Musical Passion by Telephone

In the 1970’s when I was getting to know Claude Vivier, he would sometimes phone me from Montreal to passionately play parts of whatever piece he was writing at the time. He did this simply by putting the receiver by the keyboard of his upright and blasting away as loud as he could so you wouldn’t miss anything. There seemed to be no limit to his enthusiasm about his music and his explanations of what he had in mind.

This same thing would happen when friends or colleagues would phone him. These events were an unexpected treat. I can only imagine what Claude would be doing with the capabilities of YouTube, Facebook and all the other social media available to him had he lived to this day.

So that is how I first heard fragments of Siddhartha – played to me by Claude via telephone. It happens that I was working with the National Youth Orchestra as a new music animateur with small ensembles the summer that Siddhartha was to be premiered by the NYO, so I was really looking forward to hearing the piece in its full version for orchestra. It never came to pass as, for a variety of reasons, the piece was dropped from the programming that summer.

In the years that followed I arranged for the commissioning of Greeting Music for the Vancouver ensemble Days, Months and Years to Come that I conducted and coordinated. Claude went off on his big spiritual journey to Asia and finally moved to Paris where he met his violent, tragic demise.

From the time that Claude first gave me a facsimile manuscript copy of his Siddhartha score, I had it in mind that someday I would conduct the work if the opportunity arose. To get such an opportunity would be hard to achieve as the piece requires many players arranged in eight groups in a special seating configuration. Siddhartha also presents many challenges in rhythmic structures, tempo changes, sudden shifts in volume – very often mercurial and surprising – just like Claude’s personality.

At last, to start this Esprit season with something special, I decided to create the opportunity for Siddhartha to have its Toronto premiere. The piece has only been performed once before in Canada - premiered many years after its composition by the Orchestre Métropolitan de Montréal. The piece is saturated with the power, intricacies, declamatory statements, tenderness, spirituality and wonder that Claude’s music has always been infused with. The work perfectly foreshadowed the acclaim that has come to his music.

I can never forget the times I visited with Claude and watched him playing his music for others on the telephone.