The basic material for Jeu d’ondes (Wave Play) is a quote from Maurice Ravel’s Jeu d’eau and recordings of the different sounds found on a sailboat (the rustling of sails, creaking cables, clattering of winches…). The work is set in a kind of imaginary marina, where sailboats, passenger ships and pleasure crafts have met to inaugurate a new ship: the unsinkable FM network.

I have used quotes from radio broadcasts that bring to mind the first worries regarding the project to create an FM network which, with the passage of time, now make us smile, faced with this ex-future forever unveiled.

Jeu d’ondes was realized in September 1994 at the composer’s studio. It was commissioned by the Société Radio-Canada for the 20th anniversary of its FM network [now called Chaîne culturelle].

Composition

• September 1994, Personal studio, Montréal (Québec)