Bernard Heidsieck performing Vaduz at the
11th International Sound Poetry Festival, Toronto, 1978.
Photos by Larry Wendt.

Bernard Heidsieck began working at 'projecting the word from the
page' in the late fifties with his poèm-partition pieces which were short
poem-scores which used straight forward typographical variations and space as
a system of cues to be articulated in a live performance situation. In this regard,
he called his work poésie action and he would often include some physical
gestures to help the audience visualize the text.

In the sixties he started working with tape recorders to produce works which he
organized in various functional categories such as exorcisme, biopsie, and
passe-partout. With his pass-partout pieces for example. Snatches of repeated
phrases, environmental sounds, and cliches were moulded together to form an
epiphanal 'universal pass-key' that would reveal something about the reality
from which the language and sounds were taken from. Heidsieck evolved these
techniques even further in a series of works done between 1974 and 1976 titled
Canal Street. These were derived from 50 word and phrase collages made
from documents about communication devices which he had found at the
electronic surplus stores on Canal Street in New York. After the completion of
this work, Heidsieck did another series of pieces known as
Deriche Le Robert. It was a collection of 26 pieces each based on
the listings for each letter of the alphabet in the then new edition
of the famous French dictionary, Le Robert.

In the real-time performance of his works, Heidsieck makes use of tape
recordings which can contain readings done by him of his texts, and to which he
interacts vocally. As such, these tapes act as another kind of score and providing
a pattern from which the piece is evolved from. The tape/score can contain
other sounds as well that set up a context for the piece. He also often uses simple
props (such as a glass, a telephone or a desk) and different sitting postures to
convey meaning.

His text/scores are unencumbered with interpretable visual cues which go
beyond the printed word. The appearance of the words on the page, is less
significant for him than it might be for other sound poets. That he 'reads' such
texts rather than perform them from memory, also is revealing of what he is
attempting to do with his work. The written word has robbed language of much
of its expressive power and has reduced it to an internalized voice that has no
physical boundaries or reality. That language exists as a secondary abstraction
in the form of the written word, has the consequence of erasing the significance
of the spoken word. By reading the written word aloud and 'projecting the
word off the page,' as Heidsieck describes it, one revivifies the word and
returns it to the realm of the senses and bodily authenticity.

Heidsieck's readings are generally very intense affairs. On stage he is like a
tightened spring ready to suddenly snap. Each word is delivered with a diction
and a concentration that is powerful and even somewhat unnerving at times. It is
of the utmost importance to him that he performs his work with all of the
strength which he can muster. The act of reading is a visceral and even
desperate act in his hands and he squeezes out as much energy from each word
that he possibly can. This is also the basis for why he does not do choral sound
poetry works or allows his work to be performed by others. The voice behind
his words are unique, and its timbral individuality that gives his language a soul
can only be registered as a recording, the mimicking by another destroys what
the piece is.

In Heidsieck's recent series of works (which number over 50 now), Breaths
and Brief Encounters, he has an imaginary dialog with a dead poet. This
'conversation' is performed on stage against a tape containing a 'loop' of inhaled
breath sounds made by the poet while recording their own poetry. Occasionally
there are other sounds on the tape as well, such as the pouring of a drink in his
Encounter with Dylan Thomas, or bird sounds that were recorded in the garden
where Ezra Pound last lived, in his Encounter with Ezra Pound.

It is interesting how individual and recognizable these breath sounds are of the
particular poet, especially if one was familiar with the poet's voice when they
were alive. Such recognizability makes these very haunting and effective pieces.
The mechanical rhythm of the breath evokes a sense of 'deadness', and listening
to these works is reminiscent of looking into the eyes of a face which has been
captured in a well-made hologram.

That there are more unvoiced inhaled sounds than exhaled ones during the
recording of a reading, is a fortuitous situation in regards to these works since
that act carries a certain amount symbolic luggage. Death is usually associated
with an exhalation where the first breath of life is associated with inhalation. By
collecting the inhaled sound, the poet can mechanically be 'brought back to life'
as a sonic automaton, and momentarily reversing the order of the relationship
between breath, voice, and life.

The sounds of one's own breath provides bookends for the history of one's life.
How and when we take a breath is the most personalizing and individualistic
aspect of our voice and therefore is at the root of our unique personalities.
These sounds have been written out of our literature and erased from our
memories by the 'civilizing' and abstracting processes of literacy. Writing takes
away the uniqueness of breath by reinforcing the inner voice which makes us
deaf to the sound of our true voice. The inner voice has no breath or
interruption. It gives one the absurd notion that life is eternal, interchangeable
with one another, and non-unique. We are no longer reminded of the
irreversibility of life's narrative by breath's constant interruption. A dialogue
with that which disrupts the voice and therefore its history, brings one back to
their sense of reality and uniqueness. The individual sound of breath,
unencumbered by the fetters of phonemic abstraction and restrictions, is
perhaps therefore a poet's most perfect poem, and as such, Heidsieck's pieces,
work as homages to the poet's subtle sense of reality and humanity.

Some of Heidsieck's other recordings include:

Canal Street (Paris: SEVIM/Bernard Heidsieck 3 LPs, 1986).

P Puissance B (Naples: Edizioni Lotta Poetica & Studio Morra, Radio Taxi No. 7, LP, 1983)

"Trois Biopsies" + "Un Passe-Partout" (Paris: Multi-Techniques, LP c. 1970).

Partition V (Paris: Le Soleil Noir, Six records and a book, 1973).

Poèmes Partition D2 and D3Z (Ingatestone: Collection OU, two records and a book, 1973).

There is a World Wide Web site in Australia which contains biblio/biographical material about
Bernard Heidsieck as well as a short audio sample from Canal Street.

Last Modified 30 June 1996

Référence: http://cadre.sjsu.edu/switch/sound/articles/wendt/folder4/ng46.htm