v. 31 no. 2 August / août 2003
Review of Gilles Tremblay
Gilles Tremblay. Canadian Composers Portraits.
Toronto: Centrediscs, 2003. CMCCD 9003. $20.00. Two compact discs. Disc 1:
Tremblay documentary produced and prepared by Eitan Cornfield (54:00).
Disc 2 (77:52): Phases (2:07)
(Gilles Tremblay, piano); Réseau (5:54) (Gilles Tremblay, piano); Jeux de
solstices (19:25) (Nouvel Orchestre philharmonique de Radio France, Gilles
Tremblay, chef d’orchestre/conductor); Oralléluiants (24:25) (Pauline
Vaillancourt, soprano; Ensemble de la Société de musique contemporaine
du Québec; Serge Garant, chef d’orchestre/conductor); L’espace du cÉur
(8:30) (Pro Coro Canada, AgnPs Grossmann, chef d’orchestre/conductor;
Croissant (17:53) (Penderecki String Quartet).
Among the most recent composers to be featured in the
Canadian Music Centre’s Portraits
series is Gilles Tremblay. Tremblay, who maintains an active schedule even
in his seventies, has had a profound impact on Canadian music and made
valuable contributions to Canadian culture. He served as a member of the
board of the Société de musique contemporaine du Québec for twenty
years, including six as president and two as artistic director, as a
member of the advisory board of the Canada Council, and as a writer of
both scripts and music for CBC radio. As a professor of analysis and
composition at the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal, he contributed
to the formation of a whole generation of composers. His compositions,
which are rich in their complex mixtures of sound and rhythmic shapes,
have played a significant role in the development of music and
contemporary art in Québec.
The documentary CD breaks from the format established
in previous releases in the series. Instead of interspersing the featured
composer’s remarks with contributions from acquaintances, fellow
composers, and students, Tremblay is the sole speaker. The listener
accompanies producer Eitan Cornfield and the composer on a walk through a
garden cemetery on the north slope of Mount Royal. During this promenade,
Tremblay reflects on his diverse interests and experiences. Questions,
additional remarks, and comments are provided in a voiceover by Cornfield
and musical examples added in the editing process. Although the broader
scope offered by multiple commentators is obviously lost, the listener is
compensated with the intimacy and highly personal nature of this format.
Even speaking in English, which is clearly not his first language,
Tremblay is an extremely eloquent and engaging speaker displaying an
enthusiasm for and curiosity of a wide range of subjects. The natural
setting provides an ideal backdrop for his thoughts and one is easily
captured by his insightful and often poetic reflections. At one point,
while declaring that “running water is the essence of rhythm,”
Tremblay draws the interviewer’s (and thus the listener’s) attention
to the sound of a bubbling brook. “Streams, rivers, waterfalls…if you
slow down these things,” he notes “you
become conscious of the fantastic rhythms…like many Gamelans, or
an orchestra of Indian Tabla making intricate, beautiful rhythms.” To
reinforce this point, Tremblay’s observations fade into a musical
example conveying some of his own intricate and beautiful rhythms.
Unfortunately, such illuminating use of musical examples is rare. The
relationship between spoken remarks and audio examples is mostly
superficial and I felt that, in general, the inherent potential in an
audio documentary to support or enhance verbal descriptions with music was
largely unrealized.
The second CD contains six works written between 1956
and 2001. With two works for solo piano, a string quartet, a work for
soprano and chamber ensemble, an orchestral work, and a choral work, there
is a satisfying balance of genres and mediums that provide a broad
retrospective of Tremblay’s career as a composer. These are definitive
performances, including two that are world premiere recordings. All but
one are played and conducted by the composer himself, or by the ensembles
for which they were written. Although most of the tracks were recorded
live and occasional audience noise is perceptible, I did not find this
distracting. The ambiance of the halls and the energy of the performances
are well captured in these recordings, making for exciting listening. This
aspect is particularly apparent in the Penderecki Quartet’s performance
of Croissant. From the opening notes it practically vibrates with dynamic
tension.
Tremblay’s aesthetic is concerned above all with
sonority, and one is struck, both by his comments in the documentary CD
and in his compositions, by his fascination with this aspect of music. To
cite just one of the works on this recording, Oralléluiants,
Tremblay states that “the instrumentation is characterized by the
use of three double bassists. Most of the time they use natural
open-stringed harmonics, creating an un-tempered universe which tends to
colour the rest of the music.” At
the very opening of the work, the three bass players explore their highest
harmonics to create a mysterious, otherworldly sound, seemingly suspended
in time until interrupted by the violent crash of a Chinese theatre gong.
Later, these same instruments play a fortissimo chord in the low register,
thereby causing an “invisible” (according to the score) note to
emerge. This note is not sounded directly by any one instrument. Rather,
it is produced only through the convergence of the harmonics of all three.
Since the initial releases in the Portraits series,
there have been some welcome modifications in the organization and layout
of the CD package. The audio tracks are now numbered both on the jewel-box
cover and in the accompanying booklet, allowing for easier navigation. The
cues for the tracks in the documentary have also been numbered and a list
of music used in the documentary is provided. Still, although the musical
examples, apparently, are listed in order of appearance, I was unable to
match the titles in the booklet to the audio clips. Song texts are
provided both in the original French and an English translation although,
oddly, these are placed, respectively, at the end of the French and
English notes. Anyone wishing to follow simultaneously the sung text and
the translation is thus forced to flip back and forth over eight pages of
text. The most welcome modification of all, and one that was previously
conspicuous in its absence, is the inclusion of dates and venues for the
performances and an indication as to whether the performances were
recorded live. Given the historical merit and cultural value of these
recordings, this is essential information that should have been included
from the beginning.
The only real disappointment is the liner notes.
Although they are taken from Tremblay’s own writings, they appear to be
incomplete and often disjunct fragments that have been hastily pieced
together. In the note to L’espace du cÉur, for example, there is a
bulleted list of “some prominent features of the material used.”
Written in point form, they are awkward to read, their relationship
to the music unclear, and their contribution to a better understanding of
the piece questionable. Certainly there is much merit in using
Tremblay’s own descriptions of his music, but these would be much more
useful if placed into a coherent and organized text that offers the
listener some insight into the piece and provides him or her with the
tools with which to approach it. On the whole, however, this is an
excellent set. The documentary is informative, engaging, and insightful,
Tremblay’s music is fascinating in its exploration of unconventional and
unusual sonorities, the selections are well chosen to provide a good cross
section of his oeuvre, and the performances are of a uniformly high
calibre.
J. Drew Stephen
Queen’s University