Joël Bons and the Mouth Organ

The Historical Context

The 1990s were a pivotal decade, marked by the arrival of Chinese composers in Europe and an unprecedented curiosity regarding their traditional instruments. This period represented a true "historical call" in France, where the encounter between contemporary writing and Chinese instrument making — particularly that of the sheng — opened up new aesthetic paths, driven by institutions such as Royaumont, Radio France, the Ensemble 2e2m, and the CNSMDP etc. Ethnomusicologist François Picard will revisit this founding context. It is in this wake that Joël Bons, a major figure in the introduction of these repertoires to the West, developed his conviction: the future of music lies in the convergence of cultures.

Joël Bons: Possibilities for integrating musicians and instruments from different cultures in new compositions

Over the years, I became convinced that the future of (art) music lies in the mutual influence and convergence of different musical cultures. In 2002, I founded the intercultural Atlas Ensemble, bringing together musicians from China, Japan, India, Iran, Armenia, Azerbaidjan, Syria, Turkey and Europe. The ensemble presents an unheard sound world of instruments from different cultures and aims to create new forms of orchestration in a transcultural idiom.

In this presentation, I will focus on composing for the Chinese and Japanese mouths organs, sheng and shō, in different intercultural combinations. With examples from my pieces Tour à Tour (2006), Nomaden (2015-16) and Atlas Orchestra (2023-2025), I will illustrate various compositional approaches and strategies. In these works, the instruments are used in various combinations: as a solo instrument, in duo (sheng & cello), in unusual chamber music formations (2 shengs, trombone, percussion), as soloist in a large ensemble, or as chords instruments in tutti’s and chorales.

The map of both instruments is exceptional: the bamboo pipes are arranged in a circle in such a way, that they meet the specific musical requirements for which these instruments were traditionally intended. For the shō, these are the traditional chords used in Gagaku court music; the construction of the sheng evolved, from the 17-pipe version suitable for traditional pentatonic Chinese music (often using parallel fifths), to fully chromatic variants with many more pipes, resulting in a more complex layout.

The unique construction of these instruments inspired me to freely experiment with possible fingerings, from which various musical ideas emerged. In collaboration with the performers, I thus made use of the hidden potentiality of fingering patterns, which are technically comfortable for the performer, but unusual and nontraditional. This is just one example of the compositional strategies employed that I will discuss.