Le Balcon

Augustin Muller
C'est toi qui donnes le son (2024)
for voice, instrumental ensemble and electronics

C'est toi qui donnes le son (You give the sound) is a carte blanche offered by the Musée du Quai Branly to Le Balcon, with the idea of designing a project in a venue hosting the museum's collections.

Augustin Muller, who is responsible for the musical electronics of Le Balcon's projects, devised a system of instrumentalists and speakers placed around the audience on the mezzanine housing the Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière collection. To complete this system, twelve pieces from the museum's precious collection of instruments were made available, offering the audience a kind of dialogue between the past and the present. 

Over several months, Augustin Muller and Gaspard Kiejman ‘interviewed’ the Balcon's musicians to learn about their relationship with their instruments and with sound in general. Their voices were integrated into excerpts from the museum's sound documentary collections.

Augustin Muller : 
"The starting point for our reflection on the project, and a moment of great discovery for us, was the collection of instruments, which led us to question their relationship to the memory of human cultures, and the relationship that we, as musicians, can establish with them. These instruments carry within them a whole world of musical expression, but also a particular history and meaning; they bear witness to historical circumstances that may be distant in time and space. They carry hidden meanings that may be linked to ritual or magical functions, but they are also instruments that are played, with which luthiers and musicians have been able to forge an intimate bond. Observing them allows us to establish a different relationship with them and leads us to question our relationship with our own instruments, shedding light on an intimate connection with our era and our identity."

Sung texts:
Hildegarde de Bingen (1098–1179) Cum erubuerint infelices O quam mirabilis est
Audio excerpts:
Archives of Gilbert Rouget, Hugo Zemp, Madeleine Leclair, Gérard Nougarol, Martine Journet, Eric de Dampierre, and Margaret Buckner.
Interviews conducted with Le Balcon performers in 2024.
Personal archives of Sara Muller.

Duration : 1h
Premiere : 28 September 2024 at the Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac