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by Robert Normandeau |imed_9944-0001|
The first meaning of the French word ‘figure’ is ‘the
body.’ To describe its form in sound, to interpret it. Volumes,
surfaces, lines and points studied for themselves. ‘Figure’ also
means the human face. Like the one on the cover of this disc, like the human
presence that we find all too often absent in this music. Finally, the figure
is the element that stands out from the background. The figure is the
significant element and the author’s signature; in the background we
usually find elements that are less personal and more obvious. When I am
working on a piece it is the figure that I look for, the sound or family of
sounds that will characterize it in a significant way, and indelibly.
Laughing figures for Le renard et la
rose. Irresistible laughter, the wild joy that we need so much and which
is too often lacking in concert music. Figures of meaning in Venture, where figurative
elements belong to another era and another musical genre: rock. The aims are
so different, but in many other ways we are so alike. Figures of speech, in
Figures de
rhétorique, describe the relationship between the tape and the piano, and
how the latter always moves from the foreground to the background in this
music constructed from a set of instrumentalist’s materials that is
recorded and transformed, or played live. Figures and grounds for Ellipse and the way it is
marked by the figures the guitarist sketched from the moment of the initial
studio work over the grounds made of electronic music.
As I was preparing these program notes I realized that all of the concert
pieces in this recording are dedicated. What is a dedication? Surely it is a
way of presenting a gift to someone whose role in the creation of the work
was important; it is the artist’s way of showing gratitude for that
contribution. But the dedication is also a way of projecting oneself into
that person, of finding the ideal listener for each of our pieces, the
listener without whom the music would have a different meaning.
I make my music as a sound writer rather than as a composer in the usual
sense. The latter writes music that is meant to be played and interpreted.
The composer of acousmatic music is alone in the studio and, much like the
author and the painter, forms the work with the hands. The result is not only
a set of codes, it is something that has been made real. The moment it
emerges from the workshop it takes on life. Nothing, and no-one, can change
it.
But working this way shuts the composer away in the greatest solitude
imaginable, to remain there until the work is presented in concert. It seems
only natural that the composer would occasionally imagine the ideal listener,
an alter ego to talk to in the silence of the night, someone with whom to
share not only the revelations that the act of creating affords but also the
suffering that it commands. Had I not had them to dedicate these works to,
none of the pieces presented here would have come into the light in their
present form.
Robert
Normandeau, Montréal [v-99]
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