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AGP116 is the second of two devoted to the French theorist, pedagogue, and composer Claude Ballif, who died just four years ago. Ballif's theoretical work centered around what he called 'metatonality'--a scale containing eleven of the twelve notes of the chromatic scale, where the missing note preserves an element of tonality. This sounds a bit like Stefan Wolpe's tone rows having greater or fewer than twelve notes, but that may be only a superficial comparison. Nor can I claim myself to hear the metatonal structure in Ballif's works transcribed for these installments.

This week's installment features works composed between 1953 and 1968, all from a Barclay Inedits RTF LP (995 003). Of the three works, Phrases sur le souffle (1958/1968) comes closest to the dark, mysterious sound of Un coup de dés. It was written originally for voice and piano and then rescored in 1968 for voice and instrumental ensemble.

The installment includes a PDF file with scans of the liner notes of the two LPs transcribed for this installment as well as last week's.

To download AGP116 files, right-click on each of the following links and select SAVE LINK AS.

03 - Phrases sur le souffle [25:41]

04 - Imaginaire IV [20:04]

05 - Airs comprimés, side A [3:49]

06 - Airs comprimés, side B [8:14]

Liner notes from LPs

AGP116 description

FLAC fingerprints