Robert Normandeau: Lieux inouïs: liner notes

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Lieux inouïs

Robert Normandeau

Lieux inouïs

[Unheard-of Places]

empreintes DIGITALes | IMED 9802 | 1998

Reissue from IMED 9002.

CD 25.00 CA$ [?]

to add to your cart, click the price (price always includes handling + shipping)

Unheard-of Places

by Georges Nicholson |imed_9802-0001|

La Rochefoucault said that certain people would never have known love if they had not been told about it. By extension, we may say that certain sonic landscapes, thought colors, certain states and manifestations of the soul would remain forever muted, if electroacoustics had not sprung forth from nowhere—unexpected and inevitable.

When the time has come to write our century’s music history, and the endless fights have died for lack of combatants, this expanse of sonic universe will take its rightful place. But, at this point in time, where is this new language? To be a language, one needs a vocabulary, a syntax, and a grammar; the joy and the pain of electroacoustics is that every work demands the invention of its own language, otherwise, without meaning to, it falters as imitation. And at this point we haven’t even spoken of style! Each explorer of this acoustical forest must leave a trail to guide the listener, without for a moment destroying the magic.

And this is where Normandeau is. He never leads the listener into a sonorific labyrinth of which he himself is not master and experienced traveler. The idea of ‘listenability,’ so often missing in the past 50 years, returns in force with him without surcoming to facility or the mundane. He speaks his own ideas with his own voice—each work distinct, while clearly members of the same family.

In a word: enjoy!

Georges Nicholson, Montréal [ii-90]


Unheard-of Places, the disc

by Robert Normandeau |imed_9802-0002|

Like a place never before imagined, like an untouched territory yet to be explored by human ears, like an unheard-of soundscape. It is fair enough to think of ourselves as explorers driven by absolute necessity or some ineluctable task. But this should not overshadow the essential which is still found in the idea of communicating something, of being carriers of meaning and sounds.

But who communicates what, and to whom? A serious dilemma for seasoned thinkers who are still pondering and extracting its substantial core. Is it not in this notion of unheard-of that we find, up to a certain point, the principle interest of this new sound-art called acousmatics? But what is so unheard-of that anyone can pretend to possess its key, or at least a password? The unheard-of quality probably resides less in the novelty — which is within reach of everyone today — than in the liberation of interior spaces. In other words, it is not only the sound itself which interests me — sound is always more easily created and more and more present — for excluding other aspects would be banal. It is in the meeting of sound within oneself that it holds significance as a ritual. What is this strange feeling that arises in me when I listen to works by Bayle, Calon, Dhomont or Parmegiani? One thing can be said: this music helps me to live by revealing unexplored territories which open up places of contemplation and meditation within me.

What can I say about my work? Do I have the presumptuousness to say that I possess the key to the unheard-of garden while so many others have tried yet the gateway remains locked? Of course, I would not go that far; however, since this issue should be addressed, it is probably with the intent of not adding noise to the general rumble that one can see in my intentions a certain noble gesture. Indeed, the works presented here — one excepted, La chambre blanche not yet available on disc — are the only ones I have chosen to present publicly after more than ten years of full-time work. We offer them to you with humility, as well as with great pleasure, and the we is truly plural since without the generous support of Jean-François Denis and Claude Schryer, who have decided against all odds to embark upon this adventure, this disc might not have materialized for a long time.

Robert Normandeau, Montréal [ii-90]

Robert Normandeau: Lieux inouïs: liner notes

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Prices are in Canadian dollars — 1.00 CA$ ~ 0.98 US$ ~ 0.62 € ~ 0.49 £ ~ 1.01 AU$ ~ 104.74 ¥ — and include handling, shipping and applicable taxes.


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