Marcelle Deschênes

Marcelle Deschênes

Le bruit des ailes

stereo fixed medium (2000/02) 10.55′

Friday 8 July, 2022
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To all those who feel the urge to stretch their wings

»Is the bird scared of the sound its wings make when they open?«
—Clarissa Pinkola Estés

»I reign in the azure like an unknown sphinx; I unite my heart of snow to the whiteness of swans« — Charles Baudelaire, Les fleurs du mal: XVII. La Beauté

The trampled otherness, the wrench, the wandering, the freezing, and then the itch and the explosive freedom of the stretched out wings of an Ugly Little Duckling.
– Hans Christian Andersen

The materials used for this piece are taken from a soundbase of ice storms (from the ice storm that struck Québec in 1998), erupting volcanoes and nuclear tests in forgotten deserts. […] Through the use of sonic metaphors and highly evocative referential sounds, the music stages mental pictures associated with various ›wild woman‹ archetypes taken from myths, dreams and tales. These first two parts are introspective works digging into the intimate space of affects. [English translation from French: François Couture]

Marcelle Deschênes (b. 1939 in Price, Canada) is a composer, whose works encompass multimedia performances, installations, video productions, electroacoustic and instrumental music as well as actions with non-musicians. She studied at the Université de Montréal followed by advanced training and work at the Groupe de Recherches Musicales with Pierre Schaeffer, François Bayle and Guy Reibel, and at the Université Paris 8. Deschênes returned to Canada in 1971 and took a teaching and research position at the electronic music studio of Université Laval. She has received numerous international awards, including several times prices at the Concours International de Musique Electroacoustique de Bourges. She founded in1979 the electroacoustic studio Bruit Blanc and the following year became a professor at the Université de Montréal where in 1991 she continued to teach electroacoustic composition.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcelle_Deschenes

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