Éliane was incredibly focused. She had a rare way of knowing who she was and what she wanted. She and I became friends around 1970, bonding during our shared first encounters with the Buchla 100 modular analog instrument that Mort Subotnick so kindly left behind for our use when he moved to California and was able to commission a new one for himself.
From Éliane I learned to listen for the subtlest gradations and changes in individual sounds, and for the relationships among them. We made what at that point we called “slow change music.” That was before I began hearing the term “minimalism” applied to music, brought over from visual art. This music of slow change heightened our sensitivity. As our auditory cognition adapted to what was unchanging, or evolving very slowly over time, our ears became able to perceive increasingly subtle auditory variations and to experience the beauty that was in them. This quite-alternative approach to music was, for me, the perfect antidote to the then dominant post-Webernite serial style of composition—which virtually prohibited continuity and repetition—and to the closedness and elitism that “uptown” musical subculture seemed to foster. In contrast, Éliane’s music flowed. There was no prohibition against sensuality, and the slow changes within its continuity were meant to be savored.
Although I went on to do some slowly changing soundscapes of my own, it was the hands-on, moment-to-moment control over sound that was a huge factor for both Éliane and me. Analog modular synths were improvisational, so we could work with our sound the way a painter does with a painting, or a writer does with a poem. We could work directly on the final composition itself, instead of only on a symbolic representation of it on paper.
After our time together in the Buchla studio, I went on to digital computers and other kinds of music. But Éliane kept her focus to an amazing degree, opening up hidden galaxies of sound to explore within her sonic microcosm. She also continued to evolve, of course, eventually introducing live human performers into that same rarified sonic landscape that had previously been solely under the moment-to-moment control of her fingers, touching the controls of her ARP synthesizer.
For Éliane, it was the sound that was important, not how it related to musical fashion or history or whatever others were doing. She was a purist, absolutely true to herself and her art. Her music can be played loud, like the roar of a plane taking off—the kind of sound she strived for when she was young. Or it can be listened to quietly, as the most intimate of musics. Those who haven’t heard her work should. To say that sounds change slowly in her music oversimplifies the subjective experience that only your ears can provide.
Éliane and I kept minimally in touch after she moved from New York back to Europe. We still felt a beautiful warmth and affection connecting us whenever we were able to get together over the years. I am among the many who will miss her. I am also still grateful for what I learned from her and experienced sonically along with her all those many years ago when we were both exploring that Buchla 100 together.
