Après, les cendres is an acousmatic work inspired by the poems ICBM (Intercontinental Ballistic Missile) and Nous sommes installés sous le tonnerre… [Under thunder] taken from the collection of poems Pour les âmes (Typo, 1993) by Québécois author Paul-Marie Lapointe (1929-2011).

ICBM (Intercontinental Ballistic Missile) evokes, among other things, humankind lulled by a false sense of security. The metaphor of sleep used in the text symbolizes an anesthetized conscience in the face of the unthinkable, as the lines “un bombardier repose à tes côtés / tes nuits sont assurées!” [a bomber rests by your side / your nights are safe!] ironically emphasize. In Nous sommes installés sous le tonnerre…, a terrible prophecy is announced: “le signe de la foudre marque les hommes au jour le jour” [the sign of lightning weighs on men day after day]. Fate governs our existence, and its inevitability haunts our minds.

The first three sections of Après, les cendres — noir présage, chants de mines, mur des silences — evoke the obsessive nature of fate and its manifestation in the realm of dreams. An introspective universe is created by the presence of ephemeral, furtive sounds, tormented, insistent melodies, and materials shaped by unstable spatial movements, all of which conspire to create a dreamlike universe. These sections conclude with a chimeric melody that seems to slide towards an abyss.

The final section of the work — incandescente fureur — begins with the fulfilled prophecy. A day of fury! The incandescent dawn rises in the thrust of a implacable martial motif inspired by the verses “dans la terreur arborescente des pics et des marteaux / dans le filet des sirènes / prisonniers des heures et des armes” [in the arborescent terror of spikes and hammers / in the net of sirens / prisoners of hours and arms] (Nous sommes installés sous le tonnerre…).

The work concludes with the pain left behind in the ashes of war, as perfectly expressed in this moving line: “les enfants se recroquevillent comme des feuilles brûlées” [children curl up like burnt leaves] (ICBM (Intercontinental Ballistic Missile)). We then witness the ascent of delicate, evanescent matter, freed from Earth’s gravity, like shattered souls pursuing their infinite journey.

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Après, les cendres was realized in 2023 at the composer’s studio in Brossard (Québec) with support from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (CALQ) and premiered on October 22, 2023 as part of the L’Espace du son festival at Théâtre Marni in Brussels (Belgium).

Premiere

• October 22, 2023, L’Espace du son 2023: Concert portrait: Stéphane Roy, Théâtre Marni, Brussels (Belgium)

Awards

• Honorable Mention, Category A (fixed medium), Musica Nova 2023, Prague (Czech Republic)
• Finalist, Prix CIME 2025

To Jean-François Laporte

The polyphonic and feral instrument Babel table (invented by Jean-François Laporte) caught my interest as soon as I started experimenting its possibilities and its power to generate vibrant and wild acoustic beings. The work was composed around the idea of an acoustic bestiary (bestiaire sonore) comprised of intense, roaring acoustic material as well as nimble and feral morphologies, and sounds evoking the lyrical warble of feathered animals. Bestiaire à hauteur d’oreille incorporates sections with stratified textures, where the instrument takes the center of the acoustic stage. Other, more densely articulated sections lead to close interplay between the instrument and the electronic part.

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Bestiaire à hauteur d’oreille was realized in 2022 at the composer’s studio in Brossard and in the workshop of Productions Totem contemporain, in Montréal. The work premiered on September 26, 2022 by Jean-François Laporte during the To Listen To festival at the Conservatorio Statale di Musica Giuseppe Verdi in Turin (Italy). The piece was commissioned by Productions Totem contemporain. Many thanks to Jean-François Laporte, Productions Totem contemporain’s artistic director, for his generosity and valuable involvement in exploring the instrumental possibilities of the Babel table.

Premiere

• September 26, 2022, To Listen To 2022: Concerto #1, Conservatorio Statale di Musica Giuseppe Verdi, Turin (Italy)

About this sound recording

Thanks to Guillaume Barrette for the sound recording.

Recording

• August 24 – 25, 2022, Guillaume Barrette • Espace bleu – Édifice Wilder – Espace danse, Montréal (Québec)

Mixing

• November 2024, Stéphane Roy • Personal studio, Brossard (Québec)

Performers

• Jean-François Laporte, Babel table

Time passing like a quiet caravan, a perpetual flow that ignores human beings with their consciousness of past, present and future, a movement that nothing can derail or slow down and that flows inexorably through infinite small slices of “present”: this is the background on which our existences unfold. Music, like any art of time, unfolds in this dimension, but at the same time it gives it a human face, creating an experiential time where the temporal flow, either precipitous and elusive or frozen in suspension, “remembers” or “anticipates,” contracts, dilates, and wraps around itself in an endless loop.

Avec le temps… is a 5.1 multichannel acousmatic suite that includes nine miniatures with their own temporal identity. These miniatures can be presented in variable geometry and assembled in a different order for each concert to highlight new dynamic relationships between them. I leave it to the listener to determine the temporality of these different moments. But beyond the temporal thematic, there is the music which dominates experiential time through its phonographies, its spatial configurations, its meaningful silences, its lyricism, and its fury. “Sound-footprints” recur at various moments throughout the acousmatic suite, as well as a leitmotiv formed by an iteration in echo, which can be regular, in contraction or in dilation, and which symbolizes experiential time.

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Avec le temps… was realized in 2022 at the composer’s studio in Brossard with research and creation funding from the Canada Council for the Arts (CCA). The grouping of the miniatures chute, tressaillement, and ondoiement from Avec le temps… was awarded an Honorable Mention at the 12th Musicworks Electronic Music Composition Contest (Toronto, Canada, 2022-23).

Premiere

• March 17, 2023, Assemblage II: Portrait de la musique électroacoustique au Québec: Concert 8 — Stéphane Roy, Studio dôme — Faculté de musique — Université de Montréal, Montréal (Québec)

Awards

• Honorable Mention, 12th Musicworks Electronic Music Composition Contest 2022-23, Toronto (Ontario, Canada)