Search - Pierre Henry :: Pierre Henry: Dracula

The Blood succker is in our own heart

Jacques COULARDEAU | OLLIERGUES France | 03/23/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Come in and rest in that pulsing world indeed. There are some instruments for sure and some of their notes, some of the noises are borrowed from here and there like Coppola's Dracula. Henry refers to Wagner. Sure. But there the filiation is more in the creation of the absolutely fascinating mesmerized oblivion of one's own self inside the texture of the horror of the tale. We are so much part of those witnessing walls that Dracula is nothing but the slight little thing we watch strutting on the stage. But the owl, a bird, the wolf, all the nocturne al animals crossing the stage are like tentacles from the musical wall that contains the drama. Little by little these tentacles of noise invade the whole space and the walls seem to be conquering the stage with their own inner space and the whole stage is nothing but a full sea with no surface and just an abyss of deep stirring movement in which you can drown and that welcomes you entirely, bones, flesh and all. Then you are finally totally part of the music. And you know about it because it stops or suspends itself from one movement to the next and you feel empty, inexistent, suspended between emptiness and void in a chasm of non-existence. And the march of the essence of all-sensory absolute existence starts again and you are taken along like a clandestine passenger that is hoboing aboard the train of the apocalypse that is transforming normal life into an exceptional episode with a beginning and above all an end. Horror reigns and awe is the language of your senses as they merge with that apocalyptic horror. You are part of the infinite life that lurks behind Henry's invention of a world that is tamed enough not to frighten us, at least too much. And that leads us to the fourth moment in this fable. Dracula reigns and takes possession of the world altogether. That ends nothing but rather starts en enormous explosion of transformation and resistance to such from the humans who know. But the battle is lost before even being waged. Who can do anything against this vampire. A phrase from who knows what Vivaldi or which Wagner will not change the beauty of that take-over that is total, absolute, relentless. Humanity is lost in that flowing flux of flooding surge of horror under the horrid buzzing of infernal mosquitoes straight out of the marsh of decaying rot. But there is a marching force somewhere that tries to plug itself on this satanic world. What for, my God! A humming continuo behind is like the crowd of on-lookers when the posse of vampire killers arrive on the stage of warlike life. And a new sky opens that could liberate our inner world of its inner enslavement. Listen to the train whistle in the valley, in the mountains. But now we must advance slowly and carefully along the way that leads to the shrine. Sunrays are like filtering through the clouds of the totally overcast sky. And dogs are barking while the Wagnerian theme is sounding our advance. And the end arrives on the vibrant background continuo that stops to let the low looming and soaring trombones take over and open the final battle in which he laughs, the monster, they cry, the crowd. What end can there be if not full seizure, upmost conquest, absolute control. There is no Van Helsing in Pierre Henry's Dracula. The monster is part of us, is our own heart, mind, soul, eternal truth: we are the blood thirsty blood drinking blood sucker. And some light flute is not going to change the immense transport of the rubbles of history into the streambed of our boundless memory. What's admirable in this work is the extreme mixing and blending of noise and musical instruments to the point of not knowing which is which any more but we always keep the perfect conscience of each element clearly distinguishable fro all the others. Blending maybe but not mashing together. It is just that at times we no longer know on which side of the draculean coin we are, the noise-like biter or the orchestral sucker. But who cares, provided we get the ecstasy of the deadly gift of the blood of eternal life.



Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines

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