Volume 25 Issue 6 - March 2020

JEREMY SALE PHOTOGRAPHY
Vocal collective Phth (Sarah Albu, fourth from left)
the piece. She decided to bring it to Phth. “It really struck me,” she
said. “There was something non-classical about it and it was quite
different from his other pieces.” When she did research into the piece,
she discovered that it had been originally written for an experimental
dance company, Le Groupe de la Place Royale, that was founded in
1966 by Jeanne Renaud in Montreal. Vivier wanted non-trained voices
or differently trained voices to perform the piece. Even though the
score is very notated, Albu says, it’s again different than his usual
scores, and in fact it is Vivier’s introductory program note to the work
that has given Phth the performance guidance that they’ve most
relied on.
Love Songs for 4 women, 3 men.
To be staged or not/ To be felt not understood/ Let tones from the
others inspire your own/ Let the music flow out of you as if you were
a kid/ Notation is only a reminder for certain states/ Never follow the
signs but only their spirit/ In this score you do what is appropriate
for you to do and let the rest to the others/ Always be in love.
– Claude Vivier.
The score indicates many specific gestures and motifs, and there are
some areas of the piece that for Albu are structured in a similar way
to Karlheinz Stockhausen’s vocal sextet work, Stimmung, composed
in 1968. Different groups of people are doing things in sync with each
other, but the choice of when things enter in time is left up to the
performers, she explained. Albu has added the element of staging to
the performance and this is having an impact on how they approach
the interpretation of the score. “Relationships that we hadn’t figured
out sonically are starting to become apparent by even doing minimal
movements, such as placing two people in a part of the space together.
All of a sudden this relationship is revealed and the way the voice is
being used changes, because you’re not reading a score off a page but
you’re looking at a person.” The overall approach is to let the relationships
and the bodies in the space define the sound and intention.
Because Vivier used a lot of invented language and quotations from
poetic texts, it makes it difficult at times to know what the narrative
is. Should the singer be delivering a love poem to the audience or to
the person standing in front of you? Another aspect of their interpretation
of the piece comes in the way the roles of the main couple are
portrayed. “It’s not always performed by the same two singers, and it’s
not a given that this couple is one male-one female as written. Male/
female voice assignment isn’t always respected, and all of us switch
and have several characters/archetypes throughout the piece.”
One aspect of the history of this work that sparked both my own
and Albu’s curiosity was the fact that the Array Ensemble performed
this work three times shortly after it was composed. According to Bob
Gilmore who wrote a biography of Vivier titled A Composer’s
Life, the composer also authorized a concert version of the
piece. The first performance Array gave was in the fall of 1978
at the Heliconian Hall and during a recent conversation with
one of the performers from that concert, composer and flautist
Tina Pearson shared some of her memories. "It was wonderful
and wacky and inspiring. The piece is a collage of vocal utterances,
including invented languages, German, Latin, whispers,
whistles, shouts, hums and nursery rhymes, all telling
a love story of a main duo with a chorus of unruly commentators.”
She performed in all three concerts and in the
second and third shows performed the role of the lead female
soloist. Array performed the piece again in 1980 at the AGO
and a third time after Vivier’s death in October 1983 at the
Winchester Street Theatre.
Other elements of Phth’s March 14 program will include
group improvisations and other pieces coming from members
of the group. As well, they will be collaborating on a piece
with xLq, a local emerging pop-art duo who will also perform
their own set as part of the evening’s activities. Later on in
March, Phth will be performing a full program, including Love
Songs, at a New Music Edmonton concert, and four members
of the collective, including Gabriel Dharmoo who performed
his Anthropologies imaginaires at the Music Gallery in
January, will be travelling to Winnipeg’s Cluster Festival to perform a
concert of two scored pieces and two structured improvisations.
[Correction: This story has been modified from that which appeared
in print: a consistent number of vocalists appeared in the various
Array performances of Vivier's Love Songs, and in all cases no
instruments other than voice were employed in the piece.]
IN WITH THE NEW QUICK PICKS
!!
MAR 5 TO 8: Women from Space 2020 Festival. A full and diverse lineup of musicians
to celebrate International Women’s Day weekend, including Anne Bourne, Susan
Alcorn playing pedal steel, pianist Kris Davis, free jazz bassist William Barker, percussionist
Germaine Liu, noise sculptor Mira Marti-Gray, and Lieke Van Der Voort leading
a trio featuring Olivia Shortt and Naomi McCarroll-Butler. March 5 to 7 at Burdock and
March 8 at the 918 Bathurst Centre.
!!
MAR 22 8PM: Esprit Orchestra. A program titled “Taiko Returns” featuring
Mijidwewinan (Messages) by
Barbara Croall for Anishinaabekwe
soloist and orchestra; Piano
Concerto by Christopher Goddard;
A Still Life for soprano and
orchestra by Eugene Astapov; and
Mono-Prism for taiko drumming
group and orchestra by Maki Ishii.
!!
MAR 25 TO 27, 7:30PM; MAR
28, 7PM; MAR 29, 2:30PM: Array
Space. “Earth Hour Music: An
Introspective Piano Experience
in the Dark” performed by Frank
Horvat on piano.
!!
MAR 26, 8PM: New Music
Concerts. Trinity-St. Paul’s Centre.
A concert titled “Piano Erhu
Project” with works written for the
PEP ensemble; Corey Hamm on
piano and Nicole Ge Li playing the
erhu. Features works by Canadian
composers Dorothy Chang, Alice
Ho, Terri Hron, Jocelyn Morlock,
Serra Hwang, Angelique Po and
Roydon Tse, as well as Ping Gao
Frank Horvat
(China) and Michael Finnissy (UK).
Wendalyn Bartley is a Toronto-based composer and electrovocal
sound artist. sounddreaming@gmail.com.
24 | March 2020 thewholenote.com