Uploaded June 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Sound Letter II, 49 electroacoustic soundscape meditations for random (shuffle) mode playback (1998)
Au Dernier Vivan† Les Biens
1. Accord
2. Appel
3. Arrivée
4. Ascension
5. Blessure
6. Bocal (Sounds – Robert Normandeau)
7. Brassage
8. Capital
9. Caresse
10. Cassini
11. Centre (Sounds – Kamthye Chow)
12. Circulation (Sounds – Kamthye Chow)
13. Collision
14. Courbe
15. Cycles
16. Délicat
17. Douleur
18. Éclat
19. Écoute (Sounds – Peter Huse)
20. Effort
21. Équilibre (Sounds – Hildegard Westerkamp)
22. Espoir
23. Éternal
24 .Fragilité
25. Gratte
26. Guérison (Sounds – Membres Du "Wolf Project")
27. Guerre (Sounds – R. Murray Schafer)
28. Innocence
29. Liquide
30. Matin (Sounds – Annette Vande Gorne)
31. Mort
32. Nœuds (Sounds – Kamthye Chow)
33. Nuage
34. Parle (Sounds – Blanche Baillargeon, Jeannine Schryer, Luc Courchesne, Sophie Marchand)
35. Pas
36. Plaisir
37. Porte
38. Pousse (Sounds – Kamthye Chow)
39. Poussière
40. Prairie
41. Profondeur (Recorded By [Brise-glace] – Monique Savoie)
42. Respect
43. Réveil
44. Rumeurs
45. Sagesse
46. Sang
47. Sensibilité
48. Seule
49. Temps
Sound Letter II is a collection of forty-nine electroacoustic soundscape mediations on spiritual themes. These meditations were conceived for ambient listening using the random or shuffle mode of your CD player. They are open to numerous listening and broadcast possibilities, including in four tracks (with two copies of the piece playing simultaneously) or as a concert performance with improvisations with and around the pieces.
Sound Letter II is a non-commercial, limited edition (1000 copies) which has been made available free of charge to subscribers of Musicworks magazine (issue #70) and to friends and colleagues along my path. --Claude Schryer
Art by Wassily Kandinsky
Sound Letter II, 49 electroacoustic soundscape meditations for random (shuffle) mode playback (1998)
Au Dernier Vivan† Les Biens
1. Accord
2. Appel
3. Arrivée
4. Ascension
5. Blessure
6. Bocal (Sounds – Robert Normandeau)
7. Brassage
8. Capital
9. Caresse
10. Cassini
11. Centre (Sounds – Kamthye Chow)
12. Circulation (Sounds – Kamthye Chow)
13. Collision
14. Courbe
15. Cycles
16. Délicat
17. Douleur
18. Éclat
19. Écoute (Sounds – Peter Huse)
20. Effort
21. Équilibre (Sounds – Hildegard Westerkamp)
22. Espoir
23. Éternal
24 .Fragilité
25. Gratte
26. Guérison (Sounds – Membres Du "Wolf Project")
27. Guerre (Sounds – R. Murray Schafer)
28. Innocence
29. Liquide
30. Matin (Sounds – Annette Vande Gorne)
31. Mort
32. Nœuds (Sounds – Kamthye Chow)
33. Nuage
34. Parle (Sounds – Blanche Baillargeon, Jeannine Schryer, Luc Courchesne, Sophie Marchand)
35. Pas
36. Plaisir
37. Porte
38. Pousse (Sounds – Kamthye Chow)
39. Poussière
40. Prairie
41. Profondeur (Recorded By [Brise-glace] – Monique Savoie)
42. Respect
43. Réveil
44. Rumeurs
45. Sagesse
46. Sang
47. Sensibilité
48. Seule
49. Temps
Sound Letter II is a collection of forty-nine electroacoustic soundscape mediations on spiritual themes. These meditations were conceived for ambient listening using the random or shuffle mode of your CD player. They are open to numerous listening and broadcast possibilities, including in four tracks (with two copies of the piece playing simultaneously) or as a concert performance with improvisations with and around the pieces.
Sound Letter II is a non-commercial, limited edition (1000 copies) which has been made available free of charge to subscribers of Musicworks magazine (issue #70) and to friends and colleagues along my path. --Claude Schryer
Art by Wassily Kandinsky

![Albert Roussel - Le festin de laraignee
Le festin de laraignee, ballet pantomime de Gilbert de Voisins (Ed. Durand et Cie) (1912)
I. Premiére partie: Prélude - Entrée des Fourmis - Entrée des Bousiers - Danse du Papillon - Danse de l’Araignée - Ronde des Fourmis - Combat des Mantes - Danse de l’Araignée - Eclosion et danse de l’Éphémère.
II. Deuxième partie: Danse de l’Éphémère et des vers de fruit - Mort de l’Éphémère - Agonie de l’Araignée - Funérailles de l’Éphémère. [22:34]
Orchestre National de LO.R.T.F.
Jean Martinon
The whole output of Albert Roussel demonstrates an unusual rhythmic gift, and his music, even in the “abstract’’ compositions written for the concert hall, conjures the dance. Thus it is only logical that the choreographic element should prevail in his stage works. He wrote three great Ballets: The Spider’s Feast, recorded here (1912), Bacchus et Ariane (1930) and Aeneas (1935), and in his single full-scale Opera, Padmävati (1914-18), dance intervenes so frequently that the score was called an “Opera-Ballet’’. In the “lyrical tale’’ The Birth of the Lyre the music’s center of gravity also lies in the ballet scenes.
Through the rhythmic element asserts itself with peculiar strength in Roussel’s late works, in his new classical style, the main products of his earlier, more impressionistic phase nevertheless boast a rhythmic invention of unusual wealth, The Spider’s Feast being a particularly convincing example. It is hard to believe that Roussel, a passionate nature-lover, who shortly before had written a First Symphony inspired by the Forest (Le Poéme de la Forét), should have accepted the commission of a Ballet about insect life with great reluctance, only starting work after his wife had urged him to do so. The commission came from the director of the Paris Théâtre des Arts, Jacques Rouché, who had just produced Ravel’s Ma Mère l’Oye as a ballet with great success. In September 1912, he brought Roussel a choreographic synopsis in one act by Count Gilbert de Voisins, inspired by the Souvenirs entomologiques of the great French scientist Henri Fabre. After the initial hesitations, the score was written down in less than three months, an unusually short time for the slow worker Roussel: by the end of the year it was completed. The limitations in scoring imposed by the fact that the ballet was to be staged in a small theatre had been no obstacle to the composer, since they corresponded to the very nature of the subject. Within Roussel’s output the piece thus holds the position of an intimate, lightweight interlude between the two great works inspired by his trips to India: the Evocations (1910-11) and the Opera Padmävati. Through its harscher, darker and bolder idiom, the latter opens a new phase, underlined by the composer himself, whereas The Spider’s Feast brings Roussel’s impressionistic period to a witty and beguiling conclusion.
To Roussel, the easily and quickly written ballet rather held the significance of a nice occasional piece, but success was to contradict this. The premiere took place on April 3rd, 1913 (a few weeks before Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring !), with Gabriel Grovlez conducting. The choreography was by Leo Staats, the decoration by Maxime Dethomas. Sahary Djeli danced the part of the Spider, Ariane Hugon the Butterfly, Dimitria the Dayfly, Tomy and Georgy Footit the Praying Mantises. There were twenty-two performances instead of the planned eight, and the modest score brought its author the long-expected world fame. The ballet was frequently staged and performances of the symphonic Suite were even more numerous. For several decades it overshadowed the composer’s later, often more significant productions, which understandably caused him some anger. Now that the great symphonies and late ballets have finally received their due, the musical world may enjoy the delightful early masterwork without any reservation.
Unfortunately, the orchestral suite contains less than half of the full score, whose most significant episodes it omits. A complete performance, as recorded here, is absolutely indispensable in order to appreciate the full wealth of Roussel’s inspiration. [EPR 15540]
Art by Jan Fabre Albert Roussel - Le festin de laraignee](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/vKTrUa779vE/mqdefault.jpg)
![Victor Nubla - Quantos / Represalia
Quantos / Represalia (1982)
Quantos / Represalia fue grabado por Victor Nubla en los estudios Sonitec, en la calle Gomis número 42 de Barcelona, en una sola noche de octubre de 1982, usando como instrumento un magnetofón 3M de 16 pistas y un centenar de cintas de audio extraídas de los archivos del propio estudio. Fue editado en formato de cassette un mes después, en edición limitada de 21 ejemplares con la portada impresa en acetato. Después se reeditó formando parte de la primera edición de cassettes LMD, con el mítico embalaje de la carpetilla de gomas (que es el que se presenta en la imagen). Posteriormente, hubo dos reediciones más, una en 1984 y otra en 1986, ésta con portada de Xavier Manubens.
Esta pieza fue finalista en el Concurso de Música Electroacústica de Bourges en 1983.
Algunos fragmentos fueron usados por Marcelo Expósito en su video La Tierra de la Madre (1994).
Quantos / Represalia es el primer trabajo publicado en solitario por Nubla (con Macromassa llevaba ya desde 1976), a la vez que su primer trabajo de música concreta y su primer acercamiento al apropiacionismo, que fructificaría finalmente con el uso del sampler a partir de 1986 y la larga serie MCO.
Comienza a encontrarse aquí la exploración de planos, el uso espectral del sonido y del silencio, que será habitual posteriormente en el trabajo de Nubla en la serie MCO. Aquí Nubla no tenía todavía un sampler, pero tenía un gran estudio de grabación completo para él solo que, además, estaba lleno de grabaciones. Podríamos decir un sampler gigante. Faltaban cuatro años para que el primer SK1 llegase al estudio LMD.
Los créditos de las primeras ediciones solamente indicaban que estaba interpretado por el Octeto Cristóbal Colón dirigido por Agoom An.Huba, el nombre utilizado por Nubla en la primera etapa de Macromassa.
Grabado en los estudios Sonitec de Vallcarca, Barcelona. Instrumentación: magnetofón Scotch de 16 pistas, cintas magnéticas de 1 pulgada y 1/4 de pulgada. Reverberación de muelle de 6 m. en un bloque de cemento suspendido a 1,50 m. del suelo. [hronir.org]
Art by Calo Carratalá Victor Nubla - Quantos / Represalia](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/w4YwyLDOapM/mqdefault.jpg)
![Walter Piston - Sonata for Flute & Piano
Sonata for Flute & Piano (1930)
I. Allegro moderato e con grazia
II. Adagio [5:38]
III. Allegro vivace [11:33]
Julius Baker, flute
Anthony Makas, piano
Walter Piston was one of the leading composers of the generation of American composers that came to prominence in the late 1920s and early 1930s. He was a little slower to develop than some others (such as the six-years-younger Copland), but it is with this work of 1930 that his presence began to be felt as an important voice on the American music scene.
Piston did not often stray from the sort of sonata exemplified in this early example: It is in three movements comprising a sonata form, an ABA slow movement, and a finale in sonata-rondo form. On the surface, it also seems that he adheres to the traditional tonic/ dominant-and-beyond/tonic tonal structure of the sonata form, but the fact that his melodies are generally modal, and that he boldly slips into an unexpected chromaticism gives new life to this model. In this case, a piano accompaniment that was based on a Schoenberg-like tone row. This first movement is very serious, even gruff, in tone.
The second movement is an adagio with rich counterpoint. It has an other-worldly quality, which is unusual for the usually down-to-earth Piston. It also has a serious mood.
Piston lightens up in the final movement, a piece that makes chromaticism seem funny. Light and witty rhythms deriving from mundane sources - tango, polka, and march - are common. This sonata has remained one of the most frequently played and recorded of American flute pieces. Joseph Stevenson
Flute Sonata was written in 1930 and dedicated to Georges Laurent, the long-time principal flautist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and a legendary teacher at the New England Conservatory, who premiered it in 1931.
The work was greatly influenced by his studies of Arnold Schoenbergs twelve-tone technique, which was applied in his First Symphony (1937) as well.
In 1930, Piston was a young faculty member at Harvard University. He had recently returned from Paris (1924–1926), where he studied with Nadia Boulanger. The Sonata is a direct product of this Boulangerie training, emphasizing crystalline textures, formal clarity, and tonal stability. Boulanger famously obsessed over the structural continuity of a work. Upon reviewing the Sonata, she praised Pistons ability to maintain a seamless melodic arc through the flutes registers, particularly in the Adagio. She frequently used the Sonata as a teaching tool for later students, pointing to its formal proportions as an example of how to balance academic rigor with American vitality.
Along with Aaron Copland, Piston used 1930 to define a specific American style that rejected the emotional excesses of Romanticism. The Sonata established Piston’s reputation as a composer’s composer—someone obsessed with craftsmanship and objective beauty. [masteringtheflute.com]
Art by Juana Valdés Walter Piston - Sonata for Flute & Piano](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/w9vUj8TVCOg/mqdefault.jpg)
![Egil Hovland - Lamenti for Orchestra
Lamenti for Orchestra, op. 43 (1963)
I.
II. [5:46]
III. [8:27]
Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra
Oivin Fjeldstad
«Lamenti per Orchestra», which was awarded first prize by «Ny Musikk» in their 1963 Jubilee Competition and was published by Edition Lyche in 1967, is scored for a large orchestra. The composer states: «The work consists of three movements. It is built on the following twelve-tone series, the intervals of which are the same both forwards and backwards: a - a flat - b flat - b natural - g - f sharp - c - d flat - f - e - d - e flat. In the first movement the instruments are piano, strings, trumpets, horns, timpani, and gong. The following elements are used: suspended contours of sonorities in the piano, tone-clusters and glissandi effects in the string orchestra, horizontal linear interplay. The second movement employs a large orchestral apparatus with contrasting bodies of sonorities and structurally conceived curves in the brass, wood winds, strings, and percussion. A couple of shorter sections have an improvisatory character, as the musicians are required to play in individual tempos, as rapidly as possible. The movement ends in a tissue of horizontal lines and a maximum crescendo in the entire percussion group. The third and final movement is marked Calmo (pp). The elements are: floating sonority patterns in triangle, suspended cymbals, chimes, gong, celesta, piano, and harp, an eight-part cluster in the lowest register of the double-basses, a twelve-part cluster in harmonics in the violins. A soprano voice sings vocalizations through the web of sound which gradually dies away at the end». [F 21410]
Art by Henrik Aarrestad Uldalen Egil Hovland - Lamenti for Orchestra](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/wKQK65FyRhc/mqdefault.jpg)
![Juraj Hatrik - Canto responsoriale
Canto responsoriale, for double chorus and kettledrums. Words of the 1st Epistle by St. Paul to the Corinthians and on the verses by Vojtech Mihálik Krjanie of the collection Trpky (1964)
Vladimír Bittner, kettledrums
Slovak Philharmonic Chorus
Ján Maria Doborodinský
Juraj Hatrik (b. 1941 in Bratislava) has recently caught attention with two compositions: the Canto responsoriale per due chori e timpani (1964) and Waiting for Recitative and Chamber Orchestra (1965). These were preceded by instrumental compositions followed by concertante works. The Canto responsoriale combines two antagonistic streams of music entrusted to two choirs. One of these, utilizing new means of choral technique, sings of rejected love and is based on a poem by Vojtech Mihdlik, the second based on words of St. Pauls First Epistle to the Corinthians, sings, in a movement of imitation polyphony and archaic stylisation, of the ethical value of love. In the finale the two choirs join their forces for an apotheosis of love. [Supraphon 0 12 0472]
Art by Valentin de Boulogne Juraj Hatrik - Canto responsoriale](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/wMcMMSLYUpw/mqdefault.jpg)
![Ivo Malec - Dahovi II
Dahovi II, for magnetic tape (1961)
Ivo Malec was born in 1925 in Zagreb, where he studied music and won several composition prizes. He continued his studies in Paris under Olivier Messiaen, and later Pierre Schaeffer, and while maintaining close connections with musical life in Yugoslavia, settled definitely in France in 1959, becoming a permanent member of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales. His works, which have earned two Grands Prix du Disque are sometimes for orchestra (Sigma, Miniatures pour Lewis Carroll, Oral), sometimes for magnetic tape (Reflets, Dahovi I et II), and sometimes for performer and tape (Cantate pour elle, Lumina).
Dahovi II dates from 1961. Sounds akin to breaths (which translates the Serbo-Croatian word dahovi) furnish the deliberately restricted basic material of this composition. The purpose, in fact, is less to bring out individual sound effects than to emphasise the play of volumes and densities which they form among themselves and which are barely underscored by a few designs of line and shading.
The piece is a result of a successful collaboration of the composer with the director Piotr Kamler on the short film Structures. By making subtle changes to the film score, Malec created a separate work, highlighting in the commentary of his first original record from 1969: The primary intention of this music is to change white noise (more in a poetic sense than an acoustic one). [cantus-ansambl.com]
Art by Paul Gustave Fischer Ivo Malec - Dahovi II](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/wNfLaO7EUug/mqdefault.jpg)



![Stefan Wolpe - String Quartet
String Quartet (1969)
I. ♩ = 92
II. ♩ = 144 [8:08]
Curtis Macomber, violin
Theodore Arm, violin
Toby Appel, viola
Fred Sherry, cello
In today’s aesthetics, brilliantly managed densities weigh a great deal. The use of densities means the opening of sources hidden in the material. One must purge oneself of certain aspects of contemporary writing which have been used so much that they have lost their significance and exploitability. This means, for instance, that in the composition of my String Quartet (1969) the elimination of simultaneities of movement became an open problem to work at. Everything multiple had to be put under control. Movement and directions of the multiple layers of language had to be re-engaged with the new control. Stefan Wolpe
Art by Emmi Whitehorse Stefan Wolpe - String Quartet](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/xUebYeq43GE/mqdefault.jpg)