«… 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.
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.
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.
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.
Yves Daoust est l’un de ces compositeurs dont l’œuvre, si
singulière et surprenante soit-elle, ne nous laisse pas indifférents. Concepteur sonore à
l’ONF
(Office national du film du Canada) pendant quelques années, le compositeur a rejoint, dès
1978, la fondation de l’ACREQ (Association pour la création et la recherche électroacoustiques du
Québec), dont il assumera la direction pendant près de dix années. Aujourd’hui enseignant au
Conservatoire de musique de Montréal, Yves Daoust y a développé un
programme de composition électroacoustique qui lui permet de poursuivre ses recherches.
Son dernier album Musiques naïves, édité par [DIFFUSION i MéDIA
dans la collection] empreintes DIGITALes, illustre bien cette démarche de recherche:
Yves Daoust nous invite à repenser l’écoute des paysages sonores qui
font notre quotidien, en les utilisant dans ses œuvres comme des ‘instruments’ à part
entière.
Son œuvre se compose tel un palimpseste: des sonorités nouvelles se superposent à des
œuvres plus anciennes qui fournissent, dès lors, une trame musicale de base. Ainsi, dans le
premier morceau de l’album, intitulé Impromptu, Yves
Daoust utilise la Fantaisie impromptue en do dièse mineur, opus 66 de
Chopin comme thème dominant de la pièce, laissant la sensation d’une
composition en surimpression.
De même, dans le morceau intitulé Fantaisie, Yves
Daoust utilise en filigrane la Fantaisie en fa mineur, opus 103 pour
piano à quatre mains de Franz Schubert, en lui superposant des
morceaux d’archives radiophoniques qui illustrent le pouvoir envoûtant de la radio.
Mais, Yves Daoust est également un conteur, un magicien qui se
joue des oreilles de son auditeur. Il nous fait en effet perdre pied en abolissant, dans ses
compositions, la frontière qui existe traditionnellement entre notre quotidien sonore (chants
d’enfants, voix, bruits de foules…) et la musique. Ainsi, dans le morceau Il
était une fois… (conte sans paroles), une pléiade de notes, de sons et d’harmoniques
accompagnent le chant d’un enfant, nous entraînant ainsi dans un monde tout droit issu des
profondeurs des rêves. Le compositeur intègre donc la réalité (l’eau, par exemple, dans
Water Music ) au virtuel, à l’irréel. Il travaille sur notre quotidien
sonore comme sur une partition; il en tire des sonorités, des instruments même, atypiques,
comme en témoignent Résonances, composé à partir des cloches de
Notre-Dame de Montréal, et Mi bémol, bâtit sur une polyphonie de sons
très divers.
Ainsi, l’œuvre de ce compositeur semble être une pluie harmonieuse qui transforme le monde
réel en un monde magique; sa musique scintille tel un paysage après une pluie…de notes,
évidemment.
par Richard Cochrane inHollow Ear (ÉU), 1 juillet 1999 »
314
«This is a disc full of fascinating and well-realized works.»
Daoust has a febrile imagination. Nothing stays still for long in
these electronic works which fuse samples of recognizable sounds with state-of-the-art
digital processing and recomposition. He’s been making music this way for twenty years, and
his depth of experience shows in his expert handling of such delicate issues as stereo
panning — sounds constantly move around the field, but with a subtlety that prevents them
from ever merely ping-ponging back and forth.
The disc begins with [Impromptu] a filleting of a piece by
Chopin, recorded in its entirety by the composer and completely
re-wired in software. While the postmodern referentially of the approach is certainly not
ignored, Daoust creates something quite alien to Chopin’s melodic conception, sending notes bouncing off one another like
hyperstimulated atoms and occasionally allowing them to accumulate into vast microtonal
dissonance.
Il était une fois… (conte sans paroles), on the other hand,
supposedly conjures up the images of bedtime stories he liked to tell his daughter. Perhaps
they gave her nightmares. Certainly the combination of children’s voices, harsh timbre and
squealing rubber toys terrified this listener. Atmospheric in the extreme but not for the
faint-hearted.
It’s followed by the all-too-brief Mi bémol, a study in percussive
tones (sounding like xylophone or marimba samples) which ricochet off one another with
jaw-dropping speed and agility, accompanied by spoken word samples and other concrète
bits.
Résonances uses the bells of Notre-Dame (the one in Montréal and
not Victor Hugo’s) for its sound-source; a little grating but a
sound he clearly likes. High-speed manipulations skid this way and that, always taking the
listener by surprise.
This is a disc full of fascinating and well-realized works. It’s not just for musique
concrète fans; indeed, it’s probably rather too conventionally musical for their often
ascetic tastes. Far from being compilations of “real” sounds, these are musical constructions
in the most conventional of senses; if they happen to also be imaginative and stimulating, to
refer to the non-musical auditory world and to seem to tell a story, then so much the
better.
par Henry Schneider inHenry Schneider (ÉU), 1 juin 1999
»
311
«… one of the more accessible discs of the genre, especially for its three outstanding
compositions.»
Yves Daoust is a Canadian electroacoustic composer well versed in
the manipulation and processing of natural and found sounds. Daoust
currently teaches a course in electroacoustic composition at the Conservatoire de musique de
Montréal. Musiques naïves is a collection of six Daoust compositions spanning 1986 to 1994. The opening composition Impromptu is the most recent and an interesting experiment in composition.
Daoust recorded Chopin’s entire
Fantasie-impromptu in C sharp minor, Op. 66 on a sequencer. Daoust extracted a few key motifs to create a series of ‘Chopin-objects’, which
he used as building blocks to convey the feverishness of Chopin’s
writing by unleashing floods of MIDI data, pushing this
technique to its limits. The result being music that builds slowly from warped strings,
organ, and piano to rapid crystalline arpeggios sliced, diced, and layered to create a wall
of sound not unlike Paul Dolden or [John
Oswald’s] Plunderphonics on Grayfolded.
The second composition Il était une fois… (conte sans paroles)
(1986) is a sound collage that begins with street sounds and children playing on swings. It
develops into a quiet surreal dream-like world complete with electronic insectoids and birds
making it one three standout compositions on the disc. The third composition Mi bémol (1990) is a short little ditty using processed bell sounds and voices
played both forward and in reverse. The fourth composition Résonances
(1992) is a difficult piece constructed out of a few bell sounds recorded at the Notre-Dame
Basilica in Montréal.
Water Music from 1991 is another of the high points of the disc.
Using the spectrum of sounds created by water Daoust takes us on a
sonic journey from a melting icicle to a swollen stream. Dripping water loops create
interesting rhythms that merge and cascade into a rapidly flowing stream of sounds. The disc
closes with another excellent composition, Fantaisie, a radio collage
commissioned by the Société Radio-Canada for the Prix Italia 1986. It commemorates the
fiftieth anniversary of French production on the state radio network and is an extremely
interesting and fun piece.
Make no mistake, Musiques naïves is experimental music and exists
for the adventurous listener. However, it may be one of the more accessible discs of the
genre, especially for its three outstanding compositions.
«Musiques naïves is evocative and imaginative, and it’s
electroacoustic!»
On Musiques naïves, Canadian electroaoustic composer Yves Daoust presents an interesting assortment of concert tape music.
Impromptu is made of a flurry of MIDI messages triggering musical
motives drawn from the works of Chopin. It is frenzied and
saturated, meant to capture the “feverishness” of Chopin’s work.
Il était une fois… (conte sans paroles) is a highly fanciful
soundscape inspired by bedtime stories the composer once told his daughter. Water Music celebrates nature by focussing on the sound of water dripping for 13
minutes. Fantaisie commemorates 50 years of French national radio and
draws its sonic material from archival recordings, very nostalgic I’m sure. All in all the
stuff on Musiques naïves is evocative and imaginative, and it’s
electroacoustic!
par MP inVital #161
(Pays-Bas), 10 février 1999 » 297
«Once again, empreintes DIGITALes have produced a musical gem…»
Yves Daoust released the CD Anecdotes on
this same label several years ago, and now there’s this [(Musiques
naïves)], in the nifty [OPAK] cardboard packaging which I have come to associate with
excellent electroacoustic music. (Before I get to the aural content, full marks for the
absolutely gorgeous photo-collage [by Luc Beauchemin] on the
cover.)
The CD opens with Impromptu — the most recent piece on this
collection — in which Yves dissected Chopin’s
Fantasie-Impromptu in C sharp minor, Op. 66, by recording it note-by-note and
treating it inside a computer. It starts with a nervous, tentative piano chord, which
unexpectedly fluctuates drastically in pitch setting the tone for the rest of this excellent
composition. It slowly builds into a seething deluge of notes, attack is forcibly seperated
from release and the threatening distortion is cooled towards the end by by a slight shower.
It made me think of the composition Return by our chum Morton
Subotnick (thanks for the responses to last week’s review, all of you who did), which
was executed on reasonably horrid Yamaha synthesizers by Yamaha sequencers and was “a
distillation of the piano works of Scarlatti” (or something like
that), according to Morton himself. Return, by the way, was composed as a
celebration of the Halley’s Comet periodic flyby a couple of years ago.
Next on Musiques naïves is a piece titled Il était
une fois… (conte sans paroles) which is a soundtrack to a dream, lingering ‘somewhere
between the narrative and the musical’ with sounds that caress, floating like weightless
feathers and others that leap out in joyful surprise. No danger here. This is followed by
Mi bémol, a three minute piece composed for the first empreintes
DIGITALes compilation Électro clips, which was also my introduction to
this label — an absolutely brilliant CD, which was followed by a similar compilation in 1998,
Miniatures concrètes — a celebration of 50 years since musique
concrète’s ‘invention,’ which I own but have not fallen so rapidly under the spell of.
The fourth track Résonances was constructed from church bell
sounds. Again the individual sounds are split into tinier and tinier fragments creating
shimmering cascades of bells which gradually smear back into their original shape and pitch,
now tight, then loose. Sustain is stretched — faint reflections and scattered points of sound
bounce off drifting clouds of dust motes in ancient buildings. Water
Music was inspired. like so many pieces, electroacoustic and otherwise, by the element
water. (Check out Annette Vande Gorne’s release Tao [and Musiques naïves by Yves
Daoust] on this same label for a superb piece around this theme.) Perhaps it’s because
the rich palette of frequencies and moods inherent in water can evoke and inspire any
emotion, feeling or memory. The final track Fantaisie was constructed
from radio archives and was commissioned to commemorate the 50th anniversary of French
production on the state radio network.
Once again, empreintes DIGITALes have produced a musical gem, no easy listening or
background sounds here, but a demanding and rewarding journey through the topography of
Yves Daoust’s imagination. Sublime!
Oh Yes! I nearly forgot to mention Robert Normandeau’s definitive
CD Lieux inouïs, which is perhaps my favourite CD on this label, can I
have a copy please, sir.
His other full-length CD on empreintes DIGITALes, Tangram, was made
[originally] available as a double CD of the same track, the second CD was recorded from a
multiple speaker performance master (if I remember correctly?) and was also a gem.
par Davis Ford inEtch #5:1 (ÉU), 1 janvier 1999 »
292
«Yves Daoust is a master of sound manipulation.»
Yves Daoust is a master of sound manipulation. In the beginning,
a piano fights for space with itself. Two minutes in, there is a chaotic battle of notes
involving the piano vs. that same piano, which ensues into a melee of bickering between the
piano’s close relatives and finally, burst of white and pink noise which drive the piece into
the new millennium. As the storms calms, the sounds of rain is introduced as a sort of
closure. This 10-minute absorption follows with the familiar sound of a child’s swing-set.
Daoust stretches the screeching hinges farther and farther out into
a computer-generated piece which could pass for hypnotic robot-speak. Daoust’s strength lies in his ability to take found sounds and stretch them into
a new, yet unheard environment. At the same time, artificial sounds emulate our daily
environment. It is a dichotomy that proves exciting with every listen. The final piece,
Fantaisie is created entirely from radio samples. The environment
Daoust sculpts proves to be such on oxymoron, it is disturbing, yet
equally enthralling. A distant piano rambling on, stuck in a decrementing timer, slowly
winding themselves down, while other samples of otherworldly radio nature weave their way
into the mix. Musiques naïves is perhaps the most exciting collection
of found, and manipulated sound I have ever witnessed.
par Dominique Olivier inVoir
(Québec), 26 novembre 1998 » 283_8
«… très beau disque de Daoust, touchant, à la fois familier et
débordant d’imagination: Musiques naïves.»
Lors du dernier mini-festival d’art acousmatique Rien à voir —
organisé par Réseaux au Théâtre de la Chapelle -, l’étiquette de disques montréalaise
empreintes DIGITALes lançait sa plus récente fournée. L’étiquette, qui n’est consacrée qu’à
la musique électroacoustique, offre deux nouveaux «compacts-compacts», c’est-à-dire des
disques d’une durée plus courte dans un boîtier plus compact, et trois CD d’une durée
normale. Comme toujours, les pochettes sont absolument admirables. Les compositeurs
Yves Daoust, Jacques Tremblay, Robert Normandeau, Darren Copeland et Ned Bouhalassa nous en font voir de toutes les couleurs, couleurs de son, bien
entendu. À souligner, le remixage de Lieux inouïs de Normandeau et le très beau disque de Daoust, touchant,
à la fois familier et débordant d’imagination: Musiques naïves.
par Clément Trudel inLe Devoir
(Québec), 26 octobre 1998 » 282_1
«L’étiquette empreintes DIGITALes lance trois disques…»
Dans ce qui pourra se révéler un «cinéma pour l’oreille», le théâtre La Chapelle propose,
du 28 octobre au 1er novembre, une immersion dans la musique concrète ou «acousmatique». Cinq
jours d’électro pour souligner les 50 ans d’une musique inventée par le Français Pierre Schaeffer.
Parmi les compositeurs de musique concrète, l’un des plus prolifiques est François Bayle qui dirigea à Paris, durant 30 ans, l’INA-GRM ou Groupe de
recherches musicales de l’ORTF. Ces journées organisées par Réseaux font la part du lion à Bayle que certains qualifient de «légende vivante». Le samedi 31, les concerts
de 19h et de 21h (Rétrospective no 1 et Rétrospective no 2) portent entièrement sur des
œuvres de Bayle. Ces concerts sont repris le dimanche (1 novembre)
aux mêmes heures. François Bayle s’entretient dimanche (14h) avec de
jeunes compositeurs.
Un catalogue abrégé de ses œuvres présenté par la revue d’esthétique musicale LIEN
(printemps 1994) contient une cinquantaine de titres. Sous la direction de Michel Chion, LIEN a recueilli une vingtaine de témoignages de musiciens et de
compositeurs sur Bayle, auteur de plusieurs ouvrages théoriques.
Certains ont découvert l’électroascoustique au contact d’œuvres comme L’Oiseau chanteur ou Espaces inhabitables de Bayle, dont l’un des disques porte le titre Motion-Émotion.
Cet événement Rien à voir (4)
accueille trois autres compositeurs: le Montréalais Stéphane Roy
(mercredi 28); le Suédois Erik Michael Karlsson qui offre (jeudi 29)
ses propres compositions (19h) suivies à 21h, d’une Carte blanche. Venu d’Allemagne, le
compositeur Ludger Brümmer, qui a remporté en 1993 le prix Ars
Electronica d’Autriche, offrira deux concerts le 30 octobre.
L’étiquette empreintes DIGITALes lancera (28 octobre) trois disques: Musiques naïves (Yves Daoust), Alibi (Jacques Tremblay) et Lieux
inouïs (Robert Normandeau).
Les prix sont en dollars canadiens — 1.00 CA$ ~ 0.98 US$ ~ 0.71 € ~ 0.65
£ ~ 88.83 ¥ ~ 1.7 AU$ ~ 5.31 DKK ~ 5.72 NOK ~ 6.92 SEK — et incluent la manutention, le
port et les taxes (lorsqu’applicables).