Kouros Et Korê / Innominé by Leo Küpper

Both were recorded at Studio de Recherches et de Structuration électroniques auditives, Bruxelles, 1974-1979.  Realized with the aid of the Ministère de la Communauté française, Direction générale des Arts et de Lettres. 

‘Kouros et Korê’ (1979) is constructed from the extraordinary performances of dancer Jeannette Inchauste and actor Jean-Claude Frison, whose ability to produce a wide array of microscopic vocal sounds is used by Küpper to build a delicate, complex architecture of intertwined phonemes. The latter include such sub-categories as (in French):  allophones, phonatomes, logatomes and phonetic micro-sounds. The close-up miking goes inside the sub-atomic structure of sound, while the studio montage organizes the phonetic sounds into a fascinating voicescape. No surprise sound poet Henri Chopin found the piece beautiful when Küpper played it to him in the 1980s (from a 2009 interview). Retrospectively, the works of Anna Homler, David Moss or Phil Minton seem to be inspired by these experiments.

‘Innominé’ (1974) uses the ‘Ordinateur Musical’ to process the utterances of a group of students. At the beginning, the program reacts with semi-aleatoric electronic sounds to the inchoate, indistinct ushed vocals. Then the seductive voice of Allessandra Mihail expresses the interrogations of an isolated individual. A fascinating electronic passage of dignified computer interjections follows at 6:00. Vocals return on 17:00, when all the students proposes new words and phonetic sounds according to their mother tongue (Chinese, Arab, Danish, French) during a collective performance using the interactive computer’s electronic treatment. In the end, the beauty of ‘Innominé’ impresses more than the technology used, which is indicative of its musical accomplishment.