Roxanne Turcotte

Amore is a single work in six parts by Roxanne Turcotte, realized at the Faculty of Music of the Université de Montréal between 1986 and 1988 and completed in two Montréal studios in 1992. She calls it a tale told in the language of sound, a film for the ear set mostly in a movie theatre, where a stranger’s hand brushes yours in the dark. Its main source is Roland Barthes’s A Lover’s Discourse.

The tableaux follow themes of love: seduction in a bar, waiting by the telephone, desire, secrets and travel. Turcotte sorts her material into four kinds: suggestive sounds such as telephone rings, heartbeats, club music and French folk songs like Auprès de ma blonde; dreamlike synthesized and sampled sounds; voices standing for unnamed characters, spoken by Judith Bergeron, Daniel Leduc and the composer; and a rhythmic leitmotif that suggests movement. The form follows the cycle of human breathing, tension building to a climax and release. L’amore: préambule alludes to Yellowman, and T’es le fun téléphone to Wes Montgomery.

The texts of Love You, Olé-Léa-Léo and Trop tard come from Navires de guerre by Élise Turcotte, published in 1984. Amore won 2nd prize at the International New Music Composer’s Competition in 1987.

Born in Montréal in 1960, Roxanne Turcotte studied piano at the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal and took a master’s degree in electroacoustic composition at the Université de Montréal in 1988, with Marcelle Deschênes and Francis Dhomont. She works as a composer and sound designer for concert, film, radio, theatre and circus.

CD in crystal case, empreintes DIGITALes IMED 9413, 1994.