TEMPTE OLIVIER GAGNON

INTERNATIONAL COMPOSITION COMPETITION HARELBEKE 2016

In these articles, the selected works for the final of the International Composition Competition
Harelbeke 2016 are discussed. The three finalists are SATOSHI OHMAE (JAP) with Double Unit, OLIVIER
GAGNON (CAN) with Tempte and RICK VAN VELDHUIZEN (NL) with (Un)mensch.
In this article we take a closer look at Tempte by Olivier Gagnon. We had a short conversation with
him about the work.

A TROPICAL STORM
For centuries, nature has
captured the imagination of
composers. They are fascinated by its breathtaking
beauty, as well as its destructive force. In Tempte,
Olivier Gagnon tries to depict this force, a devastating
tropical storm, in music.
On one side he describes
the physical aspect of this
phenomenon: at the beginning we hear the howling of

the wind. Soon after, the first

raindrops start to fall down
(via key-clicks on the saxophone). This builds up into a
musical chaos, in which the
storm destroys everything on
its path. In the middle section, which is a slower part,
the composer alludes to the
eye of the storm. A brief
moment of calmness before
the storm breaks again with
great violence.

Besides this pictorial, quite

literal representation of a
storm, Gagnon attempts to
reflect the associated human feelings. One can hear
the panic and chaos that
breaks out in the tempestuous character of the music.
The more calm passages
invoke the desolate and
sinister feeling of those who
have witnessed the storm.

LUTOSLAWSKI AND MICROPOLYPHONY

In order to bring the chaos of the storm to music,
Gagnon uses the technique
of micropolyphony. Gyrgy
Ligeti was the first composer
to use this technique, but
Gagnon was not quite satisfied with Ligetis way of using this technique. I believe
that Ligeti makes it too difficult to play, he says. It is
very precise and the performer needs to think a lot in
order to figure out the
rhythms. In the end one
could question the relevance of this notation, be-

cause what you hear is

chaos. Instead, Gagnon
was more interested in the
way the Polish composer
Witold Lutoslawski uses this
technique, known as aleatoric counterpoint, and in
which coincidence plays a
major role. The composer
gives the performer a cell of
notes, which has to be repeated a number of times.
How many times and in
which tempo is, to a large
extent, left open to the performer. The main point is
that one does not play to-

gether with the others. This

way is much easier for the
performer and the result is
fairly the same. The effect is
exactly what I was looking
for.
Gagnon is keen on trying
new techniques in his compositions, but only if they are
needed to express something. Some composers put
technique and experiment
as a goal, but I do not share
their vision of art. For me,
expression is the goal and
technique the means.

International Composition Competition Harelbeke 2016

MUSIC AND MEANING

For Gagnon, the starting
point of a composition is
deciding what he wants to
express. Sometimes this is a
story, sometimes only a picture. In his recent work, Ciel
Polaire, he wanted to depict
the night sky full of stars.
Events in his life can lead to
a composition. For example,
he composed Les Adieux
dun Musicien after the sui-

cide of one of his friends

who was a musician.
Music remains a form of
communication. He disagrees with the famous sentence by Stravinsky, who
said that music was not able
to express something. I do
not agree with the fact that
music does not mean anything. But I am convinced
that the meaning in music

After his saxophone studies at the Cgep in Sainte-Foy, the Canadian

composer Olivier Gagnon headed to the University of Montral in
order to study composition with Franois-Hugues Leclair and Alan
Belkin. In 2015 he accomplished a doctorate in musical art in composition with Alan Belkin and Caroline Traube. Additionally, he did an
internship with Jan Van der Roost at the Lemmensinstituut in Leuven in order to specialize himself in composing for wind symphony.
As a composer, Gagnon has won several prizes at international competitions. In 2010 he received a first prize at the International Antonin Dvok Composition Competition as well as the prize for the best
variations with the work Thme et variations sur une valse de
Dvok and the prize for the best free composition with the work
Un instant dans lesprit de Lovecraft. In 2014 he won the 12th
Concorso Internazionale di composizione Romualdo Marenco in
the category wind symphony with the work Balade Ornithologique.
Next to composing, Gagnon is also working as a teacher and he is
active in the Montral music scene, where he was a member of different organizations. At the moment he is a staff member of the Orchestre Philharmonique des musiciens de Montral.

relies on human interaction.

The meaning of music originates from the people
around that music. Music in
itself is not expressive. It gets
its expressive value by
means of a performer, a
composer and, perhaps
most importantly, a listener.
Tim Van Thuyne