If radio doesn’t appear, it means you haven’t installed the Flash plugin or that your version is too old. You must also activate Javascript.
piste@nor_3-1
To Juliette
Killim is an attempt to explore a number of sound-worlds through instrumental sound. But rather than articulate the traditional (abstract) materials of music, the sounds articulate snapshots (brief images) of the instruments which are often transformed beyond recognition into worlds where only the sense of energy present in their playing is felt.
The source material for Kilim come from recorded improvisation on (mostly) reed instruments from a number of cultures, and the work is concerned with keeping fragments of recognisable instrumental sound and retaining their sense of “played” energy, whilst using the sounds at the same time to create more abstract ‘acousmatic’ gestures.
The piece is built around a series of trajectories which act as triggers and cadences, or underpin longer passages, steering the pacing of the music using dozens of short sounds combined to make dramatic gestures or textures. The word, kilim, describes an intricately woven middle-eastern carpet whose designs inspired the piece.
[source: reseauxconcerts.com]
To Claudine
Material substances and sound substance have never been so closely associated as in the acousmatic genre. Crystal Music, which originates in this genre, is a music of forms, colors and materials shaped by kinetic energies and perspectives in the inner space of the work. Like glasswork, the material has been expanded, moulded, transmuted in the fiery furnaces of experimentation. Like crystal, it has been worked upon by the imagination which imbues its transparency with the power of illusion.
Beyond pure matter, there still remain certain sham voices lost in factual collages, but also rhetorical phenomena of ruptures and antagonistic relationships between musical characters, strained nodes, suddenly subjugated by the whimsicality of an arabesque. The work is permeated by a bountiful style employing sound material as others use flat areas of color which they scratch with a nervous, angular graphism: it thus reveals a desire for plasticity which soon enough betrays a dramatic expression.
This work, composed largely with Bill Schottstaedt’s Common Lisp Music program, could not have been realized without the technical support and exceptional conditions I enjoyed at CCRMA (Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics) at Stanford University (California, USA) during the year 1992-93, as well as in the studios at the Faculty of Music of the Université de Montréal in 1994. The work was premiered on March 3, 1994 at the Chapelle historique du Bon-Pasteur in Montréal during the 15th anniversary concert of ACREQ (Association pour la création et la recherche électroacoustiques du Québec). Crystal Music was commissioned by ACREQ with support from the Canada Council [for the Arts]. I wish to thank the Faculty of Music of the Université de Montréal for having lent me its studios in order to complete the piece. Crystal Music was awarded the First Prize at the 3rd Prix international Noroit-Léonce Petitot (Arras, France, 1994). Crystal Music previously appeared on the compact disc Prix international Noroit-Léonce Petitot 1993 (NOR 3).
Spleen is comprised solely of the voices of four adolescents, aged 16 years. The title refers to one of the most significant moods of the adolescent: this kind of sudden melancholy which surfaces for no apparent reason. This work is a sequel to a previous piece, Éclats de voix, which utilized dozens of sounds from the Dictionnaire des bruits by Jean-Claude Trait and Yvon Dulude as a sonorous base. Onomatopoetic, the material is extremely rich because it represents those instances when the sounds of human language correspond directly to the designated object or to the expression of a sentiment.
The piece is divided into five sections which represent typical situations for the adolescent, and a corresponding sonorous parameter. These sections are presented successively in concert, or separately when broadcast on radio.
Spleen was produced at the composer’s studio from recordings of the voice of Marc Gilbert, Laurent-Josée Sainte-Marie, Nicolas Thériault and Patrick Virar. It was premiered during the radio festival Journées Électro-Radio Days broadcast live in Montréal, Toronto and Vancouver on December 10, 1993. Spleen was realized with support from the Audio program of the Media Arts Section of the Canada Council [for the Arts]. The piece was awarded the Public’s Prize at the 3rd Prix international Noroit-Léonce Petitot (Arras, France, 1994).
The title L’ivresse de la vitesse (Intoxication by Speed) is an allusion towards my current artistic intentions which involve the speeding up of an excess of musical ideas so that the composition and its materials exhaust themselves in the shortest time possible. The intoxicating aspect of speed is evoked by using primarily fast tempo markings and rapid changes in orchestration, density and dynamics. These elements can be particularly sped up to the point of exhaustion and intoxication in the digital audio studio which is limitless or ‘virtual’ in its colour and density possibilities.
To increase the sensation of exhaustion and intoxication, hundreds of musical parts occur simultaneously that are organized by numerous musical systems which unfold concurrently. A few of these musical systems originate in different styles of popular music. These musical styles are organized by an overall compositional language and style in order to diffuse their direct effect or reference point, and to create an internally coherent music. This overall compositional language is intended to make the different musical styles and compositional systems implode inwards, creating new identities beyond their worn-out historical reference points, and to produce what I hope is like seduction: undeniably attractive and yet simultaneously unexplainable. Indeed any work that is totally complicit in its own absorption, so that it no longer makes apparent sense on the surface, will exercise a remarkable fascination. In short, an art work fascinates by its esotericism which preserves it from external logic.
L’ivresse de la vitesse was produced in the composer’s studio with assistamce from the Canada Council for the Arts and in particular from a Media Arts Audio Production Grant. It premiered on May 28th, 1994 at the 3rd Annual Festival of Experimental Music organized by the London Musicians’ Collective (UK). L’ivresse de la vitesse was awarded the 2nd Prize at the 3rd Prix international Noroit-Léonce Petitot (Arras, France, 1994); 1st Prize in the Musica Nova 1994 International Competition of Electroacoustic Music (Prague, Czech Republic); 1st Mention in the Stockholm Electronic Arts Award (Sweden, 1994); and the Jean A Chalmers Award for Musical Composition (Toronto, Canada, 1995). This work was reprocessed, remixed and remastered in the composer’s studio in 2001-02.