Uploaded May 2013 | Updated September 2026, 2 days ago
The title refers to the metal sounds that provided the central material for the piece, and it also evokes the creative process of transmuting these raw sources to a higher musical and expressive plane.
All the metal sources derive from sound sculptures created by the artist Derek Shiel from metal objects collected over a period of time. From the wide range of objects I selected those with the internal resonant properties that could provide me with variegated spectral families. Some possessed intervallic and tonal properties, others were inharmonic or noisier, and some sounded more synthetic than truly metallic. Although there are a number of orchestrated impacts and resonances in the piece, I was less interested in the clash of metal than in more sustained morphologies. Thus there is a focus on varied pushes, surges, swirls and sweeps of spectral energy, balanced with calmer drifts, undulations and dips, all of which move in and out of more clearly pulsed moments. These motions are also spatial so there are approaches, emergences, dispersals and distant disappearances, sometimes leaving behind the residues of spectral trails. The metal-based families, which are hardly ever absent, are brought into relations with a few other sound-types, and those who know my other pieces might spot the occasional refugee-sound from the past, recontextualized.
Base Metals was composed in 2000 in the composer's studio and premiered on October 15, 2000 during the 7th International Acousmatic Festival L'Espace du son (Brussels, Belgium). The piece was commissioned by Sveriges Radio Malmö — Swedish radio in Malmö — (Sweden). Thanks to Derek Shiel for making his sound sculptures available, and to Bosse Bergqvist for initiating the commission.
The title refers to the metal sounds that provided the central material for the piece, and it also evokes the creative process of transmuting these raw sources to a higher musical and expressive plane.
All the metal sources derive from sound sculptures created by the artist Derek Shiel from metal objects collected over a period of time. From the wide range of objects I selected those with the internal resonant properties that could provide me with variegated spectral families. Some possessed intervallic and tonal properties, others were inharmonic or noisier, and some sounded more synthetic than truly metallic. Although there are a number of orchestrated impacts and resonances in the piece, I was less interested in the clash of metal than in more sustained morphologies. Thus there is a focus on varied pushes, surges, swirls and sweeps of spectral energy, balanced with calmer drifts, undulations and dips, all of which move in and out of more clearly pulsed moments. These motions are also spatial so there are approaches, emergences, dispersals and distant disappearances, sometimes leaving behind the residues of spectral trails. The metal-based families, which are hardly ever absent, are brought into relations with a few other sound-types, and those who know my other pieces might spot the occasional refugee-sound from the past, recontextualized.
Base Metals was composed in 2000 in the composer's studio and premiered on October 15, 2000 during the 7th International Acousmatic Festival L'Espace du son (Brussels, Belgium). The piece was commissioned by Sveriges Radio Malmö — Swedish radio in Malmö — (Sweden). Thanks to Derek Shiel for making his sound sculptures available, and to Bosse Bergqvist for initiating the commission.
![Robert Normandeau - Venture (1998) [2/2]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/jN0E2Kw1ZN4/mqdefault.jpg "Robert Normandeau - Venture (1998) [2/2]
Composer: Robert Normandeau
Commission: Codes daccès, with support from the CCA , Musiques & Recherches
Premiere: February 28, 1996, Échange Québec-Belgique, Lorchestre de haut-parleurs 2, Agora de la danse (Montréal, Québec)
To Catherine Béchard
The title refers to the 1960s musical group The Ventures (theirs was the first stereo album in my small but growing record collection) but also to all of the progressive rock music of that decade and the one that followed. It is exclusively made up of fragments of that music. These are used not as quotations but rather as the sonic archetypes that an entire generation of composers, my generation, was listening to as it was growing up. It was while I was working on Venture that I understood something about the origins of my compositions during that period. To this music I have added quotations from the sixteen movements of Mussorgskys Pictures at an Exhibition, which became a cult classic when Emerson, Lake & Palmer released a reworking of it in the mid-70s. This was the work that enabled me to move from rock to classical music.
Venture is made up of six movements that refer to different states of existence: Innocence, Stabilité [Stability], Tension, Délire [Frenzy], Violence, Sérénité [Serenity], and preceded by an Introduction. These are punctuated by variations on an ever-present movement, Tunnel (a metaphor for the transition between these states) which runs through the work.
[English translation: Tom Carter]
Venture was realized between 1996 and 98 in the composers studio and at the Faculté Polytechnique de Mons (Belgium). It was mixed at the studio of Queens University in Belfast (Northern Ireland, UK). Thanks to Todor Todoroff and Michael Alcorn. The work was commissioned by Codes daccès (Montréal) and Musiques & Recherches (Ohain, Belgium) and was made possible by the support of the Canada Council for the Arts (CCA). The first version was performed on February 28th, 1996 at Agora de la danse (Montréal) as part of the festival Échange Québec-Belgique.")
