Valentin Clastrier - Heresie

Hérésie claims to be inspired by the heresy of the Cathars, the sect from southwest France also sometimes known as Albigensians, who were bloodily suppressed in the 13th century by the official Catholic authorities. Clastrier claims that their heresy appeared at about the same time as the forerunner of the hurdy-gurdy. Clastrier believes that the hurdy-gurdy, with its archaic and modern features (especially his own electro-acoustic version) is itself an heretical instrument.




These two reissued CDs (Michel Godard - Le Bûcher Des Silences / Valentin Clastrier - Heresie) mix elements of early music with what I have, in previous reviews for GMR, called "eurofolk" - see for example this review of BUB, or this one of Troissoeur.

In other words, the musicians play both traditional and current instruments, mix sounds that would be more at home in or just after the Renaissance with folk, jazz and rock material, as well more exotic influences, and take advantage of contemporary electronic techniques to produce a sound that ends up greater than the sum of its parts.

The presiding genius of the two CDs is Valentin Clastrier, France's premier exponent of the hurdy-gurdy: he plays both the classic version of the instrument and also his own invention, the "electro-acoustic" hurdy-gurdy. The first recording was issued under his own name, while the second is attributed to a group called Le Bûcher Des Silences, which is also the title of the CD. However, the two CDs feature essentially the same musicians, who are based mostly in France but come from several countries. In addition to Clastrier himself, who plays his hurdy-gurdies and also taps the woodblock on both CDs, the band includes Michel Godard on tuba and serpent, Jean-Louis Matinier on accordion, Michaël Riessler on clarinets and sopranino saxophone and Gérard Siracusa on percussion. In addition, Carlo Rizzo plays tambourine and something called a polytimbral tambourine, which he apparently invented, on Le Bûcher Des Silences, while Louis Sclavis doubles up with Riessler on clarinets and soprano sax on Hérésie.

Hérésie claims to be inspired by the heresy of the Cathars, the sect from southwest France also sometimes known as Albigensians, who were bloodily suppressed in the 13th century by the official Catholic authorities. Clastrier claims that their heresy appeared at about the same time as the forerunner of the hurdy-gurdy (which, translating from its French name "vielle à roue," the English-language section of the booklet calls a "wheel vielle", though "wheeled fiddle" would be a better translation). Clastrier believes that the hurdy-gurdy, with its archaic and modern features (especially his own electro-acoustic version) is itself an heretical instrument. In a note included in the booklet, a certain Anne Brenon argues that heresy, contrary to popular belief, is not straying, error or deviation from the correct path but rather choosing freely one's own path. This is certainly what the musicians assembled here have done.

It should be noted that this recording appears to have been supported financially by the government of the Aude département of France as part of the Cathar Country Development Program. Indeed, Clastrier seems to have a flair for sponsorship (probably essential when recording music that is without doubt a minority taste), because the second CD attracted the support of the French Fund for Musical Creation and the Museum of Musical Instruments at Montluçon in central France.

Le Bûcher Des Silences is entirely instrumental, apart from some weird voice-generated sounds occasionally thrown into the mix; Hérésie has vocals by Clastrier on a few of the pieces, which he performs at times in a hoarse and dramatic voice that reminded me of Clarence "Frogman" Henry, if any readers still remember the Frogman. Thus the third track is actually a Cathar prayer entitled "Endura," sung in this strange voice in Occitan French, which is a language related to Provençal. On track 6, which is not very subtly entitled "Catharsis", his voice ranges up into tenor register at times. Incidentally, the words Cathar and catharsis do indeed derive from precisely the same Greek word and refer to purification. The remaining vocals are found on the 8th cut, where we are back to the froglike voice, and on track 12, which is sung in a normal tenor.

Apart from these intermittent vocals, there is little difference between the sound of the music on the two CDs, and there is even a thematic overlap inasmuch as one of the instrumentals on Hérésie is entitled "Le Bûcher." Depending on the context, the French word "bûcher, " which comes from "bûche" meaning a log of wood, can just denote a woodshed or a woodpile, but it also has the more sinister meaning of the place where people are burnt at the stake -- which is of course what happened to many thousands of Cathars, although they were also massacred in lots of other grisly ways. I suspect that the title of the second album means something like "the pyre of silences" or, with a nod to Tom Wolfe, perhaps we could call it "The Bonfire Of The Silences." Despite the supposed reference of Hérésie to the extirpation of Catharism, the music itself has no obvious relation to this subject beyond some limited elements in the small number of vocal items.

Words are important to these musicians, even when their performances are instrumental. Exponents of experimental eurofolk seem to have a weakness for puns and wordplay, and the Bûcher album has pieces among its 11 cuts called "Anonymuse," "O'Clast" (which is presumably missing an icon, but neatly invokes Clastrier's name), "New Délit" (pronounced like the capital of India but "délit" means a misdemeanour in French) and "Onanie," which I can only assume has some connection with onanism or masturbation, as well as other French puns too complicated to explain here. On the other hand, the titles of the 14 items on Hérésie are less jocular and relate to the Cathars and their persecution.

Valentin Clastrier is a leading light in this special kind of contemporary music that fuses ancient and avant-garde sounds. One auction Web site that I found offering these CDs for sale calls it "ethno-folk," although the subtle meaning of this pleonastic term rather escapes me, since it would seem to signify little more than "people's people's music." Both discs contain a series of atmospheric pieces, mixing a wide variety of timbres and time signatures and including elements from traditional French music, from jazz, from central European dance tunes, from Middle Eastern music and from both early and ultra-modern music. Sometimes a tune flies away in mysterious and ultra-modern spirals, sometimes a piece swings like bebop. To add to the originality of the sound, it is, of course, always surprising to hear this kind of exotic and unpredictable music played on such "lower class" instruments as the hurdy-gurdy and accordion. I also detected the unacknowledged presence of a vibraphone on the piece entitled Onanie.

Whatever you may think of the resulting sound, which will not be to everyone's taste, there is no denying the imagination, innovativeness and sheer virtuosity of the musicians involved. A quick websearch revealed that Michaël Riessler is German, has played jazz, classical and experimental music and is said to have worked with such diverse people as the Arditti Quartet, Sarah Vaughan, John Cage and David Byrne. Carlo Rizzo, who is Italian, invented, as has already been noted, a new kind of tambourine, the particularity of which is that tunes may be played on it. He too has worked in jazz, contemporary and traditional music. Gérard Siracusa is a Tunisian-born French musician associated with the contemporary and experimental music scene, particularly in France.

Michel Godard, who is also French, appears to have achieved the almost impossible by establishing himself as a virtuoso of the tuba (with occasional switches to the early-music serpent) in the fields of jazz, improvised and classical music. He has worked with a wide range of symphony, chamber and jazz orchestras and one of his closer collaborators is the selfsame clarinettist and saxophonist Louis Sclavis, also French, who plays on Hérésie and whose work has been mainly in the jazz field – among other names he has worked with Anthony Braxton and Cecil Taylor. Jean-Louis Matinier is from Bourges, in central France where traditional music, especially dance music, is still very much alive. Matinier began playing the accordion when he was young and went to study at the local conservatoire. Lamenting the lack of accordions in the classical, jazz or rock worlds (perhaps he has not heard the Band or Richard Thompson, to name but two rock aficionados of this instrument), he has devoted himself to introducing an accordion style that is both traditional and contemporary, which he uses very effectively on these two recordings. .

Last but not least, there is Valentin Clastrier himself, who, according to a Web site review of a musical and visual spectacle with which he was involved, has as his goal to go in search of the contemporary using ancient arts. He began his musical career as a guitarist, accompanying among others the famous Belgian-born singer-songwriter Jacques Brel. He discovered the hurdy-gurdy in 1970, but it was only in 1982 that the public discovered "brutally and with stupefaction," as the review puts it, a hurdy-gurdy player unlike any other. In 1987, with the instrument-maker Denis Siorat, he developed the prototype of an alto electro-acoustic hurdy-gurdy with 27 strings instead of 6, thus multiplying by tenfold its historical possibilities and relaunching it on the world as an avant-garde and mutating instrument. He then had to seek out musicians with whom he could use his new invention and gradually put together the circle of musicians responsible for these two CDs.

After reading all of the above, perhaps you still have no clear idea what the music sounds like. I can only say that if you imagine something as strange as the bewildering cocktail that I have attempted to describe, you will be just about prepared to cope with the music itself, but no doubt you will still find it more bizarre than you expected.

Boringly, I have to finish this review with my standard question: who would buy this CD, apart from the friends and relations of the musicians? More important, who would actually listen to it with pleasure and not merely buy it to gratify the members of the band? It is not dance music (or at least only at rare moments), it is not background music (far too intrusive for that) and although it might work as a conversation piece, I suspect that the conversation would be a short one. In the last analysis, it really is music for people who want to have their consciousness invaded by extreme sounds that defy description and categorization. If you are one of the adventurous people that this description fits, then this music may well be for you. Otherwise, maybe you had better stay clear of it.

And however ultra-modern it may be, the band does not have a Web site.

Music:
1. Comme dans un train pour une étoile (Clastrier, arr. Riessler) (6'42)
2. El Castel (after Bernard de Ventadorn, arr. Clastrier) (3'49)
3. Endura (3'35)
4. Barbacana (2'33)
5. Hérésie I (4'32)
6. Catharsis (5'01)
7. Sonnerie glorieuse des armées du pape (Clastrier, arr. Godard) (2'00)
8. Notes de sang (3'36)
9. Desordre dans le desordre (3'36)
10. Hérésie II (Sclavis) (3'24)
11. Vert (Clastrier, arr. Riessler) (3'33)
12. Sine sole nihil (7'26)
13. Le Bûcher (Clastrier, arr. Sclavis/Clastrier) (6'58)
14. Fin' amors de flamenca (4'22)

Musicians:
Valentin Clastrier - hurdy-gurdy, voice, woodblock
Michael Riessler - sopranino, bass and contrabass clarinets, sopranino saxophone
Louis Sclavis - clarinet, bass clarinet, soprano saxophone
Michel Godard - tuba, serpent
Jean-Louis Matinier - accordion
Gérard Siracusa - drums, percussion