, Pierre Henry emphasizes the idea of fog. For my part, I have the impression of a chiaroscuro linked to his use of filtering: what acoustic ray can be made to pass through the magnetic fog of sounds? We hear rain, fire, white noise, acoustic sounds piercing this fog. And acoustics also serve to create atmospheres in the primary sense, floating particles. It's a poetic approach to electronics. We hear either prominent noises in the foreground or a soundscape.

Why did you use a "loudspeaker orchestra"?

A. M. Pierre Henry always talked about this setup, which runs counter to our approach to sound at Le Balcon, but which we wanted to keep for Dracula. It's a set of speakers, creating mismatched stereophony. His idea is to create pairs and place them in different locations. We first positioned the instrumentalists, inspired by Déserts, then we placed the speakers between them. We didn't neglect the visual aspect, the colors, the layout, because it was very important to Pierre Henry. In a way, he was a sound artist.

Interview by Gaspard Kiejman