The Night the Walls Moved

Beaubourg and Boulez show off a bold new concert hall

Beyond the fire-eater, the buskers and the tent circus on the cobblestone plaza of Paris' skeletal-modern Pompidou arts center, there is what looks like a subway entrance marked IRCAM. It leads down, four levels below, to the world's newest, most sophisticated center for musical experiment and composition, officially titled Institut de Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique/Musique. IRCAM is a hushed place that fairly radiates energy and cerebration. Here the ordinateur, as the French call a computer, reigns. In one lab, a group is seeking its aid in constructing a new, futuristic flute. In another, a composer is using it to produce a sound heard so far only in his own head.

Music came late in the plans for the Pompidou, better known as the Beaubourg for the Paris locale where it looms. But when the French government decided in 1972 to enter the field of music research, it moved boldly to dominate it. In the U.S. there are a number of centers for computer music, with Stanford the dominant one. In Europe, Germany has been a focus for innovation ever since the postwar years, when Darmstadt became an explosive forum for young composers. IRCAM clearly means to be the new Darmstadt: it has the facilities provided by a huge 59.2 million franc allocation, and in Pierre Boulez, 53, it has the catalyst to at tract the top talent.

Boulez is a formidable force in modern music as composer, conductor and theorist. After two decades spent largely in Germany and the U.S., he has returned to France as virtually sole programmer of his country's musical future. Says Composer Karl Heinz Stockhausen: "IRCAM is the only place in the world where there is free enterprise for the development of new music. Pierre Boulez is the most lucid and brilliant of directors."

The various operations at IRCAM have started up over the past four years. There are always several composers working with computer scientists on expanding the horizons of sound. An ensemble of musicians who play conventional instruments is now complete. The final step was taken this month when Espace de Projection, the hall for public concerts, was opened with the works of two young composers. There were earnest speeches about exploring the limits of limitlessness, some exhilarating sounds as well The as menacing booms from the void, "You but it was the hall that stole the show.

It almost refused to perform at all; five minutes before the start the power failed briefly. Boulez himself introduced his Espace, which seats only about 400. The ceiling can be raised or lowered drastically. But the most riveting feature is the walls, which consist entirely of accoustical panels grouped in blocks of three. A whole wall can be flat, or any triad of panels can jut out, changing the sound. In fact they can all move at once. This phenomenon clearly had more impact than Boulez intended. The room seemed to sway, and a wail like a sea storm turned the Espace briefly into a heaving ship. Annoyed, Boulez turned quickly to four more practical demonstrations. By altering the configuration of the panels, the same passage of music could be made to sound dry (with no reverberance) or resonant, bright or grave (accenting the deep tones). The differences were dramatic, and the audience was enthralled. Boulez realized he had a star on his hands. "It reminds me," he said, "of a little boy who is taken to a wonderful play that happened to be presented on a revolving stage. At the end he did not want to leave. His mother thought he had enjoyed the show, but he said, 'Oh please, just one more turn of the stage.' "

Composers Balz Truempy and York Holler, whose works followed, were in roughly the position of the actors in that children's play. Truempy's Wellen-spiele made the first use ever of a digital sound processor. This is a new device that modifies sound as it is performed by an ensemble by the use of mikes onstage. Much of the composition was too bland to show off the new processor, but its climax was a long, breaking roll of waves accompanied by pulsing gongs. The Holler Arcus used the more conventional method of taping the electronic part in advance. It is an impressive piece: 20 minutes of tricky synchronization in which phantasmagoric sounds from the tape conduct intense, surreal dialogue with the instrumental ensemble.

Hoeller spent two months at IRCAM working with scientists on Arcus. Says he: "You are a different composer after you have absorbed all this." Some observers think that IRCAM may sponsor too much adventure. Says Composer Otto Luening of the Columbia" Princeton Electronic Music Center: "It is fine to explore outer space in sound. But I ask, what will you bring back?"

For Boulez, to stand still is to fall back. "The people at IRCAM should be like children who always want to be fed. That is the relation I want between the musicians and the scientists." In addition to directing his staff of 53 and planning IRCAM'S future, he is working toward a May concert of his own. He regards his six years as music director of the New York Philharmonic as "a big parenthesis in my life," but adds, "I learned the practicalities of administration there. Without that experience I might not have been offered this job. I think God writes straight with curved lines." Or does not move all his panels at once. -

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