First time I saw this piece performed, was on BBC tv in 1982 by the Percussion de Strasbourg. It really blew me away. If only they could find the original film.
@LDGuy It's not half tempo, but it is maybe around 112 or so. It's the tempo that made sense at the time, both for the ensemble and the acoustics. I've done the piece more recently at faster tempi. You gain a few things, you loose others. :)
Thank you for the info you put here. I actually conducted Équivalences at the same concert, and we did Barraqué's Chant Après Chant on the second half. It was intense but very satisfying program.
A student of Messiaens and Milhauds at the Conservatoire, Guézec (1934-1971) later studied briefly with Boulez. Like any good French composer of his generation, Guézec sought à créer des œuvres de contrastes de couleurs, de contrastes dans les matériaux sonores, but, if he was the post-Boulez composer suggested by Stravinsky, he had thoroughly absorbed and transcended the influences of Varèse, Boulez, and the textures in Xenakis music when he came to write Architectures colorés.
I have heard some striking scores by new French composers: [Jean-Pierre] Guézecs Architectures colorés [1964], Eloys Équivalences [1963], and Gilbert Amys double-orchestra Antiphonies [1963]. There is a new French school, and a good one, judging by levels of skill. Boulez is the father figure, naturally. -Igor Stravinsky, interview, The New York Review of Books, May 12, 1966
I was blown away by the mere sound of this piece... I've never heard anything like this before. It sounds as if manipulating the marimba (to make the special sound effects/quarter tones) was quite a project. Great results, congratulations!
I prepared a piano at Umass (where I used to teach) and wrote down the resulting pitches and colors. I then tried to reproduce them as much as possible using a 5 octave marimba, a quarter-tone extension, put some small objects on the bars to reproduce the tones of the bolts and rubber on the piano strings, and added some other "pitched" instruments to complete the missing sounds.
