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electroradio
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Composer: Yves Daoust Commission: ACREQ, with support from the CCA Premiere: June 1994, (Montréal, Québec) This work was inspired by the Fantasie-Impromptu in C sharp minor, Opus 66 for piano by Frederic Chopin, which I recorded note by note with a sequencer hocked up to a digital piano/synthesizer — a modern equivalent, so to speak, of yesterday’s player-piano rolls. I extracted a few key motifs from the score and created a series of ‘Chopin’-objects defined by their characteristics: attacks, resonances, allures [a Schaefferian term, in French, for ‘sound behaviour’ or vibrato], harmonic timbre… The work is an attempt to convey the feverishness of Chopin’s writing through the unleashing of floods of MIDI data, pushing this technique to its limits: swirls of motives and arpeggios continuously accelerating to saturation, the crystallization of time into extremely dense units which are in turn modified and sculpted by various processes. I had given myself the challenge of realizing the piece with very simple means, using commercial instruments designed for popular rather than experimental music. Impromptu was realized in 1994 at the composer’s studio. It premiered in Montréal in June, 1994. The piece was commissioned by ACREQ with the help of the Canada Council for the Arts. 2. Il était une fois… (conte sans paroles) (1986) 15m45s imed_9843-1.2 | 14435 | ISRC CAD509813400Composer: Yves Daoust Commission: GMEB Premiere: June 1987, (Bourges, France) The idea for this piece came to me as I was recalling the stories I used to make up to put my daughter to sleep — fanciful tales, strongly influenced by the popular series of Philémon albums by Fred. The synopsis might read something like this: “A young girl goes a little too high on a swing. Each time she escapes a little more from the real world. On her last swing, she ‘goes beyond’…” This ‘scenario’ essentially allowed for the exploration of mysterious worlds, located somewhere between reality and pseudo-reality, between the narrative and the musical. The form is deliberately simple and accessible, like a bedtime story. Il était une fois… (conte sans paroles) was composed in 1986 in the studios of the Groupe de musique expérimentale de Bourges (GMEB), and was premiered in June, 1987 at the Bourges International Experimental Music Festival. The work was commissioned by the GMEB. 3. Mi bémol (1990) 2m59s imed_9843-1.3 | 14265 | ISRC CAD509813410Composer: Yves Daoust Commission: empreintes DIGITALes Premiere: November 2, 1990, Montréal musiques actuelles/New Music America, Théâtre Les Loges (Montréal, Québec) Around a small tonal object (E flat, Mi bémol in French) developed into a drone used as a thread in this piece, I have brought together some of my ‘fetish’ sounds. A stereotypical form emerged, a hyper-condensation of my style, of my articulation and construction processes: confrontation of widely different sound elements, a preference for the anecdotal, the crossfading of textures, oscillation between the musical discourse and the documentary approach. Mixtures of levels, polyphony of sounds and of meanings. A pastiche where I attempt to imitate myself… Yves Daoust [xi-90] Composer: Yves Daoust Commission: GMEB Premiere: June 1992, (Bourges, France) I composed this piece out of a few bell sounds (recorded at Notre-Dame Basilica in Montréal), treating attacks and resonances separately. Attack (verticality): outbursts, harshness, violence, dryness. Resonance (horizontality): melodies of allures [a Schaefferian term, in French, for ‘sound behaviour’ or vibrato], thick polyphonic webs, plays of spectral color, lyricism. Although designed as a discrete whole, the work was constructed out of the interweaving of the distinct atmospheres inspired by the multiple, ambiguous resonances which the sound of church bells stirs up in me. Résonances was composed in 1992 at the studios of the Groupe de musique expérimentale de Bourges (GMEB) and premiered in June of the same year at the Bourges International Experimental Music Festival. The work was commissioned by the GMEB. Composer: Yves Daoust Commission: David Olds / CKLN FM, with support from the CCA The idea of Water Music came to me on a beautiful spring day as I listened in a state of wonder to the music produced by droplets falling from melting icicles. I was fascinated by the complexity of the sound, the beauty of such a mundane natural phenomenon, that we tend to overlook. A rivulet had formed. Mixing with the melting snow, it would undoubtedly end up joining the swollen stream. Everything was there: the atmosphere, the paths to be followed, the formal concept. One needs only to pay attention. Water Music was realized in 1991 at the composer’s studio. The work was commissioned by David Olds (for Toronto’s CKLN FM program Transfigured Night) with the help of the Canada Council for the Arts. Composer: Yves Daoust Premiere: September 1986, Chaîne culturelle de Radio-Canada (Montréal, Québec) The Société Radio-Canada asked me to compose this work for radio for the Prix Italia 1986. The commission was quite specific: I was to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of French production on the state radio network, using sound archives as basic materials. I did research for over a month. From this immense collection, I extracted elements that I found to be evocative and which brought back fond memories, or which simply seduced me with their color and musical value. My aim was to use these traces of the passage of time to create a palette of contrasting climates that would convey the formidable powers of radio sound, above and beyond the referential significance of the chosen materials. In addition to having inspired the form of the work, Franz Schubert’s Fantasie in F minor, Opus 103, for piano, four-hands is discreetly alluded to throughout the piece and permeates the whole with a certain melancholy. Fantaisie was composed in 1986 at the composer’s studio and premiered in September of that year on Radio-Canada’s FM Network [now called Espace Musique] program Musique actuelle. electrocd.com Yves Daoust: Musiques naïves: track detail |
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