Uploaded November 2017 | Updated September 2026, 3 days ago
Video created with Sound Converter, Sonic Visualizer, vokoscreen and OpenShot on a Debian 8 Jessie Linux System.
Video created with Sound Converter, Sonic Visualizer, vokoscreen and OpenShot on a Debian 8 Jessie Linux System.










![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. Robert Normandeau - Venture (1998) [2/2]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/jN0E2Kw1ZN4/mqdefault.jpg)