Description
Art Choral, Vol. 8: Québec offers a true journey through more than four centuries of Québec choral
music. Rather than presenting this heritage as something static, the album creates a dialogue between
the earliest music to arrive in New France, the oral tradition, and contemporary compositions.
The program begins at the very origins with two 17th-century French masses by Henri Frémart and
Artus Aux-Cousteaux, whose scores bear witness to the repertoire that was circulating in Quebec from
the colony’s earliest days. It then explores popular memory with “À la claire fontaine,” “Quand j’étais
chez mon père,” and “Isabeau s’y promène,” reimagined in arrangements by Jean-François Daignault,
before moving on to modern and contemporary works by Claude Vivier, William Kraushaar, MauriceGaston Du Berger, and Matthias Maute.
What gives this album its strength is precisely this interplay of echoes across eras: Renaissance
counterpoint, ancient modes, and songs passed down from generation to generation reappear in
contemporary compositions. “Maison fermée,” the only piece recorded for the first time on this album,
for example, creates a dialogue between contemporary composition and influences ranging from Bach
and Gesualdo to minimalism; “Ja de longtemps,” meanwhile, draws on contrapuntal textures inspired
by the Renaissance to evoke the river and the Quebec landscape.
