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In the field of composition in Quebec, women composers are still less numerous than men composers. While the profession of composer has difficulty being recognized in Quebec society, women composers are twice as marginalized. Many of give evidence to the challenges they face when it comes to integrating into the musical community, and several musicologists have tried to better understand—and eventually solve—the problems specific to women in the field of composition.

This article examines the early reception of Pierre Schaeffer’s theoretical work in Quebec through the teaching of Marcelle Deschênes, principal author of the first electroacoustic theory and ear training curricula at both Université Laval and Université de Montréal. An account of Deschênes’s educational career is provided, along with remarks on the contents of her early courses in Morpho-typology and her listening workshops for children, using newly excavated primary material from her private archives. While existing scholarship presumes that Schaefferian thinking arrived in Quebec with the ‘orthodox’ acousmatic approach of Francis Dhomont, this article asserts that a pluralist and multidisciplinary interpretation of Schaeffer’s work can be discerned which pre-dated Dhomont’s teaching and has had an equally lasting impact overall. A methodological argument is also made for including education and other forms of ‘reproductive labour’ in the history of electroacoustic music.

The author discusses the visibility and participation of women in electronic music culture. She argues that most electronic music social networks privilege male inclusion and success, and that skill-sharing is an important strategy to encourage women in the field. To seed this discussion, the author examines her own history with reflections on the gender dynamics within electronic music communities outside the academy, and the role that social and technical currencies play within them. She also discusses Ladies club, a music distribution project that led to several solo female electronic musicians taking the stage and organising events in Montreal during 2007.

This study examines the creative layers and continuities evident within the composition and rehearsal processes of Nicole Lizée’s Golden Age of the Radiophonic Workshop (Fibre-Optic Flowers), written for the Kronos Quartet in 2012. Lizée’s compositional approach to the historic and the new, and the mechanical and the human, are interpreted through Simon Emmerson’s three themes of combination, transformation, and control, and his three “impulses within composition” that combine live and acousmatic soundworlds – integration, antithesis, and co-existence. These concepts also help to articulate the way the players engage with the physical, psychological, and expressive demands of the piece. Discussions arising from the Kronos Quartet rehearsing the piece with the composer reveal how extensions are made to the performers’ mind and body experiences when they are required both to initiate and integrate sounds emanating from unfamiliar, analogue machines into their acoustic, yet amplified soundworld. Creative layers and continuities are seen to evolve from compositional experimentation and from composer–performer and co-performer dialogues in rehearsal in the BBC Maida Vale studio prior to the world premiere at a BBC Prom concert on 24 July 2012.

In this study, four sets of songs composed by Violet Archer are examined, all of which were written at different points in her career. Archer studied with Paul Hindemith in 1948 – 49, and his teachings had a tremendous impact on the young composer. The first set of songs to be analyzed, Moon Songs, was written before her time with Hindemith, and will provide a baseline from which her later, post-Hindemith, works can be compared. Following her studies with Hindemith, Archer wrote three songs, “Cradle Song,” “April Weather,” and “First Snow,” all of which show evidence of Hindemith’s influence. Her later, more mature works, Northern Landscape and Caleidoscopio Quatro, demonstrate a refined compositional technique; one in which Archer has created her own style, while maintaining aspects of the approach taught by Hindemith at Yale. This study will elaborate on the aspects of Archer’s music that evolved throughout her compositional career.

Ce texte revient sur le processus de création de trois spectacles chorégraphiques auxquels j’ai participé comme conceptrice sonore : Concerto grosso pour corps et surface métallique (1999), Duos pour corps et instruments (2003) et Là où je vis (2007). Ces parcours de recherche-création, traversés avec la chorégraphe Danièle Desnoyers (compagnie Le Carré des Lombes), permettent d’observer comment l’écriture sonore se développe in situ avec l’écriture chorégraphique. Les deux se forment ensemble en s’influençant l’une l’autre. Les trois spectacles choisis témoignent de différents modes de création de la matière sonore : amplification des danseurs, diffusion avec des haut-parleurs inusités, invention d’instruments et citation de musiques transformées. Les récits de collaborations qui suivent révèlent les manières dont la matière sonore a émergé de l’écriture chorégraphique et vice versa.

Over the course of the last decade the organ works of Canadian composer Rachel Laurin (b. 1961) have gained critical acclaim among professional organists. Her organ music has captured the attention of American and Canadian organists, resulting in a series of commissions for new organ works. To date, there are over thirty-two compositions for organ solo. This document explores stylistic issues in Laurin's compositions for solo organ and for organ with other instruments. Pieces that have been selected for in-depth study include Chromatic Fantasietta, Scherzetto, Toccatarina (to Katarina) and Asian Legend from Twelve Short Pieces, Volume 3, op. 64, Étude Héroïque, Op.38, and the Sonata for Organ and Horn, Op.60, II. On a Painting by Thomson. At the outset of the document an overview of Canadian organ culture is provided, followed by an introduction to Laurin's life and works. Subsequently, a structural and harmonic analysis of Laurin's compositions is presented. As this analysis will reveal, the expressive dimensions of her works embrace elements of Romanticism and Impressionism.

Vivier: A Night Report is a kind of poetical archive of musical details, protocols, experiences, concepts, memories, fears, desires and sorrows connected to Canadian composer Claude Vivier's (1948-1983) unusual destiny. All characters from Marko Nikodijević's opera originate from Vivier's life and works but they are re-indexed, or reenacted differently. The countertenor voice of Vivier is what primarily makes him different from all the rest of the characters. Even it could be claimed that the rest of the voices are dominated by Vivier's vocal presence on stage. Vivier stands as symbol for minority, queer, vulnerable. During his short life he was trying to get his own voice, voice as the personification of freedom and possibility to be heard. Finally he gets vivid, imaginative opera in which both his physical and personified voices are shining by creativity that his art emanate. He gets his singing voice, and he finally gets heard.

In the 1940s it was unheard of for women to be members of a professional orchestra, let alone play "masculine" instruments like the bass or trombone. Yet despite these formidable challenges, the Montreal Women's Symphony Orchestra (MWSO) became the only all-women orchestra in Canadian history. Formed in 1940, the MWSO became the first orchestra to represent Canada in New York City's Carnegie Hall and one of its members also became the first Canadian black woman to play in a symphony in Carnegie Hall. While the MWSO has paved the way for contemporary female musicians, the stories of these women are largely missing from historical records. From Kitchen to Carnegie Hall illuminates these revolutionary stories, including the life of the incredible Ethel Stark, the co-founder and conductor of the MWSO. Ethel's work opened doors of equal opportunity for marginalized groups and played an important role in breaking gender stereotypes in the Canadian music world.

Nicole Lizée is an award-winning classical music composer and performer who composes for string quartet, electronic music, turntable, film, and other media. She has emerged as a major new voice in new classical composition, winning the coveted Canada Council for the Arts Jules Léger Prize (2013) for new Canadian chamber music with her work White Label Experiment. She has been commissioned by the Kronos Quartet among many other prestigious ensembles. This interview engages her relation to various aspects of her work, from marketing and promotion to inspiration and creation in the context of “avant garde” music. How can marketing continue to be part of the art itself? Does instinctively not fitting into a box allow for greater freedom to explore classical and chamber music in the broader context of film and other media? What other factors may be contributing to the inspired vitality of her work?