Music society declares season of Denis Gougeon
Prolific composer’s works described as ‘an act of pure generosity’
Denis
Gougeon: You know the name if you have been paying attention. This tenured professor of composition at the Université de Montréal has been at it for years, writing music that actually gets performed, even applauded.
And acclaimed? Well, yes. A database perusal of the many appearances of the composer’s name in The Gazette uncovers a serious shortage of pans. Which leads those scoring at home to wonder whether the streak will continue through 2013-2014, which the Société de musique contemporaine du Québec (known more economically as SMCQ) has declared to be the season of Denis Gougeon.
This is not the first time the new-music society, directed for a quarter of a century by Walter Boudreau, has used the “hommage” strategy to lift one of its own above the status of SMCQ member in good standing. Some will recall that 2011-12 was the season of Ana Sokolovic, another composer who combines sophisticated technique with a certain curb appeal.
“Contrarily to a large majority of composers who are fundamentally concerned with their precious little navel and don’t give a damn about the audience or performers,” Boudreau says — in typically feisty form — “Denis Gougeon’s music represents, to me, an act of pure generosity.
“Even though his works are comparable to the intricate mechanics of watchmaking, they always remain accessible to the public — young, older, scholars or neophytes. They demonstrate a rare and profound consideration, an intense concern for direct and immediately frank communication.”
Fine. But are they any good? As early as March 17, 1986 I gave the thumbs-up to the première of Éternité, a tribute to the composer Claude Vivier, whose death three years earlier was still keenly felt. The Orchestre métropolitain, then a 5-yearold ensemble in short pants, performed under the direction of Gougeon’s teacher Serge Garant (who had less than eight months to live).
“After a sustained orchestral interlude in a dissonant mode, the soprano enters, with an unexpected lush- ness that can only be called Straussian,” ran the review. “This section, called Les Adieux, was the heart of the composition, unabashedly romantic in sentiment and full of confident, sensuous strokes of orchestration.”
Keep in mind that writing sensuous strokes, confidently or otherwise, in the stillserial 1980s, was Not Done. Although it was typical of Gougeon’s budding eclecticism that Éternité ended with music for tape, undoubtedly a great relief to the composer’s hardcore companions.
The soprano on this occasion was Gougeon’s wife, Marie-Danielle Parent, who also appears on Sept. 27 in Salle Pierre-Mercure. This opening of the SMCQ season includes Heureux qui, comme … (1987; the title is a reference to a 16th-century poem by Joachim du Bellay) and En accordéon (2004), the latter with accordionist Joseph Petric in the title role. (OSM subscribers might recall Gougeon’s Écoutez mon histoire, a 2008 scrapbook of folk tunes featuring singer-accordionist Yves Lambert.) Works by the American notables John Adams and John Zorn round out the evening, led by Boudreau.
On Dec. 8, the two-piano team of Brigitte Poulin and Jean Marchand give the premiere of Gougeon’s Andante Sostenuto and his arrangement of Vivier’s Pulau Dewata (among the other works is André Hamel’s reluctantly accessible Propos sur Rachmaninov). March 24 offers a potpourri of Gougeon’s theatrical music at the Conserva- toire; the concert of April 17 is highlighted by Six thèmes solaires, a cycle that (despite the title) goes Holst two better by treating all 10 major solar bodies, including the sun. This score distributing musicians throughout the hall was written in 1990, before there was a fuss over Pluto.
Two of the SMCQ concerts are Gougeon-free. But consult smcq.qc.ca and you will find a prodigious list of list of other presenters and performers who are getting into Gougeon this season, including the Conservatoire, the Université de Montréal, the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, the OSM (in one of its chamber concerts) and I Musici de Montréal.
This last ensemble under Jean-Marie Zeitouni is doing Gougeon the signal honour of commissioning a premiere for its 30th-anniversary concert of May 15. It is worth noting that IMDM founder Yuli Turovsky, in his last interview for The Gazette, mentioned Gougeon’s Coups d’archet — Bow Strokes — as one of the orchestra’s best commissions.
All this Gougeoniana will certainly make the composer better known. Will it make him better liked? A question to ask in May. The month is September, but there are still festivals, including the Quebec International Sacred Music Festival in the provincial capital. The opening evening on Saturday features the famous Gabrieli Consort under Paul McCreesh.
Since the comparably familiar Tafelmusik (with baritone Tyler Duncan in Bach’s Cantata No. 82 and Jeanne Lamon in her last Quebec appearance as music director) will perform the following Friday, one might suppose this to be essentially an early-music extravaganza. But the Creole Choir of Cuba is among the attractions, as is jazz chanteuse Karen Young, who presents a work, Missa Campanulae, dedicated to the memory of her mother.
There is a performance of Rachmaninoff ’s 20th-century (but ancient-sounding) Vespers by the Clarion Choir (New York) and Musica Antiqua St. Petersburg (Russia) under Steven Fox. Even the Gabrieli concert includes some contemporary English music.
“The mission of the festival is to help bring sacred music to as large a public as possible, without any religious or linguistic barriers or restrictions on styles,” Taylor says. “The musical representation of faith has as many faces as there are historical eras, religions, geographic regions and composers.”
Non-believers are welcome. Young says her mother was agnostic. Go to www.imsq.ca for more information.