At the Music Multimedia Room (MMR) of McGill University’s Schulich School, Belgian composers Julien Guillamat and Annette Vande Gorne presented an ambitious program of electroacoustic music on Sunday, no less than three hours long, created in the multiphonic studios of Musiques & Recherches. The acousmatic program was rather classic from the outset: a formula that, let’s not forget, excludes the use of visual complements in favor of the intrinsic virtues of this cinema for the ear.
The central figure of this program, composer Annette Vande Gorne, presented, Vox Alia, a cycle of five pieces constructed with the human voice as the primary material, conceived by the electroacoustic composer and longtime choir director, for whom “the voice is the best of instruments, the best communicator of musical sensibilities.” Her series of 5 pieces under the Vox Alia banner, the first of which, Affetti, expresses all the affects (affetti) accepted in baroque music, including the treated voice of a pioneer of electroacoustics, Pierre Schaeffer, whom Annette Vande Gorne once knew and learned from invaluable lessons.
The second, Cathedrals, unfolds with Balinese-inspired sacred dance, a Catholic requiem, the trance typical of ancient cultures, and vocal excerpts from the pioneers of electroacoustic practices, namely Pierre Schaeffer and François Bayle, who were among his mentors. The third, Vox Intima, is based on work done with the late poet Werner Lambersy, a text about intimate creation and the doubts that cross all creative minds. The fourth, Vox Populi, evokes popular spaces for vocal expression and also sacred places where the voice expresses itself through prayer. The fifth focuses on animal voices, featuring monkeys singing for real and nature returning in force. Heard Sunday in the best venue in Canada for this type of exercise, the Vox Alia cycle reveals some very high qualities. First, because it is based on the oldest instrument in human history: the voice. The composer and choirmaster’s sensitivity to the voice is wonderfully manifest in the sensual, circumspect, and downright brilliant treatment of her subject. Anyone looking for the human voice in its proper form risks being disappointed, as this vocal framework has been considerably transformed, deconstructed, filtered, reconstituted, and recreated in the service of a creative environment.
Powerful features, voices that sing the sacred, cry out in trance, speak, allege, babble, grumble, rumble, whistle, purr, sometimes intone ancient melodies, sometimes produce meaning. The aesthetics put forward here correspond to the updated baggage of the pioneers of electroacoustics from which she has imbibed, but let’s also say that the composer uses several direct and identifiable references for the average person, which demonstrates her evolution over time.
We are here in an abstract universe that reveals little direct meaning, few markers to cling to, and therefore a rich universe of sounds whose coherence rests primarily on the feelings of its creator and her way of inviting the past of music into its present and future. In the second part of this very long program, we were able to absorb the work of Julien Guillamat, artist and professor of electroacoustics at the Mons Conservatory where Annette Vande Gorne taught for a long time. In the context of the Quebec-Belgium exchange, Montrealers David Piazza and Ana Dall’Ara-Majek worked at the Musiques et Recherches studio, as did Robert Normandeau, who had visited it long before, since a youthful work created in 1987 was broadcast there, in perfect harmony with the aesthetics of the time.
It is understandable that this program is the result of these exchanges led by Belgian artists and researchers. This also explains the presentation, at the beginning of the program, of a work by the late Francis Dhomont, a French composer who lived in Montreal for a long time and accomplished much for the development of acousmatics in Quebec. Thus, Julien Guillamat first spatialized his recent composition Altitudes, based on sounds collected in a ski resort in the Pyrenees, with all the contradictions inherent in this leisure activity reserved overwhelmingly for the privileged. The narrative framework of the work does not systematically refer to skis hurtling down the slopes, but rather plays on this tension/contradiction between mountain nature and the human inventions that could pervert it. Here again, one must be familiar with the work’s project to recognize its materials and connect them to what this project suggests, constructed according to the rules of electroacoustic art. We will also be treated to the second movement of the Pond Symphony, an immersive sound work by the Belgian composer, a soundscape inspired by the Thau lagoon – southern France.
Finally, the works of David Piazza and Ana Dall’Ara-Majek can be said to have rigorously followed in the footsteps of their hosts, in their way of collecting, electronically generating, processing, and rearranging sounds. Two highly abstract works, full of ebullience, heavily exposed frequencies, maximalist noises, drones, bestiary sounds, and other minute details.
In short, a truly acousmatic program!
Programme
Francis Dhomont : Vol d’arondes (1999)
Annette Vande Gorne : Vox Alia I — Affetti (1992-2000)
Annette Vande Gorne : Vox Alia II — Cathédrales (2021)*
Annette Vande Gorne : Vox Alia III — Vox intima (2022-23)*
Annette Vande Gorne : Vox Alia IV — Vox populi (2023)*
Annette Vande Gorne : Vox Alia V — Vox naturæ (2024)*
Entracte
Julien Guillamat : Altitudes (2024)*
Julien Guillamat: Symphonie de l’étang, 2nd Mvt (2023)*
David Piazza : Clameurs et agrégats place de Ransbeck (2022)*
Ana Dall’Ara-Majek: Xylocopa Ransbecka (2017)
Robert Normandeau: Rumeurs place de Ransbeck (1987)
