Votre recherche

Article sur l'artiste sonore Nancy Tobin.

Certains membres de la scène des musiques nouvelles souhaitent en décentrer ses racines eurocentriques et en critiquer ses tendances colonialistes. Avant même de discuter des stratégies qui pourraient constituer un cadre décolonisateur, il est utile d’identifier comment la colonialité se reflète dans cette scène. L’auteur, lui-même membre actif de celle-ci, partage des pistes de réflexion portant sur l’homogénéité culturelle du milieu, les questions d’accès, l’héritage de la musique classique, le concept de l’excellence européenne, la présomption d’universalité, la coexistence de statuts de légitimité et de marginalité, la relation ambigüe avec l’appropriation culturelle et les fondements de l’attribution du mérite.

Ethel Stark (1910-2012) was one of the most important conductors and concert violinists in Canada in the Twentieth century. This article highlights how an Austro-Canadian Jewish woman who lived outside the constraints of conventional domesticity, both navigated through and defied the ideals of the “Cult of True Womanhood” and spearheads a movement of feminism in music. I argue that Stark’s exposure to Jewish cultural traditions of social justice and womanhood in her childhood formed a critical dimension of her feminist activism later in her life, and in particular in the founding of The Montreal Women’s Symphony Orchestra (1940).

Dora Cojocaru is recognized as an outstanding representative of the Cluj school of composition, but also as a strong voice in Romanian musicology. While her musicological output includes books, studies, articles, radio programs, conference papers, master classes and scientific communication sessions, her most important contribution remains the book entitled Creația lui Gyӧrgy Ligeti în contextul stilistic al secolului XX [Gyӧrgy Ligeti's Work in the Stylistic Context of the Twentieth Century], which was the first book about Ligeti that appeared in the Romanian musicological landscape. Dora Cojocaru’s compositional portrait can be drawn by following the language characteristics and compositional devices used in the chamber cantata Dați-mi lampa lui Aladin [Give Me Aladdin's Lamp]. The composer’s work is characterised by a propensity for chamber music. The composer confesses that it is also a consequence of the fact that this genre comes with a plethora of expressive possibilities. In terms of the musical language used by the composer, its first characteristic is the concern to avoid repetition in expression and the variation of an already used musical material. This is strikingly evident in the chamber cantata Dați-mi lampa lui Aladin [Give Me Aladdin's Lamp]. Another peculiarity is the construction based on a developmental discourse, while a third characteristic is the frequent construction of the discourse based on an economy of means and on a musical material consisting of only a few notes. In the case of this cantata, it is essential to note the historical context, which is closely linked to the symbolic title suggesting the composer’s desperate desire to bring her brother back to life, although she is aware that this is only possible by magic. The composer’s choice of lyrics is derived from the fact that Trakl’s and Rilke’s texts allude to the theme of death, which is one of the frequent themes of late Expressionism, and are therefore pervaded by a tragic note, in tune with the composer’s musical intentions. If we follow the text-music relationship, we notice some extremely significant moments, in which music creates sonic images that are suggestive of the message of the text.

This paper presents an analysis of Annesley Black’s not thinking about the elephants (2018), for saxophone quartet and live electronics. Written for Montreal’s Quasar Saxophone Quartet, this work explores concepts of suppression and emergence through traditional musical dimensions such as melody, counterpoint, and form, but also through contemporary musical dimensions such as psychoacoustics (difference tones), theatrical elements, and live electronics. Black’s practice engages critically with the compositional process itself by formulating dialectic relationships between material and compositional strategies (both intuitive and systematic). This work encourages the listener to engage in a multidimensional listening experience where conceptual extremes become a catalyst for the building of narrative and tension.

Un article de la revue Circuit, diffusée par la plateforme Érudit.

Produced by Juro Kim Feliz under the Canadian Music Centre Library Residency, Nomadic Sound Worlds is a four-part blog/podcast series exploring Canadian contemporary music through the lens of present-day global migration. A collection of essays named Letters of Transit: Reflections on Exile, Identity, Language, and Loss (ed. André Aciman, 1999) informs and inspires this project, with trajectories branching out from related themes including mobility, displacement, loss, reconciliation of polarized truths, and invention of selves. In this regard, the series will feature selected immigrant Canadian composers whose musical worlds collide with various personal stories of immigration.

Women have been active as performers of instrumental music since the Medieval period, and yet their contributions are often overlooked. This dissertation examines the history of women’s orchestras outside the United States, and explores their development, as well as reasons for existing. Several factors regarding their development are taken into consideration, including time period, country, and culture in which the ensemble is present. The birth of the women’s orchestra is traced from the ospedali of the 18th century Venice to today. All-female ensembles from England, Canada, Cuba, and Afghanistan are profiled, as well as the Women’s Orchestra in Auschwitz. Two modern-day women’s orchestras – the Allegra Chamber Orchestra in Vancouver, British Columbia, and my recital orchestra at the University of Maryland – were surveyed in an attempt to learn more about the culture of women’s orchestras. This paper seeks to answer the questions “What is the culture of women's orchestras today, and should they continue to exist?”

Carefully preserved in the archives of the Ursuline and Hôtel-Dieu Monasteries of Quebec are several manuscripts containing Canada’s first sacred works for female voices. The manuscripts contain dozens of intricate motets composed in the French Baroque style, a repository of music which has not been sung for hundreds of years. These motets form a neglected part of Canada’s musical heritage which is waiting to be unearthed and explored. Ursuline and Augustinian nuns arrived to the French territories of the New World to educate and evangelize young women. Singing formed a core element of their teaching and worship. For over one hundred years (1639-1760), church music provided a backbone to Canada’s vibrant musical culture. When the French territories were lost to Britain and Spain, musical culture shifted radically and the sacred French music simply faded into obscurity. An overview of the sweeping events of the French Baroque era includes discussion of France’s social conditions, the political and religious climate, the flowering of the arts and the exploration of the New World. In France, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were a time of great strife which heralded the massive social changes to come in the nineteenth century. France’s struggles directly impacted the colony of New France, including that of its religious institutions and music. This study traces the musical activities in the Ursuline community of New France as the nuns lived their mission on the frontier, teaching Aboriginal and colonial girls. The evolution of female emancipation stemming from religious evangelism is considered. Examination of a trove of 160 motets located in the female monasteries of Québec City reveals the high caliber of music practiced by the nuns. No interpretive editions for performance purposes exist. Newly transcribed works have been generated from the manuscripts, with period performance guidance for appropriate ornamentation and ensemble requirements. An in-depth discussion of New France Baroque vocal and choral musical styles is provided, with reference to historical records of how it was taught, as described in contemporaneous music treatises and many original documents specific to these religious female communities.

Réflexion sur la dépolitisation et l’éclaircissement du hip-hop lors de son passage dans la culture de masse.

To measure Maryvonne Kendergi’s contributions to the smcq, it is necessary to revisit her career in Quebec, which was based on the solid academic and professional training she received at Parisian institutions from 1929 to 1952. Thereafter, in Montreal, she was hired by Radio-Canada for her exceptional voice, and in September 1956, she embarked on a brilliant radio career as a promoter of contemporary music. Kendergi gradually introduced the listening public to the arcana of the Montreal avant-garde. In this endeavour she was encouraged by Stockhausen’s arrival in Montreal in 1958, by composers’ efforts in organizing International Music Week in 1961, by the foundation of the smcq in 1966, and by the influence of the latter organization, particularly in its collaboration with the Université de Montréal in establishing the Musialogues in 1969. The role of Kendergi’s exceptional skills in broadening the influence of the smcq is explored in this article.

Quebec composer Linda Bouchard (born 1957) is an extremely prolific composer, particularly active on the new music scene in the u.s. where she has lived for lengthy periods since 1989. She has composed a rich and diverse catalogue of works, ranging from orchestral music to more intimist instrumentations, and also using multimedia or improvisation. In this interview, the composer reflects on the question of exile and identity in light of her own experience, thus reliving her own artistic path while also addressing some still burning questions about the place of music creators in the global culture.

Cet article analyse la nouvelle collaboration entre la compositrice et pionnière de musique électronique, Éliane Radigue, et le Quatuor Bozzini. Débutant vers la fin des années 1960, la carrière d’Éliane Radigue se caractérise par de très longues oeuvres de musique électronique qui semblent de prime abord ne pas changer, et dans lesquelles les micro-oscillations naturelles entre les hauteurs remplacent la rythmique traditionnelle. Depuis 2001, Radigue ne travaille plus qu’avec des instrumentistes et utilise un « processus de composition intuitif » semblable à la « transmission orale de musiques traditionnelles anciennes » (Sonami 2017). Alors que les quelques intellectuels qui ont fait montre d’intérêt envers la musique de Radigue ont concentré leur attention sur l’aspect oral de ses compositions, cet article cherche ici à amener l’analyse au-delà des paramètres formels « non-écrits » de sa musique afin d’explorer comment la sonorité d’une pièce de Radigue génère de nouvelles manières de concevoir la performance et la composition. Les notes d’observation de l’auteure, la correspondance entre l’auteure, la compositrice et le quatuor, et les enregistrements des rencontres entre les Bozzini et Radigue seront utilisés pour retracer les moments de grande réaction émotionnelle causés par la sonorité très particulière que demande la musique de Radigue. Ces réactions affectives du côté de Radigue et du quatuor révèlent des points de tension entre différentes conceptions de la création collective, et réorientent complètement ce que cela signifie que de posséder, transmettre, interpréter et composer de la musique. Des spectrogrammes et des enregistrements des tentatives entreprises par les Bozzini seront utilisés dans l’étude de ces points de tension, et démontreront qu’afin de pouvoir jouer avec succès une pièce instrumentale de Radigue, les Bozzini doivent reproduire chaque élément des pièces électroniques de la compositrice; le quatuor à cordes doit se « transformer » en un étrange instrument.