After having straddled the world of literature and fine arts for several
years, Stéphane Roy chose to devote himself fully to electroacoustic
music. The malleable richness of certain pictorial works sparked his
imagination and strongly influenced his concept of an acousmatic art.
Unstable spaces, kineticism of sonic forms, shimmering vibrations of colors
and contrasts of characters have dominated his compositions ever since.
The works of Stéphane Roy have been awarded prizes in national and
international competitions. He has been invited on several occasions to
present his works in Europe and the Americas. Stéphane Roy
completed a doctorate in composition under the guidance of Francis Dhomont
and Jean-Jacques Nattiez and since 1989 has taught at the Université
de Montréal. He was a visiting scholar at CCRMA at Stanford
University (USA) in 1992-93.
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Material substances and sound substance have never been so closely
associated as in the acousmatic genre. Crystal Music, which originates in
this genre, is a music of forms, colors and materials shaped by kinetic
energies and perspectives in the inner space of the work. Like glasswork,
the material has been dilated, moulded, transmuted in the smelting furnaces
of experimentation. Like crystal, it has been worked on by the imagination
which gives its transparency the power of illusion. Beyond pure matter,
there are still certain sham voices lost in factual collages, but also
rhetorical phenomena of breaks and antagonistic relationships between
musical characters, tensional nodes, suddenly subjugated by the
whimsicality of an arabesque. Crystal Music, is run through by an abundant
style using sound material as others use flat areas of color which they
scratch with a nervous, angular graphism: it thus reveals a desire for
plasticity which shortly betrays a dramatic expression. This work,
composed largely with Bill Schottstaedt's Common Lisp Music program, could
not have been realized without the technical support and exceptional
conditions I enjoyed at CCRMA, Stanford University during the year
1992-1993. I thank also the Faculty of Music at the University of
Montréal for lending me its studios in order to complete this piece.
Crystal Music, was commissioned by the ACREQ (Association pour la
création et la recherche Électroacoustiques du
Québec), subsidized by the Canadian Arts Council. Crystal Music was
awarded the First Prize at the 3rd Noroit-Léonce Petitot
International Acousmatic Music Competition (Arras, France, 1994). Crystal
Music previously appeared on the compact disc Prix international
Noroit-Léonce Petitot 1993 (NOR 3). Crystal Music has been recorded
in 1996 on the CD entitled Kaleidos under the label empreintes DIGITALes
(IMED 9630).
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