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Gabriel Charpentier
In the course of her research, Hanna Smith had the opportunity to interview Gabriel Charpentier about his compositions for the theatre. Short audio excerpts from their discussion in August of 2005 are available here:
Link to audio interview with Gabriel Charpentier: 1
Link to audio interview with Gabriel Charpentier: 2
Link to audio interview with Gabriel Charpentier: 3
In the span of over six decades, French-Canadian composer, musician, and poet Gabriel Charpentier has left a profound mark on Canadian radio, television, and theatre. Perhaps best known for his musical pursuits, Charpentier has composed and produced scores for nearly two hundred theatrical productions in both French and English, many of these unique scores associated with productions of Shakespeare in both English and French Canada. A significant number of these works have been realized through his enduring involvement with Montréal’s Théatre du nouveau monde, the Stratford Festival, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and Radio-Canada. The ingenuity and compositional mastery evident throughout Charpentier’s works had early beginnings in a remarkably diverse musical education.
Born in 1925 in Richmond, Quebec, Gabriel Charpentier spent many of his formative years under the guidance of Jesuit monks in Montréal until, at the age of twenty, he joined the Benedictines at l’Abbaye de Saint-Benoît-du-lac in the study and practice of Gregorian chant. Two years later, he secured an audition with the legendary French composer and instructor, Nadia Boulanger, at the prestigious Fontainebleau School of Fine Arts, just outside of Paris. Well-known for instructing such pupils as Aaron Copland, Walter Piston, and Phillip Glass, Boulanger was immediately impressed with Charpentier; the young singer’s performance of an 11th-Century chant prompted her demand that he begin his studies with her the following morning (“Interview”).
After five years of intense study in Paris under the guidance of Boulanger (composition), Andrée Bonneville, Norbert Dufour, and Annette Dieudonné (solfège), Charpentier returned to Québec and assumed the roles of programming coordinator and artistic consultant for the CBC’s French-language music shows (1953-1980). It was in the relatively new and uncharted realm of television that Charpentier first explored the intricate relationship between music and theatre. He and such colleagues as Pierre Mercure and Françoys Bernier avidly and successfully undertook the challenge of bringing large-scale theatrical productions to the small screen. “When we began, we had nothing, just ourselves,” he explains. “There was a feeling of discovery every time … we were inventing television” (“Interview”).
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| A section from Charpentier's Coriolanus score |
In 1959, Charpentier accepted the position of music director for the Théatre du nouveau monde in Montréal. The theatre company had been formed eight years prior by six members, including Jean Gascon and Jean-Louis Roux both of whom were to play pivotal roles in French Canada as adaptors of Shakespeare. The primary objective of the TNM was to bring to French Québec the major classic and contemporary works of both local and international playwrights (www.tnm.qc.ca), including Shakespeare. During his 13-year involvement with the company, Charpentier composed and produced music for over twenty productions, which included the works of Molière, Lebesque, Shakespeare, and Carrier. Jean Gascon, who was concurrently involved as both an actor and director at the Stratford Festival, had directed many of these productions.
Charpentier joined Gascon in Stratford in 1963, composing the score for his production of Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors. The results proved favourable to both critics and audiences, marking the beginning of a prolific, decade-long period of creative collaboration. Perhaps the most publicized and widely acclaimed of such collaborations was the 1970’s bold production of Cymbeline. “This was a fine production of a most curious work,” writes journalist John Pettigrew, who praised Charpentier’s score “with its mixture of weird electronic music and more conventional attributes,” and “the most necessary and splendiferous intervention of a deus ex machina in all drama” (Pettigrew 14-16).
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| A section from Charpentier's Coriolanus score |
Such references to Charpentier’s scores as being weird or unconventional were certainly not unusual, as he often looked to a wide range of sounds and media to compliment each unique production. In Brian Bedford’s 1980 production of Coriolanus at Stratford, for example, Charpentier mixed “wind” sounds drawn from lightly stroked piano wires with ambient electronic sounds to create what Pettigrew describes as “a pulsating soundscape” (Pettigrew 240). Each colour-based score took Charpentier at least nine months to compose and required long periods of solitude. “When you are alone in front of your colour charts and with the text,” he explains, “this is where you hear all the cues. You don’t know what you will invent. Day after day, minute after minute, you feel it in your head” (“Interview”).
Aside from composing an impressive body of musical works for radio, television, and theatrical productions, Charpentier has created and produced complete works of his own including An English Lesson (Stratford, 1968) and Clara et les philosophes (Quebec City, 1976), both part of a series of 10 short operas listed under the title of Clara 91. He also wrote Orphée I, a liturgy in seven parts that debuted at the National Arts Centre’s inauguration (Ottawa, 1969) and Orpheus II, its English-language counterpart adapted by Michael Bawtree to be performed at the Stratford Festival in 1972. Evident in each piece is a profound reverence for Gregorian chant, a sense of exploration, and an acute awareness of the intricate relationship between music and theatre.
Charpentier’s creative acumen further spans into the writing of poetry, for which his 1948 collection, Aire, won the Prix de poésie moderne (Paris). He has also written text to accompany the music of Pierre Mercure, Jocelyne Binet and Marc O’Reilly and translated selected works of R. Murray Schafer, including Beauty and the Beast and Toi-Loving. Of the duality that exists between the composition of text and music, Charpentier explains that “it’s a mystery. When I write poems, it’s a different kind of working, of saying. The rhythmic patters are completely different, [but] it’s natural. […] You just strive what you want to say and it’s there” (“Interview”).
Throughout his long and prolific career, Charpentier has served on the jury of a variety of prestigious committees, including those of the Ontario Arts Council (1983-85) and the Prix Opus (2001-03), and taught at McGill University (1955-56), l’École nationale de théâtre (1961-64), and the Banff School of Fine Arts. Central to Charpentier’s teaching and his many diverse creative pursuits is the notion that every element of a theatrical production, from the musical score to an actor’s subtle movement, is inextricably related and of equal importance. Furthermore, he stresses the inherently human element of theatre, as well as its exploratory nature. “As Jouvet says, theatre is like commerce, commerce between human beings,” he explains. “You have to know all the time that you don’t know anything …you just have to begin again” (“Interview”).
Hanna Smith
In the course of her research, Hanna Smith had the opportunity to interview Gabriel Charpentier about his compositions for the theatre. Short audio excerpts from their discussion in August of 2005 are available here:
Link to audio interview with Gabriel Charpentier: 1
Link to audio interview with Gabriel Charpentier: 2
Link to audio interview with Gabriel Charpentier: 3
Bibliography:
“Charpentier, Gabriel.” Encyclopedia of Music in Canada [Online]. Date unknown. Historica. 25 Jul. 2005. <http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm>.
Charpentier, Gabriel. Personal interview. 25 Aug. 2005.
Charpentier, Gabriel. Personal resumé. 2005.
“Gabriel Charpentier.” Canadian Music Centre [Online]. 1988. 27 Jul. 2005. <http://www.musiccentre.ca/apps/index.cfm>.
Pettigrew, John, and Jamie Portman. “Stratford: The First Thirty Years.” Toronto, Canada: Macmillan of Canada, 1985.
“Une naissance dans l’effervescence.” Théâtre du nouveau monde [Online]. Date unknown. 16 Aug. 2005. <http://www.tnm.qc.ca/fr/theatre/frs_theatre.htm>.
Links:
External Links:
Listen to Gabriel Charpentier's music from the Canadian Music Centre's website
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Fischlin, Daniel. Canadian Adaptations of Shakespeare Project. University of Guelph. 2004.
