Claude Vivier venerated at new-music festival
Coyness, sensuality add to composer’s lasting appeal
The biennial Montreal/New Music festival could always begin with a work by Claude Vivier, the local (adopted, kicked out of the church choir, murdered by a male prostitute — Hollywood?) and most venerated Canadian composer in the international monastic community of new music; this year is also the 30th anniversary of his death.
The festival opened on Thursday with favourites of Vivier’s mature style. First was Zipangu, written in 1977 after an Oriental tour to clean out theory gunk from schooling. It is a work of “spectralism,” a careful blurring of tones, and this structured swishiness — produced in this case by grating bowing — wraps around a single melody at times comic and slumbering. It ends with sudden chords played normally that land like a stack of thick slices in a good sandwich. I’d speculate this coyness and its sensual undercurrent are part of Vivier’s lasting appeal and reasonable position on the “are you frightened and don’t know why?” spectrum. (Pharmaceutical research played a significant but quiet part in early new music.)
Hymnen an die Nacht was sung by mezzo Marie-Annick Béliveau with Louise-Andrée Baril at the piano. This short piece — which reminds me that traditional concerts should consider new music’s practice of listing durations in the program, creating opportunities for interesting lies — left the night’s deepest impression. It was commis-
Zipangu ended with sudden chords landing like a stack of thick slices in a good sandwich.
sioned for the 1975 Tremplin International Competition and has the range and concision you’d associate with an obligatory work to be heard dozens of times in one day. Béliveau has a superbly clear tone that was perfect for the deceptively simple distended syllables she emitted, like Cassandra, without hope of being understood.
Walter Boudreau conducted the SMCQ ensemble, filled in with the Bozzini Quartet, with familiar intensity in the well appointed but dry-sounding Salle Pierre Mercure. The night ended with La Vie d’un héros, Boudreau’s tribute to Vivier, a friend and drinking companion. It was grandiose on the heels of two dense works, but the allusions grooved while Vivier still rang in our ears. Violinist Noémi Racine Gaudreault attacked the difficult solo with such bitter vigour that when it was over I expected her to tearfully beg for the release of her children, but she smiled instead.
The festival continues until March 3 with more than 50 concerts and events, which include children’s programming for the first time in its 10 years. I am curious about the vocal happening at Place des Arts on Saturday, the Chants du Nord double première at the Conservatoire on Wednesday, the young local composers concert at Place des Arts on Thursday, and Clarificelle, an installation and performance for kids under 4 at Place des Arts on Friday and March 2. But there are many interesting things listed at www.festivalmnm.ca.