récital commenté/lecture-recital « Figure performative et eccéité : L’idée musicale comme singularité pré-individuelle et impersonnelle dans Tambours intérieurs (2010) »
Thursday, Feb 23, 2023
13:15 p.m. - 16:00 p.m.
Iannis Xenakis, for whom music “must aim to train [...] towards the total exaltation in which the individual merges, losing his consciousness”, to Gérard Grisey affirming that “The composition of processes [...] is inhuman, cosmic and provokes the fascination of the Sacred”, joining what Deleuze defines as the splendor of ON: “a mode of impersonal individuations and pre-individual singularities”, passing by Steve Reich for whom “Musical processes can give one a direct contact with the impersonal[,]... makes possible that shift of attention away from he and she and you and me outward toward it”, contemporary music explores what Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari call a “non-human experience of man”.
As a pre-individual and impersonal singularity, the musical event becomes haecceity, and releases blocks of sensation where “sensations, percepts and affects, are beings that are worth by themselves and exceed all experience”. Through the idea that music “strives to make forces that are not sonorous”, expression and representation give way to a paradigm where, according to Sauvagnargues, “it is less a question of repudiating forms than of proposing a new conception of them, as material and sensible form, variable and intensive, and not as a given abstract form”. Deleuze and Guattari will thus say that “the essential relationship is no longer matter-forms”, but rather “material-forces”, and that “the material is a molecularized material, [...] which must as such ‘capture’ forces, which can only be forces [...] of an energetic, informal and immaterial Cosmos”.
In my compositions, the concept of Performative figure formalizes such an approach to the musical idea through a set of strategies and techniques. In this lecture recital, my work Tambours intérieurs (2010) will be analyzed in the presence of the Bozzini Quartet, thus showing how this thought of the “non-human experience” is paradoxically and necessarily embodied in the action and body of the performers.
Jimmie LeBlanc
In his compositions, Jimmie LeBlanc approaches the musical idea in terms of capturing forces and the logic of sensation, particularly through the concept of the Performative figure. Performers of his music include Ensemble Contrechamps, Esprit Orchestra, Quatuor Bozzini and Continuum Ensemble. LeBlanc won a 3rd prize at the Lutosławski Award (2008), as well as the Jules-Léger Prize for New Chamber Music (2009). His research concerns musical semiotics and aesthetics; he sits on the editorial board of the journal Circuit – Musiques contemporaines and teaches composition at the Faculty of Music of l’Université de Montréal.
Quatuor Bozzini
Quatuor Bozzini has been an original voice and strong advocate in new, experimental and classical music since 1999. Driving the hyper-creative Montréal scene and beyond, the quartet cultivates an ethos of risk-taking, experimentation, and collaboration, venturing boldly off the beaten track. With a rigorous eye for quality, they have nurtured a rich and diverse repertoire, regardless of trends. This has led to over 400 commissioned pieces, and some 500 premiered works. Their open, collaborative, artist-led approach has resulted in the realisation of numerous innovative and highly-praised productions, including inter-disciplinary projects with video, theatre and dance.