Les Anciens (The Elders) is part of a larger electroacoustic (acousmatic) work by Stéphane Borrel called Laughing Tonalities (Anthologie du rire). The work uses as its essential sound material the laughter from recordings of three hundred invited participants.

Stéphane writes, “The musical writing – based on very precise sound selection, manipulation and editing – brings into focus the timbres, the rhythms and the pitches of this material. In addition, it takes into account a more evocative side which consists of recreating “plausible” scenes or portraits that highlight the different laughter types. Les Anciens (The Elders) brings together two people who, in reality, have never met.

Behind the touching scene, the couple’s good humour, their half-hearted understanding, we must also feel the laughter at the pain, almost a nasty cough; at the end, his breathing stops, then her breathing – insects and birds remain. This is one of the pieces from the Laughing Tonalities cycle which deals with the theme of ‘ages of life’.

I probably won’t choose… but if I could choose, I would like to end up like them: sitting outside on a beautiful evening, ‘comforted by the insensibility of nature’, as Milan Kundera writes, ‘because insensibility is consoling; the world of insensibility is the world outside human life; it is eternity; it is the sea gone with the sun [« c’est la mer allée avec le soleil » Arthur Rimbaud]. […] the gently inhuman beauty of the world before or after the passage of men.'”

Stéphane Borrel lives and works in Lyon, France. He writes for different ensembles and diverse electronics, ranging from chamber music to the symphony orchestra, from mixed music to sound installations or acousmatic pieces. He teaches composition at Conservatoire de Lyon. Learn more about Laughing Tonalities on Instagram.