| Summary: | In 1979-80 Claude Vivier wrote four essentially instrumental works which comprise
an important phase in his compositional oeuvre—after completion of his only opera
Kopernikus (14 May 1979), and before his trip to Europe in November 1980. During these
18 months Vivier strove to devise a new musical language of chord-colours ("couleurs"),
based on a compositional substratum ("jeux de timbres") in three wholly instrumental works:
Orion (6 October 1979) for orchestra; Zipangu (13 August 1980) for string orchestra; and
Cinq chansons pour percussion (26 September 1980) for percussion group. In contrast,
Lonely Child (5 March 1980) for soprano and orchestra introduces a modified version of
frequency modulation (which I call additive synthesis) to produce couleurs, eliminating the
jeux de timbres stage entirely. After his return to Montreal in early 1981, Vivier's musical
language embraced additive synthesis as a way of producing chord-colours, beginning with
Prologue pour un Marco Polo (1 March 1981).
The /<?wx de timbres (Vivier's highly idiosyncratic interpretation of Klangfarbenmelodie)
forms a crucial pre-compositional stage for the "couleurs" of the instrumental
works in question. In Orion chord-colours are achieved through imaginative orchestral
settings of thejeux. Two subsequent works use extra-notational techniques to produce chordcolours
from their jeux: avant-garde techniques with crushed string sounds or sul ponticello
effects in Zipangu, and performance-based outcomes of specified pitches with Balinese and
Chinese gongs in Cinq chansons pour percussion. I examine sketch materials for the three
pieces to extrapolate their various musical processes, especially the jeux de timbres, and to
show that Orion presents the most intricate, yet clearest theoretical design.
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