[…] Bien qu’il ne s’agisse pas d’une commande, l’idée de cet enregistrement n’en fut pas moins inspirée par la tenue du MMA/NMA. Jean-François Denis et Claude Schryer ont ainsi commandé 25 miniatures électroacoustiques, d’une durée de trois minutes chacune, à des compositeurs du Québec, du Canada, des États-Unis et du Mexique. Si la liste ne contient que 24 noms, c’est que le 25e électroclip a été réalisé conjointement par Christian Calon et Claude Schryer qui ont aussi travaillé seul.
Le tout forme une mosaïque captivante où se mélent le spectaculaire et le poétique. Ces courtes confidences révèlent des personnalités, des sensibilités, des esthétiques trés différentes. On ne se lasse pas de parcourir ce disque dont l’une des qualités majeures est de ne laisser à aucun musicien le temps de se fourvoyer en longueur.
Trois minutes, c’est la durée d’une chanson populaire ou d’un vldéo-clip. Mais là s’arrête le rapprochement car il ne s’agissait pas de fabriquer une pièce aux dimensions étroites d’une chansonnette. Il fallait au contraire obliger son écriture à cerner rapidement un propos qui aurait facilement pu s’étaler dans le temps.
Les Yves Daoust, Francis Dhomont, John Oliver, Stéphane Roy, Gilles Gobeil, Charles Amirkhanian, Jean-François Denis, Christian Calon, Robert Normandeau, Claude Schryer, Hildegard Westerkamp y sont parvenus avec un bonheut particulier. Les origines différentes des auteurs ne semblent pas jouer un rôle particulier. Comme si le langage électroacoustiaue devenait de plus en plus intenational.
Pour augmenter le plaisir de l’écoute, on gagnera à jouer ces miniatures les unes contres les autres. Car bien entendu, l’ordre une nous propose le disque n’a rien de définitif. Il peut aisément étre modifié en programmant son lecteur laser.
Ajoutons encore que la réalisation technique et la présentation du disque ont fait l’objet d’une attention toute particulière. On y retrouve la même qualité, le même souci du détail que dans les CD précédents du même éditeur.
Vivienne Spiteri has become our most active interpreter of new music for harpsichord, a distinction reinforced by the application of her double manual Hubbard to the four (Canadian) works on this album.
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The world of contemporary avant-garde and serious electronic music is a vast one, with myriads of academics and private individuals exploring musical techniques and modes of composition. Of course, with such a wealth and diversity of new-music being created, often on private labels and in unlikely places, it is impossible to keep on top of it all, let alone sort out the wheat from the chaff. One just has to rely on chance, as with this new Canadian label who contacted Audion on the off-chance that we would be interested.
Amazingly the first three releases, on this CD-only label, are all most innovative and fascinating…
Calon is an expert in electroacoustic music, a Frenchman and close associate of both the GRM and Groupe de Musique Experimentale de Marseille (GMEM), he recently moved to Canada to help promote such music there. Calon’s style is firmly in the evolutive soundscape mode as developed by the likes of François Bayle, Luc Ferrari, et al, taking environmental sounds, created and manipulated effects, and creating a dynamic sound panorama of awe-inspiring complexity.
The three lengthy works here are all quite different: Portrait d’un visiteur, a mysterious and unnerving melange of sounds, some recognizable, many manipulated beyond recognition. An enigmatic visionary music. La disparition features a lot of orchestral sounds (including Beethoven’s Grosse Fugue 133), fragments of ethnic and medieval musics, a great range of atmospheric and instrumental elements, all to create a massive floating musical fabric. Minuit, a 40-minute suite, is the most unique work here, a musically descriptive nightmare, combining abstract instrumental and electronic sources together with narrative texts and voices. So unusual and mystifying, Minuit often goes beyond the realms of what one could call “serious” avant-garde, onto the totally bizarre. Particularly a section of hysterical laughter which reminds one of Nurse With Wound! A most intriguing and innovative album.
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Also greatly influenced by European electronic and musique-concret techniques, Canadian Normandeau has developed many of the compositional techniques developed by the likes of Pierre Henry and Stockhausen further, to create a music that contains many familiar elements yet is new and different.
Featuring five very different styled pieces Lieux inouïs is a challenging and exciting experience. Most obviously a dedication to Stockhausen (in fact some text from his Hymnen is borrowed here!), Jeu is a dynamic collage, featuring slabs of sound, good use of space, and sonic sliding effects. In fact the compositional technique is almost stolen from Stockhausen! Mémoires vives is a carefully constructed collage of borrowed orchestral and instrumental sounds, a great ever-developing sound-pool. Rumeurs (Place de Ransbeck) is very much in the fashion of François Bayle, featuring opening and closing doors, voices and effects. Incidentally it is nothing like Pierre Henry’s similar instrumental Music for a door and a sigh! Contrasting again, Matrechka is a kind of organised chaos, a melange of electronic sounds moving through numerous phases, spatial and dynamic. And to end on a softer note Le cap de la tourmente is a spooky atmospheric piece with rich harmonics, composed by very novel means.
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Radically different, and totally out-on-a-limb, this is a very surprising release indeed. A very complex melodic music, both stochastic and rhythmic, often jumping from one to the other. This is computer music of a very innovative kind, it could both be described as a stop on from Peter Frohmader’s Homunculus as well as Morton Subotnick’s Return; elements of both are present, yet this is far more intensive and demanding. The experience is one of frantic rhythms juxtaposed with angular melodies, a music that flies off at tangents in all expected and unexpected directions. Not easy to get into, but ultimately rewarding.
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