When minimalist music based on sustained notes is properly conceived and genuinely inspired, one of its features is that it can plunge the listener into another state of being, into a kind of reverie in which, paradoxically, he or she hears more acutely and perceives the slightest and subtlest nuance. For L'Ile ré-sonante, Eliane Radigue drew her inspiration from an image: an island in the waters of a lake that reflect her face. It is both a “real” image and an optical illusion. The sounds relate to the shallows—the lake water—and the heights—the island that rises up. The composer stresses the transparency that basically produced this work and provides us with another source of inspiration: the particular moment in classical music in which the ear no longer hears the previous notes, but has not yet heard the ones that are to follow. It is a fleeting moment opening up onto a “Not yet”, here a moment that is considerably prolonged. But nothing—no explanation, no meaning—is imposed on the listener. Indeed, everything calls on him to listen to the resonance of his own inner world.

A sound is born from silence and slowly swells from the deep bass, while a little later a treble emerges, playing its part in a whole range of oscillations. In shimmering sound, this treble, which seems to live and to ripple, opens up in the swelling movements. The key to the mystery of this electronic sound, brought literally to life, lies in gradually adding other frequencies to the initial treble, and this slowly gives shape to a notion of timbre, until one suddenly has the impression of hearing, far off in the distance, a sort of lullaby, a human melody shifting from one peak of sound to another ...

After the swelling sounds have died away, a hint of a singing voice, presumably a woman's, becomes ever more precise. The superimposition of the bass frequencies then leads to the sounds of a church organ. Made up of a tangle of cycles, the mass of sound moves inexorably forward, until (is it real or is it an illusion?) the tempo seems to pick up speed and the human voice re-emerges and appears to answer itself in a regular intertwining of translucent echoes. The rapid and slow effects are, in fact, but relative matters in this music of sustained notes, for they combine with immobility in the deceptive play of interacting sound waves.

Long hypnotic moments of great meditative calm follow, with continuous rolling bass and sparkling trebles sometimes enhanced by a mysterious halo of sound, while the swelling slowly dies down into a lullaby. (Daniel Caux)

Eliane Radigue (FR), studied electroacoustic music techniques at the Studio d'essai at the RTF, under the direction of Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry (1957-58). In 1967-68 she was assistant to Henry at the Studio Apsome. Her music (its source an Arp synthesizer and medium recording tape) attracted considerable attention for its sensitive, dappled purity. Becoming a Tibetan Buddhist in 1975, Radigue stopped composing for a time. When she took up her career again in 1979, she continued to work with the Arp synthesizer which has become her signature. She composed Triptych for the Ballet Théâtre de Nancy, Adnos II & Adnos III, and began the large-scale cycle of works based on the life of the Tibetan master, Milarepa.