Robert Normandeau

Clair de Terre brings together three works by Robert Normandeau composed between 1999 and 2001, two of them born from his music for the theatre of director Brigitte Haentjens. All three apply his idea of a cinema for the ear, where meaning and sound carry equal weight.

Malina (2000), dedicated to Haentjens, comes from her stage adaptation of Ingeborg Bachmann’s 1971 novel Malina, presented in Montréal in 2000. Its only source is the shakuhachi of Claire Marchand, a flutist who adapted modern flute techniques to the instrument. The concert version was commissioned by the IMEB and premiered at the Synthèse festival in Bourges, and received an Honorable Mention at Musica Nova 2000. Erinyes (2001), dedicated to Anne-Marie Cadieux, uses wordless onomatopoeias recited by the actors of Haentjens’ staging of Sophocles’ Electra, among them Marc Béland, Anne Dorval and Andrée Lachapelle. The voices are “frozen” by computer so they can be explored from within. It was commissioned by the Sonorities Festival in Belfast and belongs to his Onomatopœia cycle.

The title work, Clair de terre (1999), lasts 36 minutes and was written for 16 channels. It starts from the first photograph of the Earth seen from space, roughly contemporary with the birth of electroacoustic music. After an overture, twelve short movements each take an element of film grammar, such as narrow frame, rhythmic editing, duration of shots or darkness, and build it from a soundscape, an object, an instrument and vocal onomatopoeias drawn from ten years of his sound bank.

Born in Quebec City in 1955, Normandeau completed the first DMus in electroacoustic composition at the Université de Montréal in 1992 and has taught there since 1999. From 1989 to 1993 he directed the Clair de terre concert series at the Planétarium de Montréal.

CD in OGpak, empreintes DIGITALes IMED 0157, 2001.