Hommage to Claude Vivier

Claude Vivier’s short life (1948-1983) was dedicated to a constant quest for new musical and aesthetic experiences; a quest that would lead him to construct a uniquely authentic world of sound and to write powerful, free, almost shameless music beyond any known compositional approach. “Not knowing my parents enabled me to create a magnificent dreamworld", he said in 1983. “I shaped my origins exactly as I wished." Born in Montreal in 1948, he grew up in a Catholic orphanage and for many years wanted to become a priest. In the end, however, he decided to study composition. He became a student of the great composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, who would influence him profoundly. However, he would go on to articulate a musical idiom that was all his own.

He shared Olivier Messiaen’s Catholic faith, his spirituality and his way with tonic height and rhythm. His unique sonic polyphony—a product of the way he analysed and handled the harmonic qualities of sound—reveals the influence of spectral music, something he shared with Gérard Grisey and Tristan Murail.

His contact with the exotic music of the East would radically change both the way he thought and the sound of his music. His melodically elegant and expressively powerful works seem to unfold naturally from a single note or motif which is processed in a manner closer to Indian Raga than to Western musical practice.

The idiom he uses in his vocal works—an idiom he created using the automatic writing technique—is of especial interest. Claude Vivier’s short life was dedicated to a constant quest for new musical and aesthetic experiences; a quest that would lead him to construct a uniquely authentic world of sound and to write powerful, free, almost shameless music beyond any known compositional approach.

23 years after his death, Vivier’s music remains an enigma and little known to the general public. Remaining true to its mission to familiarize audiences with contemporary masterpieces, the Ergon Ensemble seeks through this tribute to contribute to the recent international compositional and musicological interest in the composer.