Jacques Tremblay’s world is a pretty frightening one. Taking his cue from traditional concerns of musique concrète, his music is cinematic, narrative-based and populated by many recognizable sound-sources. Take the lovely Oaristys, which the composer rather worryingly describes as erotic. It moves programmatically through six stages of a sexual encounter, each one populated by disturbing, disembodied sounds, cavernous echoes and intense dissonance. Maybe this just goes to show subjective any ‘program’ will be, attached to any music, even in this most illustrative genre. Given that Oaristys is Tremblay’s tender ballad, no wonder tracks describing “the unconscious, prowling and searching for a way to enter the fissured wall of memory” or “the cruelties that man has committed in the name of God” are a long way from blissed-out ambience. While the musical content of these pieces is in itself enjoyable enough, the concrete sounds (including spoken words, water, footsteps; the usual things) create a considerably more all-encompassing atmosphere of nastiness. It’s as well that Tremblay puts enough musicality into what he does that you feel you want to keep listening. It’s something like watching a horror movie with your eyes shut.

The last two tracks are less conceptually scary, but just as edgy. Rictus nocturne is the composer’s tribute to jazz, and oddly enough it’s the world of mushy standards which gets the treatment. Still, apart from the odd, obvious sample, what Tremblay is doing here is using the notion of the “jam session,” the informal, after-hours playing where much experimentation often goes on. Combining a variety of electronic techniques under no particular theoretical rubric, Tremblay creates a altogether abstract work of music with very little to do with jazz; though it’s a lot of fun. Jeu d’ondes is a short piece sampling sounds from a yacht (both the boat and the water) and completely re-frying them to produce another abstract composition. Tremblay’s relationship to his sources is ambiguous, transforming some beyond recognition while leaving others untouched. Often, as on the first and final tracks, the results are extremely dramatic; in Oaristys they are strangely beautiful.

Westerkamp began working with R Murray Schafer’s soundscape concepts in the 1970’s while recording the environments surrounding her Vancouver home. Her work is remarkable for its careful and exact transformations of natural sound into musical material. These are some of the most thoughtful environmental compositions ever recorded.

Canadian composer Hildegard Westerkamp’s works have centered around environmental sounds, acoustic ecology, and the creation of soundscapes since the mid-1970s. Her latest release, Transformations, is no exception. This disc contains a collection of works that transform ordinary sound events into unique creations. Westerkamp provides a new way of listening to organized sounds, at times processed, by highlighting the minute details of individual sonic events. This technique attracts attention by making one aware of specific sounds and the environments in which they naturally occur. A Walk Through The City (1981) focuses on the people forgotten and unnoticed in today’s urban society. This work was commissioned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) radio program Two New Hours, and was first broadcast in April 1981. The opening three minutes of A Walk Through The City sounds more like a walk through the airport due to the nature of the material presented. The aircraft sounds suggest the listener is about to depart on a journey; more particularly, a listening adventure. A Walk Through The City is a depiction of an urban soundscape based on a poem of the same title by author Norbert Ruebsaat, who is heard reading his poem throughout. The sounds featured in this work come from the skid row area in Vancouver, British Columbia. Everyday occurrences like low car sounds pulsating, squealing brakes, sirens, pinball machines, and street music are transformed into rhythmic gestures and lyrical passages. Homeless, drunken men, singing children, whispers, and distant shouts are present while the inanimate sounds of the city fade in and out. This composition effectively creates a vibrant aural canvas that immerses the listener in the real surroundings from which these sounds originated. A Walk Through The City forces one to face sometimes disturbing material, people on the streets, without the chance to quickly dismiss or ignore their sad experiences.

Less heart-wrenching subject matter is found in the composition Fantasie for Horns II (1979). This work presents a variety of horn sounds, beautifully woven together, featuring Brian G’Froerer on the French horn. The tape part, Fantasie For Horns I (1978), received an honourable mention at the 1979 International Competition of Electroacoustic Music in Bourges, France. Both pieces feature a collection of various horn sounds and their echoes. Each horn is distinctly recognisable: the Doppler effect of a train horn, the distant call of a fog-horn, a boat-horn along with the gentle lapping of water, an alphorn with its grand echoes. The echo dialogue between the tape material and the French horn draws the listener into the sound experience through Westerkamp’s use of repetitive material. Fantasie for Horns II wonderfully blends the richness of the French horn, both muted and unmuted, with the recorded horns each from their separate environments. Kits Beach Soundwalk (1989) is a work for spoken voice and tape featuring Westerkamp as narrator. In this composition, the voice acts as a commentary to the sound material presented. While this soundwalk includes the sounds of birds, ducks, cars, planes and splashing water, its primary focus is the intimate sounds of barnacles. According to the narrator, the high frequencies of the barnacles increase brain activity, thus stimulating our dream experiences. When the voice is present in this composition, it adds to the peaceful soundscape with its soothing tones. Kits Beach Soundwalk contains varying ostinato patterns of faint birdsong and sparkling barnacles producing a calming and meditative composition.

The electroacoustic work Cricket Voice (1987) is a sound exploration of a desert region in Mexico called the ‘Zone of Silence.’ In this composition, the cricket’s song is transposed, created into short themes, and looped at varying speeds. Elaborate rhythms result from the cricket’s song being played in and out of phase. The sustained high frequencies in Cricket Voice create a rich sonic canvas in which the listener’s sense of time can become blurred. There is never a dull moment, as subtle variants are always present during repetitive passages. Wonderfully playful panning tickles the ears and stimulates the mind to anticipate the unexpected.

The final track of this CD is entitled Beneath the Forest Floor (1992). This electroacoustic composition was also commissioned by CBC Radio’s Two New Hours. It was recommended for broadcast by the International Music Council’s Rostrum of Electroacoustic Music in 1992, and received a special mention at the Prix Italia in 1994. The sounds were recorded from various forests on British Columbia’s westcoast, particularly in Carmanah Valley. This region is known for containing some of the tallest and oldest trees in the world. Clearly audible in Beneath the Forest Floor is the enormous vastness of the forest soundscapes, (punctuated only occasionally by the sounds of small songbirds, ravens, jays, squirrels, flies and mosquitoes). It is not the preservation of sounds alone which captures and transmits the desired soundscape but the imaginative placement of these sound events. It is this creativity that allows the formation of new, attractive, and stimulating acoustic environments. In Beneath the Forest Floor, there are three present. The first adds little or no processing to the recorded samples while the third adds the most processing to the sounds. The second environment fluctuates between the first and the third, representing the shadow world of the forest. Processing effects in this section act as the sun and shadows would, playing with the sound objects in the forest, hiding some in darkness while exposing others to light.

Hildegard Westerkamp’s concern for acoustic is evident in all of her works on this disc through her selection, preservation, and imaginative placement of the sound events. This allows the sounds she records to be transformed into a new listening journey of discovery while retaining the level of magic first experienced in each particular soundscape. Transformations is an enjoyable disc and a wonderful creative accomplishment.

The contrast is remarkable and the results utterly convincing: take late twentieth-century digital multi-track-recording and sound-processing technology, apply it to an instrument that had its heyday 350 years ago, and produce a program of thirteen highly original works by composers from Canada, the United Kingdom, France, and Greece. What you get is a brilliant double CD by Canada’s leading new-music harpsichordist vivie’ vinçent^e.

Next to the invention of music notation around 1100, the invention of sound-recording seems to me to be the most fundamental technological shift in the history of music. In many ways it has had an even more profound effect on music because it is an “open” technology, not based on a specific artistic content (Western music is so intimately bound to its notation that it is at times hard to distinguish between the two), but rather on the basic material of music – sound and silence. The elaboration of sound recording into multi-track studio technique by electric guitarist Les Paul in the late 1940’s, followed by recent developments in computer hard-disc recording, have created a new “virtual” instrument, capable of transforming any musical performance or sonic event into a sequence of sounds that is totally convincing as a musical gesture, yet bears only a tangential relationship to the original source. In short, silence has become a blank canvas on which to paint sounds, unfettered by the technical weakness (or brilliance) of musicians.

With the notable exception of electroacousticians, new music performers and composers have only slowly warmed to the enormous artistic potential of the recording studio – in contrast to the rock world, which would literally be unimaginable without t he multi-track studio. Harpsichordist vinçent^e, whose work is deeply indebted to Glenn Gould’s studio work of the 60’s and 70’s, shows remarkable vision in her approach to the studio, and in her recorded interpretations of the thirteen works on the CD. Rather than using the studio to essentially record live performances, editing to get rid of those pesky mistakes that we humans are prone to, she conceives each work as a distinct sonic entity, designed to be realized in the studio and to be listened to in one’s home. Editing and mixing become an inherent part of the performance, rather than just a way of correcting errors. This is a remarkable creative leap for a performer to make, especially one whose instrument has been ignored by the musical mainstream for almost three centuries.

But I think the harpsichord’s peculiar historical and technical limitations are the strength of this record. The instrument is largely free of the tyranny of the mainstream repertoire that a pianist or a violinist have to contend with – no Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, or Schönberg here. And the limited dynamic range of the instrument, along with its rich palette of timbral variations, make it ideal for electronic treatment, with the studio used to enhance t he performance with elements other wise unattainable.

The most obvious examples of this approach are the three pieces on the CD on which three separate pairs of stereo microphones are used to capture the sound of the instrument from three different acoustic perspectives, the focus then moved back and forth among them to emphasize the works’ structures and create timbral variation – a technique used by electric guitarists for decades, and one that brings new life to the harpsichord.

The most successful of these pieces is à perte d’espace by François Rose. The work uses highly effective 9th and 11th chord voicings and strong rhythmic gestures to create an almost jazzy sense of energy and forward momentum. The musical space alternates between distance and extreme close-up several times during the work, always in order to underline the inherent musical structure of the piece, never just to create gratuitous sonic effect. This type of imaginative composition, combined with vinçent^e’s spirited and creative performance, will win new listeners for the harpsichord.

Brian Cherney’s déploration sets up an intriguing compositiona l and recording process, evolving via rapid-fire cross-cuts (both in the writing and the recording) between dense, virtuosic clusters and atonal passages – played with much bravura by vinçent^e – and more tranquil, tonal music taken from a motet by Josquin des Près. vinçent^e’s use of a dynamic mix, with the acoustic space constantly evolving, rather then being fixed at a single, static point of view, is brilliantly suited to this work – it would be hard to achieve such a convincing performance in a live setting. Though the piece is overly long (once the process is set in motion, we know where it is going, and there are no surprises), it shows how vinçent^e’s concept of the studio can add another dimension to a composer’s work. And the final minute of the work is an inspired use of technology: using a studio fade-out (no, not a diminuendo; remember a harpsichord can’t do that) to achieve the sense of the music disappearing into silence – which is clearly Cherney’s intention, but which would be unrealizable (given the harpsichord’s limitations) without the intervening recording process. This is technology in the service of art.

Of somewhat less interest is Rodney Sharman’s five-minute miniature, kore. The work revolves around a series of pleasant harmonies and arpeggios, but seems to lack any fundamental direction, any musical argument. The subtle use of microphony helps create a sense of some movement in the performance, but cannot overcome the overall static nature of the composition.

With Simon Emmerson’s points of departure, we are shown another side of the harpsichord. The lack of acoustic volume and resonance of the instrument, as compared to the piano, has always been viewed as a weakness, but Emmerson takes a different perspective. By using live electronics to enhance and manipulate the harpsichord’s limited resonant capabilities, he creates a fascinating sense of dialogue between the acoustic sound and the electronic artefacts, which would be very difficult to handle in a work for piano and electronics. Delays, flangers, phasers, chorus, and reverb move in and out of the harpsichord sound as vinçent^e plays Emmerson’s essential linear musical argument at full tilt. This piece opens the door on a Pandor’s box of musical possibilities for harpsichord and live electronics and, given the success of this piece, I would love to hear more of this type of work from vinçent^e and her composer collaborators in the future.

The curious (to modern ears) timbre of the harpsichord at times makes me think of its roots in a distant European past, when the musical hegemony of Western classical music had not yet been canonized by royalties, publishers, academics, and record companies, and the sense of tone colour, attack, and tuning was more open and flexible – perhaps somewhat closer to the folk music that surrounded it. To my ears, the sound often evokes elements of African or Asian music. Muted notes, micro-intervals, and percussive effects make me think of the cora, the kalimba, the koto, or the pipa, in a way no other modern Western musical instrument could.

vinçent^e explores this part of the instrument’s nature with several fascinating works involving alternate tunings, either in quarter-tones or in the “agricola” tuning – a microtonal tuning, named for German musician Martin Agricola (1545) that uses a series of asymmetrical pitch adjustments (ranging from +20 cents to –17 cents), based around the note A (440). Bruce Mather’s saumur at times sounds more Byzantine than contemporary, with its highly seductive quarter-tone melismas and evocative use of microtonal harmony. The alternate tuning is used here as a fundamental part of the work’s architecture, not just as a colouristic effect, to create a work of striking beauty. John Beckwith’s on the other hand is somewhat more conventional. He uses the quarter-tones playfully at times, but never really gives himself over to the tuning, always placing the quarter-tones in reference to our modern intonation system. Calliope Tsoupaki’s piece, common passion, is performed in the agricola tuning. Though at times a bit over-long in its thematic elaborations, it is impressively performed by vinçent^e. Also, the piece emphasizes the subtlety of intonation the harpsichord can achieve and the expressive capabilities of the instrument.

The remaining works on these two CD’s fall more squarely into the modernist camp, while still exploring the instrument’s potential. Wendy Prezament’s 2 pieces for harpsichord and David Eagle’s toccare share a common concern for timbral variation, using the harpsichord’s multiple stops and muting possibilities to create kaleidoscopic textures, which brings forth dramatic performances from vinçent^e. The opening work on the CD, Barbara Pentland’s ostinato and dance, suffers from the composer’s somewhat academic approach to the instrument, leaving one wishing that she had really let loose and given the performer something to dance about!

Pierre Schaeffer’s two-and-a-half-minute miniature, bilude (for harpsichord and tape), does give us something to dance about — specifically, the second Prelude from Bach’s fifth French Suite. A dialogue between the harpsichord (playing the Bach score) and tape (starting out with a piano rendition of the Bach, but evolving into solos for car horns and scissors), the work has a relentless drive and a sophisticated sense of the absurd that makes it truly one of the outstanding moments on this recording. Pierre Desrocher’s eudoxia exhibits a similar sense of drive, using repeated arpeggios and cascading harmonies to create an exhuberant tour de force, which vinçent^e performs with the kind of carefully considered reckless abandon that the work requires.

The final seven minutes of the record are given over to a conceptual work entitled …the idea of silence…, the title clearly paying homage to Glenn Gould’s radio work The Idea of North. Consisting largely of recorded silence, with very few quiet noises in the middle, the piece follows directly after the fade-out of the Cherney work, acting as an extended coda to the disc, giving the listener time to consider what she: has just listened to. Like most purely conceptual works, the practical realization is imperfect (my normally very quiet NAD CD player was cranked so high to hear the sounds on the record that the most noticeable noise was the electronic pre-amp noise…), but then, I guess, that isn’t the point.

But my point is this: vivie’ vinçent^e has created a very ambitious and very powerful double CD that convinces us not only of her considerable talents as a harpsichordist, but of her new and original vision of the instrument and its relationship with contemporary technology.

Das vorzügliche kanadische Elektroakustik-Label empreintes DIGITALes stellt in einer Serie neuere Komponisten vor, die in ausführlichen Beiheften ihrc Arbeit erläutem und deren Biographie/Werdegang ebenfalls mitgeliefert wird. Robert Normandeau ist vornehmlich am klanglichen Potential menschlicher Stimmen interessiert. Le renard et la rose beginnt mit einem Gelächter, welches sich langsam in ein fieses Sauggeräusch steigert, um dann von brodelnden Gesprächsfetzen dunkler Männerstimmen weggewischt zu werden. Mit ähnlichen Spannungsbögen arbeiten Normandeau auf der ganzen Platte: Gegensätze werden geschaffen und durch überraschende Wendungen in der Formgebung der Stücke aufgelöst. Ohne Zwang oder den Druck der Veränderung. Clevere Musik ist immer dann gut. wenn man garnicht merkt, wie clever sie ist. Garantiert in keinem Tesco-Katalog!

The pieces on this CD provide a powerful retrospective of Westerkamp’s work with environmental sound sources. And it is ‘work’ that we hear: these are not unadulterated soundscapes—pristine aural documents of time and place—but carefully wrought sonic forms in which the composer performs a subtle non-invasive surgery on our listening. Sometimes her intervention is more overt; as in Kits Beach Soundwalk where her speaking voice becomes the guide that leads us through a transforming world, suggesting her own sonic dreamscapes and depicting them in sounds along the way. Here we travel together through the shimmering chatter of barnacles to birds, beeps, watery tricklings and even a ghostly thread of Mozart before the low-pitched ‘monster’ of the city returns. This is perhaps the most didactic journey on the CD, but in the most forgiving and imaginative sense of that word.

Another piece, A Walk Through The City also includes speech, but this time as a poem spoken by its author, Norbert Ruebsaat. His voice, sometimes confined in short-wave radio timbres, sometimes real and reciting, sometimes whispering in the listener’s ear, is the central all-knowing presence in this tale of urban sounds. Westerkamp did not record all the original sounds herself (many are from the World Soundscape Project’s admirable collection) and it sometimes shows in some obviously ‘archival’ recording perspectives. But perhaps this kind of distancing is appropriate in a piece which veers from personal to impersonal, taking the listener on a swooping flight above the real city, where layered children’s voices, reminiscent of Gesang der Jünglinge or evocative mouth-organ strains, emerge unexpectedly from evolving traffic sounds and sliding drones and glissandi. The closing gesture, three separated descents—a tough and final punctuation—is inspired, while the use of spoken poetry in conjunction with such a rich sonic world makes for challenging and ultimately rewarding listening. This is a piece that asks, and deserves, to be heard again and again.

An earlier piece Fantasie for Horns II, dating from 1979, is for live horns (Brian G’Froerer) and tape; the tape using the sounds of other horns: cars, trains and whistles. An harmonic world characterized by slow drones and filtered timbres becomes the background for a surprisingly Mahlerian horn part.

Cricket Voice begins with looped rhythmic patterns that are almost minimalist in character, but soon the layered sounds, derived from the cricket’s call, weave a peculiarly tactile fabric. This is a composer who loves beautifully sculpted timbres, often focussing on high frequency and carefully ‘hand-tinted’ spectra, or using low and high pitched sounds in an almost metaphorical sense. Many of the sounds have the clear, crisp hyper-reality of the acousmatic world, but Westerkamp has different stories to tell.

The final piece on the CD, Beneath the Forest Floor is the most recent, dating from 1992. This forest grows from a low-pitched rhythmic drone and blooms as a primeval world in which birds cross the densely populated space suddenly and without warning. In the other pieces Westerkamp seems, to me at least, present and accompanying the listener: her words, or her musical processes, travel with us. Here, I felt comfortably lost—abandoned in an only occasionally familiar world which rose into an ecstatic sunlit reiteration of piping tones, birdsong and watery oscillations. Just when kitsch-ness was on the cards the music shifted a gear upwards and became a more abstract, transcendent encounter. Reading the liner notes I see this work is, for Westerkamp, about peace and the ‘inner forest’ in each listener. As with all the pieces here, she suggests a signposted listening path. But one gets the feeling that it’s fine to walk around in the woods awhile.