Jean-Claude Éloy

Jean-Claude Éloy (born 15 June 1938) is a French composer of instrumental, vocal and electroacoustic music.

Musical training

Jean-Claude Éloy was born in Mont-Saint-Aignan near Rouen.

Style and technique

Through most of his career, Asian (especially Hindu) music and aesthetics have had a strong influence on Éloy's music.^[1] In some earlier works, Fibonacci numbers played a part—in a very obvious way in Équivalences, where fermatas are assigned values of ½, 1, 1½, 2½, 4, and 6½ seconds,^[2] and disguised by arbitrary arithmetic transformations in the rhythms of the withdrawn composition Macles.^[3]

Works (selection)

• Trois pièces pour piano (1960) (13')
• Stèle pour Omar Khayyam (1960) for soprano, piano, harp, and percussion (20')
• Cinque poèmes de Saîgyo (1960) for soprano and piano (9')
• Chants pour une ombre (1961) for soprano and eight instrumentalists (18')
• Études I et II for flute (1962), violoncello, and harp (21')
• Étude III (1962), for orchestra (20')
• Équivalences (1963), for 18 instrumentalists (10')
• Faisceaux-Diffractions (1970), for 28 instrumentalists (25')
• Kâmakalâ (1971), for three orchestral groups, five choral groups, with three conductors (ca. 32' )
• Shânti (Paix, 1972–73), for electronic and concrete sounds (1h45', WDR Electronic Music Studio, Cologne)
• Fluctuante-Immuable (1977), for large orchestra (20')
• Gaku-no-Michi ("Les Voies de la musique", also translated for "La Voie des sons" (1977–78), film without images for electronic and concrete sounds (3h50', NHK Electronic Music Studio, Tokyo
• Yo-In (Réverbérations, 1980), théâtre sonore for an imaginary ritual, with an actor-percussionist, electroacoustic music, and lights (3h40' in 4 acts, Instituut voor Sonologie, Utrecht)
• Étude IV (1979), electroacoustic music, UPIC – computer with graphic interface - (20')
• A l'Approche du Feu Méditant (1983), for 27 instrumentalists of a Japanese gagaku orchestra, with two choirs of Buddhist monks from the Shingon and Tendai sects, and six percussionists (2h30')
• Anâhata (Vibration primordiale, ou d’origine, 1984–86), for two solo Buddhist-monk singers, three gagaku-orchestra instrumentalists, percussion, electroacoustic music, and lights (3h45')
• Butsumyôe and Sappho Hikètis ("La cérémonie du repentir", "Sappho implorante", 1989), for two female voices (extended vocal techniques), electroacoustic music (1h00')
• Erkos ("Chant, Prière", 1990–91), for a soloist playing Satsuma-Biwa and a vocalist (techniques from "Shômyo"), with electroacoustic music (1h05', WDR Electronic Music Studio, Cologne)
• Several American Women (1996), for two women's voices (sung and spoken techniques), with electroacoustic music
• … kono yo no hoka … (" … ce monde au-delà …", 1996), solo voice (extended vocal techniques, exceeding those of "Shômyô", 30’)
• Galaxies (1996), electroacoustic music, with solo voice (1h15’)

Notes

References

• Burton, Anthony. 2002. "Éloy, Jean-Claude". In The Oxford Companion to Music, edited by Alison Latham. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-866212-2.
• Chauvin, Marie-José (1971). "Entretien avec Jean-Claude Eloy". Courrier musical de France 36 (October–December).
• Deloche, Aimée-Catherine (1985). "Eloy, le temps revisité". Silences 1:159–67.
• Éloy, Jean-Claude (1970). "Improvisation: Refuge, utopia or necessity?" The World of Music/Die Welt der Musik/Le monde de la musique 12, no. 3:6–21. [In English, German and French.]
• Éloy, Jean-Claude (1969). "Musiques d'Orient, notre univers familier". In La musique dans la vie 2 ("Rayonnement des cultures africaines, regards sur les civilisations asiatiques, quelques problèmes du monde actuel"), 183-215. Paris: ORTF.
• Éloy, Jean-Claude (1995). "L'autre versant des sons: Vers de nouvelles frontières des territoires de la musique? " In La musique et le monde (Internationale de l'imaginaire, nouvelle serie 4), edited by Françoise Gründ, 193–231. Arles: Actes Sud. ISBN 2-7427-0280-6
• Felder, John (1981). "The Structural Function of Wind Role Transformations in Equivalences by J. C. Eloy." Ex Tempore: A Journal of Compositional and Theoretical Research in Music 1, no. 1:18-35
• Green, Tona (1991). "Interview with Jean-Claude Éloy". Computer Music Journal 15, no. 1 (Spring): 14–19.
• Kramer, Jonathan. 1973. "The Fibonacci Series in Twentieth-Century Music". Journal of Music Theory 17, no. 1 (Spring): 110–48.
• Lowman, Edward A. 1971. "An Example of Fibonacci Numbers Used to Generate Rhythmic Values in Modern Music". Fibonacci Quarterly 9, no. 4:423–26.
• Mâche, François-Bernard (1963). "Une oeuvre nouvelle de Messiaen". Mercure de France 1202 (December), 828–31. Reprinted in François-Bernard Mâche, Un demi-siècle de musique...et toujours contemporaine, Collection sémiotique et philosophie de la musique (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2000), 28–31. [discusses Jean-Claude Éloy's Équivalences as well as Messiaen's Sept haïkaï]
• Rockwell, John (1983). "Music: Jean-Claude Eloy". The New York Times (19 November).
• Stoianova, Ivanka (1993). "Mythen der Weiblichkeit in der achtziger und neunziger Jahren: Stockhausen, Eloy", Wiederaneignung und Neubestimmung, der Fall ‘Postmoderne’ in der Musik (Studien zur Wertungsforschung), ed. Otto Kolleritsch, 87–116. Vienna: Universal Edition.
• Stoianova, Ivanka (1997). "Jean-Claude Éloy: à la recherche du feu méditant: portrait du compositeur". In Music and Sciences, ed. G.F. Arlandi, 196–227. Bochum.
• Stoianova, Ivanka (2001). "Eloy, Jean-Claude". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan Publishers.
• Stoianova, Ivanka (2003). "Produktion und Reproduktion in der elektronischen Musik am Beispiel von Jean-Claude Eloy". In Musikalische Produktion und Interpretation: Zur historischen Unaufhebbarkeit einer ästhetischen Konstellation (Studien zur Wertungsforschung 43), ed. Otto Kolleritsch, 163–75. Vienna: Universal Edition.
• Weid, Jean-Noël von der (1997). "La cosmogonie sonore de Jean-Claude Éloy". Dissonanz, no.51:30–32

External links

• listed as Jean-Claude Eloy at the Internet Movie Database
• Jean-Claude Eloy information's site
• Books revues, interviews, recordings, scores, memories
• hors territoires (books and Cds)
• musical examples: http://www.eloyjeanclaude.com/eloyjeanclaude.org/index.html
• List of texts of Jean-Claude Eloy: http://www.eloyjeanclaude.com/EloyListeTextes.html