An Interview with Annette Vande Gorne, Part One

Annette Vande Gorne (see Figure 1), a renowned composer of electroacoustic music, explores different energetic and kinesthetic archetypes in her works. Having accidentally discovered acousmatic music in France in 1970, she became convinced by the revolutionary character of an art which permits her to use nature and physical worlds, among other sources of inspiration, as models for an abstract and expressive musical language. Her contributions include pioneering research on space—a fifth musical parameter, the other four parameters being pitch, duration, intensity, and timbre—and the relationship between words and meaning, as well as between words and vocal material. Of equal importance has been her exploration of gesture in acousmatic music, which is founded on a keen awareness of the fundamental link between the musician and the machine, a concept that carries as much weight in composition as in interpretation. Through her teaching, Vande Gorne (born in 1946 in Charleroi, Belgium) has conveyed these notions, alongside the French electroacoustic aesthetic, to several generations of composers in Europe and beyond. She also offers diverse opportunities for composers, interpreters, and researchers at Musiques & Recherches, the institute for electroacoustic music she founded in Ohain, Belgium, in 1982 (see Figure 2). This interview was conducted in French on 18 July 2005 at Musiques & Recherches. It was subsequently translated, edited, and updated through additional interviews with the composer at Musiques & Recherches between 2005 and 2011. [Editor’s note: This interview is published in two parts, with the second part appearing in the next issue (Volume 36, Number 2).]