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Radio // Musiques naïves
Musiques naïves
Impromptu (1994), 10m09s [excerpt]
Track 1 from Musiques naïves
CD: empreintes DIGITALes (1998) IMED 9843
1 October 2001
By EC in Audio Video (Poland), October 1, 2001

Press Clipping

blogue@press-6052 press@6052
1 August 2001
By François Couture in All-Music Guide (USA), August 1, 2001

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“… documents the work of an established composer.”

Musiques naïves, “Naive Music”: a beautiful title for this collection of works by Yves Daoust. It aptly describes the stolen melodies from Chopin and Schubert, the memories, the children voices, the rediscovered natural phenomenons. Water Music originates from the composer’s fascination with the sound of melting icicles. A fantasy around water and the end of winter pleasures unfolds almost magically, taking the listener on a beautiful journey, not exempt of ironic passages (a flushed toilet evacuates winter altogether!) It is the best work on this CD, although Il était une fois… (conte sans paroles) “Once Upon a Time… (Tale Without Words)” also features all of Daoust’s best compositional tricks. Résonances, a study on the bells of the Notre-Dame church in Montréal, remains much colder and uninvolved. The same comments apply to Impromptu, ten minutes of unconvincing computer treatments of Chopin’s Fantaisie-Impromptu in C# Minor, Op. 66. Fantaisie also has a classical motif at its heart, Schubert’s Fantaisie in F Minor, Op. 103. Phrases of it serve as the articulation for this work using excerpts taken from the archives of the national French-Canadian radio. A commission from Radio -Canada to celebrate its 50th anniversary, it is inhabited by a nice nostalgia, but non-Quebecers will hardly be able to relate to it. Less essential than Daoust’s first CD Anecdotes, Musiques naïves documents the work of an established composer.

blogue@press-422 press@422
9 November 2000
By Ian Whalley in Array Online (USA), November 9, 2000

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The opening CD notes give Yves Daoust’s biography that includes a background in piano performance and an early interest in cinema and theatre. The composer’s track notes, particularly those on the third track, provide the best insight into what is being attempted here, and François Guérin’s analysis of works in the CD notes give an overview of the composer’s main stylistic traits.

The opening track Impromptu is based on the composers MIDI recording of Chopin’s Fantasie-impromptu in C sharp minor (Op. 66). Key motives are then extracted to form the basis of ‘Chopin sound objects’ that are manipulated well beyond the physical limits of the piano. Ideas freely collide in a mixture of the melodic and textural, yet the piece is carefully controlled structurally. The sense of momentum, particularly through the control of density and panning, is outstanding.

Il était une fois… (conte sans paroles) is a sound collage inspired by stories the composer used to make up to put his daughter to sleep. Like a bedtime story, the work inhabits a twilight world between reality and dreams, and the structure is accessible. The result is surreal, evocative and haunting, with the specific and vague trading places for attention in the texture.

Small ‘fetish’ sounds are the basis of the short work Mi bémol. The composer indicates that the piece is a concentrate of his style and mains means of articulation. This includes confrontation of heterogeneous materials, overlapping textures, anecdotal material, and vacillation between musical and documentary approaches. This condensed work is tightly controlled and the material is finely balanced.

Résonances was composed from bell sound samples. Attacks and resonance are treated separately then blended into an atmospheric piece that has many subtle layers of engagement. The effect is swirling and full of unexpected turns. The careful juxtaposition and balance of the known with the surreal here continually captures ones interest.

Water Music; I initially played with some trepidation because the subject matter has been so overworked in electroacoustic music it seem difficult to find an original angle. The results here are anything but disappointing. Again, the balance of material, careful control of texture and shape, and sense of development are a tribute to the composer’s mastery of the idiom. The use of speech in this context, particularly childrens voices, is an inspired touch.

The CD concludes with Fantaisie, a work commissioned by Société Radio-Canada and based on samples from the radio sound archives. The composer aimed to create a collage of memories from radio and express the power of the sound beyond the referential significance of the material selected. Alluded to throughout is Schubert’s Fantasie in F minor (Op. 103). The work unfolds slowly as the listener is drawn in. The journey is rambling and drifts from the actual to the imaginary as material is transformed.

This CD illustrates an astonishing array of generation techniques, and is particularly imaginative in balancing the musical and documentary approach. Underpinning this is a solid yet subtle sense of structural control, and a clear sense of artistic purpose. Deceptively conservative, one is left with the sense of a series of parables allowing the material to be read on a number of levels.

blogue@press-358_9 press@358_9
1 November 2000
By Geert De Decker in Sztuka Fabryka (Belgium), November 1, 2000

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Yves Daoust is a master of the composition…”

Yves Daoust instrument is the piano, since as a child, therefore you find on this CD piano music. Not just classical piano music, no experimental music with the piano. He does not avoid using the classical piano sounds in combination with the new electronics. Impromptu (1994) the first composition is a combination of both, a classical play of Chopin is recorded with a sequencer and reworked. The result is a composition that starts with the classical timbre of the piano surrounded with an ambient atmosphere that slowly transforms into a very hypnotic atmosphere of piano tunes that comes and goes very quick. In the second track he goes completely an other way, there he plays with sounds and tunes. This way he creates stories with several atmospheres, sometimes you find yourself listening to a heavenly atmosphere of an other dimension while a bit later the nerve breaking sounds of a fair comes over you. Playing with sounds and tunes is what you also can found in the 4 other tracks on the CD. Especially his search for what is able to do creatively in music with what is there on the world. He works with sounds that he can creates and find around him, with the bell sounds of the Notre-Dame in Montréal, Water Music is a composition made with several sounds of water, and last but not least makes a composition with archive material from French Radio-Canada. Yves Daoust is a master of the composition, because he proves here that there is able to make music with the collage of sounds, thanks to the several atmospheres that he is able to put into his compositions.

blogue@press-357_52 press@357_52
1 August 2000
By Linas Vyliaudas in Tango #8 (Lithuania), August 1, 2000

Press Clipping

blogue@press-347_1 press@347_1
1 March 2000
By Alan Freeman in Audion #42 (UK), March 1, 2000

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“… fascinating…”

Ah, the weird sonic world of empreintes DIGITALes, with an ever growing catalogue of curious and creative music. […]

As ever all their CD’s are fascinating inventions in sonic art and electroacoustic music.

Daoust is a name we’ve encountered many a time before, and this new collection of works (dating 1986-94) shows him at his best in melding sound into a melodic/amelodic texture. Each of the six tracks has a different focus: Impromptu celebrates discovery with diverse sonic coincidences, Il était une fois… (conte sans paroles) is a brilliant piece of deep resonant cosmic music, Mi bémol sound like a little avant-garde firework display, Résonances presents a carillon of bells in a variety of mutations, Water Music whilst being constructed from water sounds is not quite what you’d expect (I won’t spoil the surprise), and then finally we have Fantaisie in which Daoust lets all his ideas run free, as a sort of bizarre sonic movie. All fascinating stuff, and largely original in style and conception.

blogue@press-340_001 press@340_001

Other texts in

  • Earscape #7 (USA), March 1, 1999

Some Recommended Items

  • UCC 771028984329
  • Société Radio-Canada
  • Canada Council of the Arts