subscribe! - La Scena Musicale

MUSICULTURE
IN MEMORIAM
Maryvonne Kendergi
by LOUISE BAIL
Author of Maryvonne Kendergi, La musique en partage (Hurtubise HMH, 2002)
cabin and writes things and then sends them out into the world,” Mazzoli
agrees. “But I think that that’s really outdated.” For many musicians
today, composing seems to be as much about absorbing culture
as it is about creating it.
“Music that only you can write”
It was, however, exactly this appetite for varied influences that Pulitzer
Prize-winning critic Justin Davidson attacked in a March 2011 New
York Magazine piece. Naming, among others, Muhly and Mazzoli as
part of “an omnivorous generation of composers” who “go merrily
Dumpster-diving in styles of the past and of distant parts,” he concludes
that “with their range of choices oppressively wide… [their
music] bristles with allusions and brims with ambition—yet it somehow
feels stifled by all that freedom.” Is this the future that Alex Ross
described, when “reproduction will displace production” and “new
music will consist of rearrangements of the old”?
When The Wall Street Journal asked him to comment on Davidson’s
argument, Muhly replied: “That’s just a boring ages argument…
[like] people who are horrified that now that you can get Thai green
chillies in the supermarket, every hausfrau can cook up a curry. It’s
the end of the world! It’s always been the case that young artists have
more access to more things and the only question is whether you have
the skills to use them.”
It’s true that in other streams of music, such as rock or jazz—or classical
music before the 20 th century—innovating on established forms
is not considered uncreative pastiche. Mazzoli believes the sum of varied
influences can in fact be the key, paradoxically, to a unique voice.
“You have to write the music that only you can write,” Mazzoli says. But
that springs from “the sum of all your influences and experiences—
which are really unique to you. I try to write music that is really of my
time and place in the world. I’m not trying to recreate things that happened
in the fifties, sixties, or even the nineties. My music comes from
a lot of different places. The music that I like the best—whether it’s
classical or pop or whatever—always has this element of familiarity
mixed with a lot of great surprises.”
The greatest surprise of all may be how we classify indie classical in
fifty years. A marketing and media attempt to popularize instrumental
music? Chronologically in a music history book some pages after
minimalism? A death knell for classical music as a mainstream genre,
the parallel to what Dylan or Davis going electric signalled for folk and
jazz? Forgotten?
Regardless, Mazzoli has one hope; that, “in the future, people will
really still be listening to the music.”
Perhaps she’s right. Perhaps the music can speak for itself.
LSM
Warhol Dervish plays Muhly, Mazzoli, and Parry at Sala Rossa, followed by The Youjsh
(another genre-busting ensemble). December 18 at 9 p.m. For more information
on Warhol Dervish and the concert, visit www.violalotus.tumblr.com
This article is the first in a series exploring new music in a social context. Next edition—
The rise of start-up ensembles: what’s behind the musical entrepreneurship trend?
ON SEPTEMBER 27, 2011, Maryvonne Kendergi, a beacon of
modern music in Quebec known as “the grandmother of composers”
or the “great lady of music,” gently passed away at the age of 96.
The title of Kendergi’s memoirs, La musique en partage, aptly
describes the personal and professional
life of the composer, who used
her talents in the service of those
close to her and shared her savings
with those less fortunate.
Her accomplishments demonstrated
her exceptional gifts as a presenter
and organizer. The broadcast
series Festivals européens (1956-
1963), where she reported on works
from the great festivals of Europe,
opened the doors to her brilliant career
in radio. In 1961, with Pierre
Mercure and Serge Garant, she organized
the Semaine internationale
de musique actuelle.
At the instigation of Pierre Mercure, she helped establish the Société
de musique contemporaine du Québec in 1966 alongside Serge
Garant, Jean Papineau-Couture, Hugh Davidson and Wilfrid Pelletier.
In 1967, she joined the University of Montreal’s Faculty of
Music. In 1970, she created and organized the ‘Musialogues.’ In 1980,
she readily lent her support to the Association pour l’avancement de
la recherche en musique du Québec (ARMuQ, . now known as the Société
québécoise de recherche en musique or SQRM), becoming its
first president. She also donated the Maryvonne Kendergi fund to
the UdeM, from which scholarships are awarded annually to musicology
students.
Of Armenian origin, she was born during the First World War, on August
15, 1915 in Aintab (Gaziantep), on the southern border of modern
Turkey. Survivors of genocide, her family moved to Aleppo, Syria. In 1928,
the young Maryvonne completed her primary schooling with the Sisters
of the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary, where she studied piano, discovering
her musical vocation. She went to France to pursue her music
studies at the École Normale de Musique in Paris with Nadia Boulanger.
There, she completed a teaching degree (1933) before returning to the
Middle East to try out a career as a concert artist (1933-1937).
During the war, she helped prisoners and refugees, organized food
banks, and supported the rescue networks for Jewish children. After
the war, thanks to the friendships she had developed during this period,
she was entrusted with the organization and management of
cultural activities at the Cité Universitaire de Paris (1945-1952).
While there, she rubbed shoulders with composers who introduced
her to avant-garde music.
She left Gravelbourg, Saskatchewan after four years in June 1956
to pursue a concert career in Paris, little knowing that as she passed
through Montreal, Marc Thibault, director of the French radio network,
would succeed in keeping her there with this prescient statement:
“Would you like to do what you are made to do?”
Wherever she went she carried with her a deep attachment to her
Armenian roots, a steadfast appreciation for France, the country
that gave her its language and culture, and an unequivocal allegiance
to Quebec, where she eventually settled.
LSM
TRANSLATION: LYNN TRAVERS
16
DECEMBER 2011 / JANUARY 2012