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2 Tempo 61 (239) 2-17 C 2007 Cambridge University Press
DOI: 10.1017/S0040298207000010 Printed in the United Kingdom
Bob Gilmore
0.0
cu
1. Introduction
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ON CLAUDE VIVIER'S 'LONELY CHILD' 3
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4 TEMPO
5 Grisey, 'La musique: le devenir des sons', originally written in 1982 and rep
Cohen-Levinas, ed., Vingt-cinq ans de creation musicale contemporaine: L'Itin&
(Paris: L'Itineraire/ L'Harmattan, 1998), 298.
6 Here we are talking not of actual resonance (of the type Grisey would expl
his Prologue (1976) for solo viola and optional resonators) but of simulated r
plex sound - in this case, a low trombone note - is treated as though bro
component partials and reconstituted by the ensemble. This technique h
as 'instrumental synthesis'.
7 Messiaen, Technique de mon Langage Musical (Paris: Alphonse Leduc, 1944);
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ON CLAUDE VIVIER S 'LONELY CHILD 5
colour the piano timbre. The first of these two features sugge
parison with Vivier's obsession with melody, increasingly the
his music from Learning of 1976 onwards, and essential to Lon
but this is arguably fortuitous and, besides, Vivier's melodies a
more conventional than the formula-type melody used by Sto
The other aspect of Mantra is of greater consequence: th
modify the piano sound by operating a sine-tone generator an
modulator. This latter, a common feature on early modular sy
ers, is a device that enjoyed a degree of vogue in the late 196
modulator takes two signals as input and produces a signal c
the sum and difference of their respective frequencies. If, for
the inputs are two sine waves of 200Hz and 300Hz, the output
ring modulator will be two frequencies of 500Hz (300Hz+20
100Hz (300Hz-200Hz) - the sum and difference tones respec
richer waveforms than sine tones are used as input (in Mantra,
of the grand pianos) then the output signals from the ring m
may be very complex; not infrequently the resulting sound
bells or various metallic sounds. Ring modulation was seize
the early studios as a way of creating inharmonic timbres;
see in a moment, the analogous technique used by Vivier g
sort of harmony that is likewise 'inharmonic', and not bas
natural harmonic series. (Shortly before his death Vivier re
Grisey: 'I'm also composing with spectra now. You've influen
only I twist mine a little!'8)
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6 TEMPO
Claude Vivier
Latest publications
from the Vivier
catalogue
Hymnen an die Nacht
soprano and piano ?5.50
Pianoforte
solo piano ?5.50
Pi6ce pour violon et clarinette
violin and clarinet ?5.99
BOOSEY
To purchase music by
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ON CLAUDE VIVIER S LONELY CHILD 7
4 5
?4 4
21 t
~gm4m
- ....... ., ... .. . . ... . ,
u 4 14 f f4 C ~JP
--- - - - - ------- -
a " --.111---- -
pla
I ~~~ =I P L pp
........... ..... . . .. .. . ........... .. _.. .
YbPO
A .......p - pp.. ..
. . . . .p . .p....... ... .. .. .
.......... ..... .... ..... ..... .. .. ... .. ..... . ... . .... . .... ...... ..
Abe8
a .O
........ . .L _j , -1 .. . ........... ......... ..
-am,,i,,,u w . __ .._,_.M,'' ,
.....
Figure 1:
Vivier, Lonely Child bars 24-28, showing the spectrally derived harmonies
(in Vlns I) accompanying the soprano.
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8 TEMPO
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ON CLAUDE VIVIER'S 'LONELY CHILD 9
9,h
I" V
o.No a . . . .
............ n 9
II
3A
4-., t a IR L ?
Joshua Fineberg, 'Guide to the Basic Concepts and Techniques of Spectral Music', in
Contemporary Music Review 19 no.2 (2000), 81-113; cf. p.84.
12 It should be noted that Vivier's calculations of the combination tones used in Lonely Child,
as seen in his sketches, contain a good many errors. These would seem to be the result
of doing the calculations by hand (rather than with a calculator or computer), probably
at Vivier's characteristic high speed. The errors remained for the most part undetected by
him and were incorporated into the score. In working on this article I found what seem to
me more than ten inexplicable pitch choices out of the 75 combination tones in 'm6lodie
1' alone, the only plausible explanation for which is mathematical error. And yet, possible
though it would be, it somehow seems utterly repugnant to imagine a 'corrected' version of
the score. (W B. Yeats, in his poem 'The Scholars', was surely right to castigate those 'old,
learned, respectable bald heads' who 'edit and annotate the lines / That young men, tossing
on their beds, / Rhymed out in love's despair'.)
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10 TEMPO
4. Formal design
Lonely Child is, of course, 'about' much more than its inno
this new timbral/harmonic principle, and in this section
the overall form of the work and the nature of its musical
general before examining Vivier's use of 'les couleurs' in co
Although Vivier himself did not leave us a written analy
Child he spoke of the work several times in interviews and
comments below were made in the context of an interview
Canada, and give an accurate although extremely conden
of the compositional techniques used in the piece:
Lonely Child is a long song of solitude. In constructing it musicall
have total control in the expression and musical development of th
composing without using chords, harmony, or counterpoint. I w
at a music that was very homophonic, that could transform itse
melody, which would then be 'intervalised'. I had already comp
melody, heard at the beginning of the piece, for dancers. Afterwa
this melody into five melodic fragments that are 'intervalised', tha
one note below another, giving intervals: thirds, fifths, minor
seconds, etc. If you make a sort of frequency addition of each
vals, you arrive at a timbre. So there are no longer any chords,
orchestral body is transformed in this way into timbre. The roug
intensity of this timbre depends on the generative interval. Music
13 Vivier, 'Lonely Child', in V6ronique Robert, ed., 'Les 6crits de Claude Vivier', in Circuit:
Revue Nord-Amiricaine de Musique du Xxe sicle vo.2. nos.1-2 (1991), 108.
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ON CLAUDE VIVIER'S 'LONELY CHILD 11
Bars 140-149 ffpassage for bass drum (with rin at the end);
Bars 150-180 fourth milodie;
Bars 181-194 interlude (ending with harmonic series on the double
bass);
Bars 195-214 epilogue: return to the opening melody in the
orchestra, at a slower tempo and with addition of
'aleatoric colours' in the strings
However self-evident this may seem when one gets to know the work,
there are some possible variations. Figure 3 shows Vivier's own idi-
osyncratic description of the form, as found in his lecture notes for a
presentation he gave on his music at Feedback Studios in K61n on
November 1, 1982.
A I , . .
Figure 3:
A page from Vivier's lecture notes
for a presentation at Feedback
Studios, K61n, in November 1982,
, . .
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12 TEMPO
-,X. W, yl.
. . .... . .......
?xx',:x
X: gi
gg
X
X
-1: 'N.:
::?::S::...........
y b ..... ..... ...
Nx. -N?: Z
......... ...
.............
??mmx .......... . . . . . . X X :1 :1
X X -X
N N
bi:4:
. .. .... . .
..........
...............
v:. X. XX,:o
..........
ox NO g . . .. . . ... . . . . ... . ... . . . . . . ..
... .........
MEN
Iz MIN yo . oz?
Figure 4: The most striking and, from a compositional point of view, coura-
The waveform of the Narucki/De
geous structural feature of the whole work is its wholesale reliance
Leeuw recording of Lonely Child,
showing the dynamic shape of the
on an essentially two-part texture of melody and bass enhanced, 'in a
work. way automatically', by 'les couleurs'. There is, as Vivier himself was
well aware, no real counterpoint to speak of, although even with two
voices there is a kind of functional harmony. The dyad is a character-
istic Vivier sonority; it is to his music what the triad is to tonal music.
Earlier works like Learning (1976) or Pulau Dewata (1977) had been large-
ly homophonic, their single lines sometimes becoming two-part but
rarely contrapuntal in the strict sense. This type of texture reappears in
subsequent works, such as the odd but wonderful Greeting Music (1978);
the piano solo that opens that work juxtaposes gamelan-style melodic
fragments with dyads treated with 19th-century-style octave doublings.
Dyadic textures characterize parts of the opera Kopernikus (1978-79) and
the last section of the orchestral work Orion (1979). However in Lonely
Child this concentration on melody and bass becomes the predominant
texture. In the same Paris lecture mentioned above, Vivier recounts an
experience that made him realize the importance of two-part textures:
One day I heard a rehearsal of a chorale by Bach and I only heard two voices; I
heard the alto and soprano voices together. It was an extraordinary experience
because I heard that the music was still fantastic... two sounds superimposed, as
an interval, are musically as important as a chord.15
The overall 'sound' of Lonely Child - the sonic image that lingers in the
mind once the music has stopped - has, arguably, less to do with the
spectral elements than it does with Vivier's particular sense of melody
and harmony. This is already evident from the opening section, which
is a single line that occasionally becomes two-part; it is melodic, yet
somehow unsure of its direction. Vivier uses almost entirely consonant
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ON CLAUDE VIVIER S 'LONELY CHILD' 13
13 3 4 3
O~ptmst*Lf*
J=72 4 4 4
A .. . ...................t.....................
p t4t9 w t.9 WsipX Wmt'tor
4 !? . ?4- t - 4 4 4
~rAr
YtK
I+
ISM
i -.4- . , ,
i i ....... . ......... ..... .9+am
3 4 3 2 4
A W-.
4 4 4 4 4 4
14 14 14 14
t. ..--n TIP 3 tti
....... -
.... .....
-----. i . ...... .... ---------
.............. ...... . .... . + + ......
.. ......... ..'...
Figure 5: At the beginning of the work the other sonority that creates a spe-
Lonely Child, opening. cial atmosphere is the rin, the Japanese percussion instrument, Buddhist
in origin, shaped like a rice bowl and traditionally made of copper or
bronze. Vivier had fallen in love with the instrument on his travels in
Asia a few years previously (although he had probably encountered
it before; Stockhausen had used it in the realization of several of the
pieces in Aus den sieben Tagen). Struck with a padded mallet, the rin has
a very long ring-time. (The instrument comes in different sizes with cor-
respondingly different pitches, but Vivier specifies a 'very low' one.) The
sound, not specifically identifiable to most listeners, unmistakably lends
the piece a 'non-western' and quasi-ritualistic aura.
Having looked at the overall form of Lonely Child and at the constitution
of its spectral harmonies, it is fascinating to see the various ways Vivier
uses these 'couleurs' in the four main vocal sections of the piece. In mtlo-
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14 TEMPO
/lipb
mflzza-pp rnJ-
xrl ~-~17-f p~
in r ppin'pp p
------------
in' pm>pp p
iN]' p III~lJYA~~,LJ
"'f>~~- ppm
Pn'zz~ppni]'pp~zz~
air ppm]'pp
Figure 6:
'Les couleurs' from the beginning of
melodie 3, bars 113-114, voice and
strings only.
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ON CLAUDE VIVIER'S 'LONELY CHILD' 15
6. Conclusion
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16 TEMPO
Note
I would like to thank Rozalie Hirs and Donnacha Dennehy for thei
encouragement as I worked on this article. I also wish to acknowledg
the stimulus of the work of two Canadian scholars who have written on
Lonely Child: Jacques Tremblay's 'L'&criture ' haute voix: Lonely Child d
Claude Vivier', in Circuit 11, no.1 (2000), 45-67; and Patrick Levesque'
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ON CLAUDE VIVIER'S 'LONELY CHILD" 17
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