electrocd

Track listing detail

Arksalalartôq

Micheline Coulombe Saint-Marcoux

  • Year of composition: 1970-71
  • Duration: 6:45
  • Instrumentation: stereo fixed medium
  • Commission: Ina-GRM
  • ISWC: T0708735710

Stereo

ISRC CAD500114580

  • 44,1 kHz, 16 bits

Beyond the surface meanings of language we may become aware of a world where the play of decomposition, association and juxtaposition produce an unlimited number of sounds and sonorities. A kind of verbal delirium, or vertigo. Arksalalartôq, based on texts by Québec poets Noël Audet and Gilles Marsolais, expresses the vertigo of words and sounds, by analogy with the Inuit game (most often played by women) in which participants test their creative and inventive powers as well as their stamina by emitting sounds most of which are meaningless.

During the creation of this work, Coulombe Saint-Marcoux recognized the resistance of some sonic materials and the importance of openness for the composer. In an interview with Lyse Richer, she said that she worked for two days on a ten-second montage that refused to do what she wished. Suddenly, she decided to play it backwards, and found the result to be marvellous: “one must not be too stubborn. The material at hand has its potential at the start, and its exigencies and its limits” (Richer 1984: 22).

“Many inexpressible forces express themselves in a counterpoint of strolling voices and searchlights, where the hiccuping voice finally finds its broken voice, and where, once we have approached the work from the opposite direction, we find both the spirit of Pierrot lunaire and the musical lessons of Erwartung” — JJ Van Vlasselaer, Le Droit, Ottawa, 9 février 1982.

[English translation: Andra McCartney]


Arksalalartôq was realized in 1970-71 in the GRM studios (Paris, France) and premiered on February 26, 1971 during the “Journées-rencontres du GRM” in Les Halles (Paris, France). Arksalalartôq was commissioned by the Ina-GRM. A mixed version—for voice, electronics and tape—was realized in 1976 at the request of actress-singer Meg Sheppard and composer-pianist alcides lanza and recorded on the disc Transmutations: voice, piano & electronics, New Music from the Americas vol. 3 (Shelan, ESP 9601).


Premiere

  • February 26, 1971, Journées-rencontres du GRM, Halles Baltard, Paris (France)

Composition

Contrastances

Micheline Coulombe Saint-Marcoux

  • Year of composition: 1971
  • Duration: 6:34
  • Instrumentation: stereo fixed medium
  • ISWC: T0708215024

Stereo

ISRC CAD500114590

  • 44,1 kHz, 16 bits

Developed from a limited amount of material, this study juxtaposes moments whose contrasting effects are produced through different sound treatments. Each moment brings forward its own sound characteristics, and this results in a constant play of opposites.

[English translation: Andra McCartney]


Contrastances was realized in February 1971 in a private studio in Paris (France) and premiered on April 1, 1971 at the Musée d’art moderne, in Paris (France).


Premiere

  • April 1, 1971, Concert, Musée d’art moderne, Paris (France)

Composition

Moustières

Micheline Coulombe Saint-Marcoux

  • Year of composition: 1971
  • Duration: 9:41
  • Instrumentation: stereo fixed medium
  • Commission: GMEB
  • ISWC: T0708008529

Stereo

ISRC CAD500114600

  • 44,1 kHz, 16 bits

The landscape of Moustiers-Sainte-Marie in Haute-Provence, in the French Alps, where Coulombe Saint-Marcoux stayed for a while, suggested to her a suite “whose moments are drawn from the play of forms and of lines that emerged from such an imposing landscape, with its impressive masses of rock, strange sculptures, changing horizon, twinned peaks, desert-like aspect, and so on. The feeling is one of disorientation, vertigo, and fear, but also of contemplation in the face of so much beauty that music cannot completely describe.”

“The different, highly contrasting parts, and times where there is almost… silence. You know how it is when you’re high in the mountains and you perceive a silence coloured by an extremely high frequency. Well, I really felt that, I really experienced it.” (Coulombe Saint-Marcoux in interview with Richer 1984: 19)

[English translation: Andra McCartney]


Moustières was realized in 1971 in the GRM studios (Paris, France) and premiered on June 17, 1971 at the Palais Jacques-Cœur during the festival “Dans Bourges ancien musiques d’aujourd’hui” in Bourges (France). Moustières was commissioned by the GMEB (now IMEB).


Premiere

  • June 17, 1971, Dans Bourges ancien musiques d’aujourd’hui, Palais Jacques-Cœur, Bourges (Cher, France)

Composition

Zones

Micheline Coulombe Saint-Marcoux

  • Year of composition: 1971-72
  • Duration: 9:02
  • Instrumentation: stereo fixed medium
  • ISWC: T0705550599

Stereo

ISRC CAD500114610

  • 44,1 kHz, 16 bits

Zones was constructed from sounds made by several keyboard instruments, such as harpsichord, piano, organ and electronic keyboard instruments. The purpose was to arrive at a fusion of tone qualities by manipulating the original sounds in the same way. Four zones result from this, each with its own particular character. First the original sounds are filtered and modulated in a sort of gyratory rocking; then a pizzicato string sequence gives the second zone an iterative quality which could be represented graphically by a series of small points. The third zone is inhabited by a long sound, a kind of continuum of conversation; followed, in the fourth zone, by shock sounds whose resonances, rather than falling gradually, move in spirals. The whole work ends in a small coda in which the sustained and pointillistic elements return together.


Zones was realized from December 1971 to January 1972 in the Sonic Research Studio of Simon Fraser University (SFU) (Vancouver, BC) and premiered on March 25, 1972 during the Festival international d’Art contemporain (Royan, France).


Premiere

  • March 25, 1972, Festival international d’art contemporain, Royan (Charente-Maritime, France)

Composition

Constellation I

Micheline Coulombe Saint-Marcoux

  • Year of composition: 1981
  • Duration: 18:41
  • Instrumentation: stereo fixed medium
  • Commission: GMEB
  • ISWC: T0707603982

Stereo

ISRC CAD500114620

  • 44,1 kHz, 16 bits

To Françoise Barrière and Christian Clozier

Constant spiral, opposing, conciliating…
Oscillations of the eternity of time…

By analogy, Constellation I is an artificial association of structures (masses, objects, layers…) in strong contrast, each of which, while emphasizing particular elements of the electroacoustical musical language, has a formal profile clearly marked in space and time.

Constellation I, while not a similar electroacoustic version, adopts more or less the same structural organization as an earlier work, Mandala I, for five instrumentalists. Also based on the theory of the mandala, Constellation I depends essentially on the principle of the unification of highly contradictory forces. Montage objects with a high energy potential articulate and fuse together the nine contrasting moments of the piece, which, however, keep their own configuration in a vast gravitational movement.

Micheline Coulombe Saint-Marcoux, March 15, 1982


Constellation I was realized in June 1981 in the studio of the Groupe de musique expérimentale de Bourges (GMEB—now IMEB—France) and premiered on June 9th (or 10th?), 1982 during Synthèse, the Festival international de musique expérimentale de Bourges (France, 1982). Constellation I was commissioned by the GMEB. This work exists in two versions: one for the concert (presented on this disc), and one for dance (choreography by Martine Époque premired on July 28, 1983 at The Banff Centre for the Arts).


Premiere

  • June 9, 1982, Synthèse 1982: Concert, Bourges (Cher, France)

Composition