Francis Dhomont
Espace/Escape
by Francis Dhomont
from his Cycle de l’errance
This acousmatic triptych recounts the Journey and some of its symbolic projections (escape, love, flight, space, the limit of disappearance, the loss of oneself) while merging natural images with pure abstractions; metaphors of a metaphor, since in music any tale is inherently a transposition.
Espace/Escape (1989)
“As soon as we become immobile, we are elsewhere, we dream in a vast world, immensity is the movement of immobile man. Immensity is one of the dynamic aspects of peaceful daydreaming.” – Bachelard, The Poetics of Space
Space.
Open, intimate, confused spaces. Broken spaces, whirling
Indecisive edges of the space
Space-refuge, enclosed, maternal, space of reminiscence and
of associations.
Tumult or murmur in the space of a thousand reflections
Escape.
The flight always engenders a vertigo of multiple elsewheres.
Here..There…
- Francis Dhomont: more information
Francis Dhomont biography:
Francis Dhomont is an Associate Composer of the Canadian Music Centre, and both a founding and honorary member of the Canadian Electroacoustic Community. Since 1978, composer Francis Dhomont has divided his time between France and Québec, where he has taught at the Université de Montréal from 1980 to 1996. He studied under Ginette Waldmeier, Charles Koechlin and Nadia Boulanger. In the late 40s,in Paris (France), he intuitively discovered with magnetic wire what Schaeffer would later call "musique concrète" and consequently conducted solitary experiments with the musical possibilities of sound recording. Later, leaving behind instrumental writing, he dedicated himself exclusively to electroacoustic composition. An ardent proponent of acousmatics, his work (since 1963) is comprised exclusively of works for tape bearing witness to his continued interest in morphological interplay and ambiguities between sound and the images it may create.
The Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec recently awarded Dhomont a prestigious career grant. In 1999, he was awarded five first prizes for four of his recent works at international competition in Brazil, Spain, Italy, Hungary and Czech Republic. In 1997, as the winner of the Canada Council for the Arts' Lynch-Staunton Prize, he was also supported by the DAAD for a residence in Berlin (Germany). He now focuses on composition and theory.
