ABSTRACT
In Paris and its environs, two brothers have been designing and building new instruments since the 1950s. Bernard and Francois Baschet, pursuing their own brand of practical acoustic research, arrived at a set of unique acoustic systems and created from them an orchestra of completely original instruments. For the Sculptures and Structures Sonores, as the Baschets call their works, are some of the most inventive, inspiring, and beautiful instruments of our time. The real motivation behind Structures Sonores has been, simply, a love of sound for sound’s sake, form for form’s sake, and exploration for exploration’s sake. The Baschets have become masters of simple vibration-conducting technology. They can initiate a vibration in one place, have it conducted to another locus for some sort of modification and then send it to a radiator to let it be heard. Typically in the Structures Sonores, steel bars or rods run from the gum to the radiator.
