Yves Daoust

Musiques Naïves collects six fixed-medium works that Yves Daoust composed between 1986 and 1994, at the GMEB in Bourges and in his own studio. Several borrow their titles from the classical repertoire, and two use classical scores as material, but all of them start from sounds that remain recognisable: the source is never erased, it is pushed until its musical side comes forward. The booklet essay is by François Guérin.

Impromptu (1994), commissioned by ACREQ, comes from Frédéric Chopin’s Fantaisie-Impromptu in C-sharp minor, recorded note by note with a sequencer and turned into floods of MIDI data, using only commercial instruments meant for popular music. Fantaisie (1986) was written for Radio-Canada’s entry to the Prix Italia, to mark fifty years of French-language production on the state network: it is made solely of radio archives, with Franz Schubert’s Fantasia in F minor for four-hand piano shaping the form.

Résonances (1992) treats the attacks and resonances of bells recorded at Notre-Dame Basilica in Montréal separately. Water Music (1991) began with droplets falling from melting icicles on a spring day. Il était une fois… (conte sans paroles) (1986), a GMEB commission, follows the bedtime stories Daoust used to make up for his daughter, and the short Mi bémol (1990) is in his words a pastiche where he tries to imitate himself.

Born in Longueuil, Québec, in 1946, Daoust studied at the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal and with Gilbert Amy in Paris, then trained at the GMEB from 1973 to 1975. He worked as a sound designer at the National Film Board of Canada, taught electroacoustic composition at the conservatories of Québec City and Montréal, and helped found ACREQ in 1978.

CD in Opak, empreintes DIGITALes IMED 9843, 1998.