Gilles Gobeil, René Lussier

Le Contrat is a single 66-minute work by Gilles Gobeil and René Lussier, two friends who had worked together on their first pieces some 28 years earlier. Commissioned by Jean-François Denis for empreintes DIGITALes, it set out to follow Goethe's Faust and the very architecture of the poem. Composition took from 1996 to 2003; along the way, three unfinished versions were presented in Montréal, at the Maison de Radio France for the GRM, and at the Victoriaville festival.

The plan changed as the years went by. Chapters were dropped or merged, the poem's chronology gave way to musical needs, and other tellings of the Faust story found their way in, with acknowledgements to Liszt, Gounod, Ravel, Palestrina, René Clair, Melville, Papini, Strindberg and Gorki. The result unfolds in 17 tracks, from Les remparts to L'écolier, through scenes such as La nuit la plus longue, Le cabinet d'étude, La chambre de Marguerite, Le duel and La cathédrale.

The credits split the roles: Gobeil brought the original idea, research, spatialization, synthesis, sound transformation and “travel reminiscences”; Lussier played guitars, daxophone and percussion, and contributed voice, noises and foot tapping. Both edited. Text excerpts are read by Benoît Fauteux and Jean-Antonin Billard, and the work was mixed with Martin M Messier. It premiered at Espace GO in Montréal in October 2003 and was a finalist for album of the year at the Prix Opus 2003-04.

Gobeil, born in Sorel-Tracy in 1954, studied with Serge Garant and works in the “cinema for the ear” tradition, often from literary sources. Lussier, born in Montréal in 1957, is a guitarist and composer active since the late 1970s, co-founder of the Ambiances Magnétiques label and author of music for more than fifty films.

CD in OGpak, empreintes DIGITALes IMED 0372, 2003.