Claude Vivier

Claude Vivier ( ; baptised as Claude Roger; 14 April 19487 March 1983) was a Canadian composer, pianist, poet and ethnomusicologist of Québécois origin. After studying with Karlheinz Stockhausen in Cologne, Vivier became an innovative member of the "German Feedback" movement, a subset of what is now known as spectral music. Between 1976 and 1977, Vivier travelled to Egypt, Japan, Iran, Thailand, Singapore, and Bali, where he came under the influence of aspects of their respective traditional musics.

Despite working at a slow pace and leaving behind a small œuvre, Vivier's musical language is vast and diverse. His place in the spectral movement of Europe entailed the manipulation of the harmonic series and led to music that incorporated microtones to replicate these frequencies, a compositional technique he would later refer to as the jeux de couleurs. He is also known for incorporating elements of serialism, dodecaphony, musique concrète, extended techniques, surrealism, traditional Québécois folk songs, and more. The themes of Vivier's pieces are largely seen as autobiographical, often centring around loneliness and ostracization, the search for love and companionship, or voyaging to foreign lands. He used his personal experiences to advance an avant-garde style, having written multilingual vocal music and devising his so-called (invented languages). He is considered to be among the greatest composers in Canada's history – György Ligeti would revere Vivier as "the most important and original composer of his generation."

Vivier was openly gay. After ending his brief relationship with Christopher Coe, he frequented Parisian gay bars where he solicited male prostitutes, one of whom violently attacked him in January 1983. Despite warnings from friends and his own increasing paranoia over his safety, Vivier had continued to engage in the same behaviour. On the night of 7 March, he was killed by a serial murderer who routinely deceived gay men in the Marais to rob and assault them.

Early life Childhood

Claude Vivier is believed to have been born on 14 April 1948 in the vicinity of Montréal, Québec, and was voluntarily placed in the orphanage of La Crèche Saint-Michel (no longer in operation) that same day by his mother. Her name, ethnicity, and origin, as well as that of Vivier's father, are unknown.

Vivier himself would posit in later years that he was likely not of French Canadian heritage. He would often mythicize the story and heritage of his parents, at times telling people his family was German, Eastern European, or Jewish. His friend Philippe Poloni would relay: "he thought that his father was a conductor, or his mother was a musician, and they met in Montréal. Or something like that, something very romantic. He always said he spoke good German and good Italian because he had a natural connection with those two languages as he had some Italian and some Jewish German blood in his veins". He searched his whole life in the hope of finding his birth parents, to no avail. This frustration and the feeling of a hollow identity inspired many of his works, including Lonely Child (1980).

After receiving the young boy, the Sœurs Grises who ran the orphanage gave him the name of Claude Roger and he was subsequently baptized at the Église Saint-Enfant-Jésus. He was considered mentally disabled, as the nuns believed him to be "deaf and dumb." Apart from this, however, very little is known from his early life in the orphanage due to a lack of record-keeping; any learning disability that he may have had, went undiagnosed.

He was adopted at the age of two and a half by the working-class Vivier family from Mile End, consisting of parents Armand and Jeanne (née Masseau) and their two biological children. The couple had suffered a miscarriage many years prior and were looking for a young girl to adopt, only to find each of the Montréal orphanages having solely boys. It is unknown why Claude was chosen out of the many in Saint-Michel. He was a charismatic and excitable child, but his time in the large and strictly Catholic Vivier household was fraught with incidents.

At the age of eight, Vivier was raped by his adoptive uncle, Joseph. He revealed this to a priest during a routine confession, and the priest reportedly told the young Claude that he would not be forgiven unless he told his parents. Vivier's parents became infuriated after he eventually recounted the sexual assault, believing he was either lying or responsible for the incident. He was subsequently expelled from the novitiate of Saint-Hyacinthe halfway through the school year, with the official reason given by the Frères Maristae being his "inappropriate behaviour" and a "lack of maturity"; but it is generally accepted by music historians that the Christian intolerance towards homosexuality was the true motivation. He worked various odd jobs to stay afloat financially after leaving the novitiate, including positions at a hardware store, an Eaton's, and a restaurant in the Laval area. In the fall of 1967, he was finally able to enroll at the Conservatoire de musique du Québec à Montréal (CMQM).

He studied piano with Irving Heller, harmony and counterpoint with Isabelle Delorme, fugue with Françoise Aubut-Pratte, and composition with Gilles Tremblay. Vivier was one of Tremblay's more enthusiastic and dedicated pupils, with Tremblay recalling: "He was eager to know. He was so eager to know that he was sometimes very tiring, because he would follow me in the corridors after the lessons and ask me questions". Tremblay, a pupil of Olivier Messiaen, refused to focus on specific historical periods and styles of music, believing the concept of music composition was all-encompassing. He analyzed contrasting genres with his students, including Gregorian chant, and the music of Johannes Sebastian Bach and Alban Berg. This unique outlook for the time inspired Vivier's future style in combining disparate influences. His Quatuor à cordes (1968), Ojikawa (1968) and Prolifération (1969, rev. 1976) are among the few works he completed at the conservatory. Tremblay would come to support Vivier and elevate his status as a serious composer, and the two developed a close friendship.

Vivier began his first known romantic relationship in Montréal with a man named Dino Olivieri. A postcard from this period to Olivieri reads, "Perhaps, I love you very much".

Career Studies in Europe German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen (pictured) taught and heavily influenced the aspiring Vivier. In 1971, following studies with Gilles Tremblay, Vivier studied for three years in Europe, first with Paul Méfano at the Conservatoire de Paris, then Gottfried Michael Koenig at the Institute for Sonology in Utrecht, and finally Karlheinz Stockhausen in Cologne. He had first heard Stockhausen's music after attending a 1968 concert of new music in Montréal, and was fascinated with the German composer's experimental approach to timbre. Vivier moved to Cologne hoping to take lessons with him, and was initially rejected. Stockhausen reportedly sight-read one of his manuscripts and exclaimed to his students, "Just look at this! Look at this writing! Would you accept somebody like this as a student? This man will never be a good composer, with writing like that!" Vivier was rejected once more before being formally accepted in Stockhausen's Darmstadt courses for the first semester of 1972, studying additionally with professors Hans Ulrich Humpert and Richard Toop.

Vivier was strongly influenced by Stockhausen, and would revere the composer as the greatest in music history. This novel had gained a newfound resurgence in popularity during the counterculture revolution, and had already begun to serve an influence to other musical works; among them being Ralph McTell's song "The Ferryman" (1971) and Yes's album Close to the Edge (1972). It was his most ambitious project up to that point, and as noted by György Ligeti, was his first foray into Asian music, specifically the raga. The Youth Orchestra contacted Vivier soon after receiving the score, saying the work was far too complex and technically difficult to be performed – it would remain unperformed until several years after his death.

He took up other professorial and pedagogical jobs during this time, including at the Collège Montmorency in Laval, the Université de Montréal, and the University of Ottawa. The composer would tell an interviewer that he was "not liked" at Montmorency, and was described by a peer to be "a catastrophe" of a teacher. Vivier's time at the University of Ottawa was considerably more rewarding; In 1975 he was placed in charge of the university's foremost contemporary ensemble, the Atelier de musique contemporaine. His teaching contract lasted for the seven months from October 1975 to April 1976, and was paid hourly at a rate of approximately $20. He would frequently commute by bus from his apartment in Montreal to the music department in Ottawa.

Ethnomusicological journeys Vivier , holding the orchestral score for his opera Kopernikus (1979). From late 1976 to early 1977, Vivier spent some time travelling to Egypt, Japan, Iran, Thailand, Singapore, and Bali to document the musicology of these regions. the most prominent change was his newfound fixation with more complex rhythms. His piano piece Shiraz (1977), named after the eponymous Iranian city, contains a flurry of interlocking rhythmic combinations and pulses at great speed. Vivier was inspired to write the piece after listening to two blind singers perform in the city's market square. – the name of the piece is taken from a former and antiquated exonym for Japan, roughly translated to mean "the land of sunrise". Zipangu is considered by many to be the composer's most aggressive and "unforgiving" piece, as it features a plethora of extended techniques for strings (i.e. snap pizzicato and bow overpressure) and denser harmonic content atop a complex melody, similar to the string compositions of Krzysztof Penderecki.

A traditional Balinese gamelan orchestra, which Vivier conducted extensive research in. Bali was where he spent the most time, meticulously analyzing the traditional gamelan of the region, and attempting to learn their native language. Vivier kept an incredibly detailed notebook where he wrote everything he had learned from local villagers, including an anatomical chart with various body parts labelled in Balinese. He described his Bali trip as, "a lesson in love, in tenderness, in poetry and in respect for life".

He briefly travelled to Europe in November of the same year to confer with the French spectral composers Gérard Grisey and Tristan Murail, the former of whom was an old friend of Vivier's from the Darmstadt school. They would together study, "spectral calculation of the relationships between the bass note and the melodic note". Spectral music would later become the main thesis of Vivier's last compositions. He would label his spectralist techniques as jeux de couleurs ("play of colours"), a blending of harmony and orchestral timbre that rises above a fundamental two-voiced texture; very much inspired by the exploratory works of Grisey, such as Partiels (1975). Jeux de couleurs arose from Vivier's preoccupation with the vertical manifestation of melody, and how various instruments of the orchestra could be used to replicate specific tone colours through the harmonic series. This is a considerable departure from the principles of klangfarbenmelodie, as Vivier began to use frequency modulation and other intervallic algorithms to reach notes beyond 12-tone equal temperament. In his scores, he often writes out the tuning in cents to precisely map out the frequencies for performers. In a letter addressed to Grisey, shortly before his death, Vivier writes, "I'm also composing with spectra now. You've influenced me... only I twist mine a little!"

The Canadian Music Centre, of which he had been a member, named him "Composer of the Year" in 1981, for continuously endorsing and contributing to the contemporary musical language of Canada.

Later life and death Final move Rue du Général-Guilhem in Paris. The 7th door from the left, no. 22, was Vivier's last home and the site of his murder. In June 1982, Vivier decided to temporarily relocate to Paris, believing he had exhausted all the orchestras and ensembles he could possibly be commissioned from in Canada. He left most of his possessions behind and lived in a small apartment on in Paris's eleventh arrondissement, in the northeastern corridor of the city. Despite troubled financial circumstances, Vivier was confident and pleased to be in the city; spending the majority of his days composing, first working on Trois airs pour un opéra imaginaire (1982). A few months later, he began a short but passionate relationship with an American author and expatriate, Christopher Coe. The relationship ended on 24 January 1983, when Vivier found out Coe had another boyfriend in New York City. It was one of Vivier's few serious relationships. Before the assailant made off with the contents of Vivier's wallet, he cut the composer's phone line with the same scissors. Vivier rushed to his friend, Philippe Poloni, who was staying in an apartment complex not far from his. He recalled in a letter sent the morning after, "Philippe has been marvelous with me – I cried in his arms – he was incredibly tender with me – we talked a little, he looked after me and he also took care of this wound in my being which touched my soul to its depths". Poloni helped recompose Vivier, but warned him of the many (cheats) in the area who could trick him into being robbed again.

The incident profoundly affected Vivier and made him significantly more paranoid and self-conscious, "I'm afraid, afraid of myself, I'm afraid of failing in my task – I'm so stupid, so weak, so incapable of living my creative solitude fully and that is what I have to force myself to do". Despite this, however, he continued to visit other gay bars in the area, to the frustration and worry of friends who feared another attack would happen.

Death On the evening of Monday, 7 March 1983, Vivier was drinking at a different bar in the Belleville neighbourhood and invited twenty-year-old Pascal Dolzan to spend the night at his flat. He was stabbed with such force that the dagger penetrated the mattress in several areas and left blood spatter on the walls and ceiling. First responders initially suspected two or more men to be responsible, given the extensive damage to Vivier's body and home.

Dolzan was considered the prime suspect, and was arrested nearly eight months later on 26 October, at a pub in Place de Clichy. His modus operandi was to enter gay bars – despite not being gay himself – and seduce men with the intent of assaulting them and stealing their valuables, similar to other in the city. Dolzan is confirmed to have assaulted several men and killed two others in this way, mostly in the area encompassing The Marais (currently home to France's largest gay village). The true number of victims is possibly higher.

During Dolzan's subsequent trial, the court came to the conclusion that Vivier and his other victims were robbed, assaulted and murdered as the result of a series of drug-fueled hate crimes. He was charged for and found guilty of all three confirmed killings by Paris's cour d'assises and given the maximum possible sentence of life imprisonment in November 1986. Dolzan was later transferred from the Penitentiary Centre in southern Lannemezan to a higher security prison in 1991, after engaging in a series of violent protests within the penitentiary.

Funeral and reactions The Père Lachaise Crematorium, where Vivier was cremated on 23 March 1983. As Vivier left behind no will, it was ultimately decided by Paris authorities to cremate his remains on 23 March 1983, as his body had been too bludgeoned and decomposed for morgue workers to embalm him. He was cremated at the Père Lachaise Crematorium, and his ashes were transported to Montreal for burial. A small ceremony was held in Paris on the same day, with his remains being substituted by a small wooden box in an improvised casket. Many of his friends and musical contemporaries were in attendance, including Grisey and Murail.

A proper funeral was held in Église Saint-Albert-le-Grand de Montréal on 14 April, what would have been Vivier's thirty-fifth birthday. The music performed there included the psalm setting from Ojikawa (1968), one of the earliest works in his catalogue. His ashes were placed in Laval's Salon Funéraire Dallaire. An official memorial concert followed on 2 June in the auditorium of Salle Claude Champagne, with performances of pieces including Prolifération (1969), Pianoforte (1975), Shiraz (1977) and Lonely Child (1980).

As news of his death spread throughout France and his native Québec, many of Vivier's colleagues and former teachers were shocked. Gilles Tremblay would say he was, "completely surprised" and, "... when he died we were very sad. But in a certain way I was furious. I was furious against him. You know, you don't have the right, when you have such talent, to be so stupid!" Some would question if he had any motive or incentive to have himself killed, especially as the composer was chronically depressed and known to have a fascination with death. Harry Halbreich would say after Vivier was attacked in January, "... we begged him to move, but he ignored these warnings, driven by who knows what horrible fascination with the darkness that he was so afraid of". Vivier's close friends Thérèse Desjardins and José Evangelista, conductor Vladimir Jurowski and others would suggest he had intentionally arranged his own death. He similarly had the tendency to blurt and shout out various phrases and expletives seemingly at random, with some speculating he had a form of Tourette's syndrome. The more notable of these incidents include him screaming, "I am a bastard!" in the middle of a lunch with his teacher Gilles Tremblay, and him repeatedly yelling, "shit!" in Gottfried Koenig's classroom.

Especially as his career was beginning, Vivier was recalled by many to have had incredibly poor hygiene. He was noted for wearing the same shearling coat nearly every day of his adult life, and growing out his greasy, long and unkempt hair. reflecting the previous struggles and newfound confidence in accepting his sexuality.

It is believed that Vivier was a carrier of the HIV virus at the time of his death, as Christopher Coe had tested positive for AIDS in the early 1980s, around the time the two were dating. Philippe Poloni would say years later, "I think if Claude didn't die [of murder] he would have died of AIDS. I think his path was going that way". Coe himself died from AIDS-related complications in 1994.

Ethnicity Despite having no evidence to suggest Vivier was ethnically Jewish, he would maintain throughout his life that he was — an experience with a ouija board in Montreal would cement this belief, "the 'oracle' call[ed] out (in answer to Vivier's question 'who am I?') the name 'Jew. After the 1982 Chez Jo Goldenberg restaurant attack, an antisemitic mass murder which occurred less than five kilometres from where Vivier was staying in Paris, he had begun to fear he would fall victim to a racially motivated hate crime. He wrote in a letter to Desjardins, "I've never before experienced racism and its animality so deeply in my skin", referring to the racism in France he perceived at the time.

Music Overview

Vivier is believed to have only forty-eight surviving compositions completed before his death. They vary in ensemble and included choral works, chamber music, experimental music for tape, and large-scale opera. Vivier's musical style would shift consistently throughout his career; he was once an advocator of serialism, which had taken a hold on much of Europe's composers in the mid to late 20th century, but would abandon it and come to resent its popularity in later years:

Vivier is considered to be one of the founders of spectral music, and is placed among the early group of pioneers referred to as the "German Feedback" group, alongside fellow composers and Stockhausen pupils including Péter Eötvös and Clarence Barlow. Parallels between Vivier's compositional style and that of Olivier Messiaen have been noted, especially regarding the use of dense chords in homophonic textures and use of east Asian instrumentation, such as tuned nipple gongs and gamelan-adjacent keyboards and melodic idiophones. He is considered one of the most important alumni of the Darmstadt school, in terms of his contribution to the postmodernist trend that flourished after his death. Some musicologists, however, classify Vivier as a postmodernist composer in his own right, who wrote some of the first and most consequential pieces of this era.

Many of his works center around important themes of Christianity, including the chamber pieces Jesus erbarme dich (1973), Liebesgedichte (1975) and Les Communiantes (1977). Despite resenting much of his strict religious upbringing, he continued to maintain a strong spiritual disposition, still believing in God while having no allegiance to any specific denomination.

Application of language and multilingualism

The study of linguistics fascinated Vivier from a young age, and many languages are used in the texts and librettos of his vocal pieces, oftentimes juxtaposed on top of one another. He was a polyglot who would learn multiple languages at the same time – he is known to have been completely fluent in French, German and English, but he also took extended notes and studies on Greek, Latin, Italian, Balinese, Malay, Japanese, and more. The degree to how educated and conversational he was in the latter languages is not fully known.

Several examples of multilingual texts are present in Vivier's music. Chants (1973) predominately features a Latin text, which is sometimes manipulated in the form of being spoken backward. The lexicons of other languages, including Polish (mamouchka for "mother") are also present. The similarly Latin text from Virgil's Eclogues, alongside many other quotations, is used in Liebesgedichte (1975). The latter half of Glaubst du an die Unsterblichkeit der Seele? (1983) features the male narrator reciting a combined text of French and English.

The langue inventées Vivier first recalled his tendency to create new languages as a child, saying his lack of identity and parents led him to, "[fabricate] my origins as I wanted, pretended to speak strange languages. [...] My whole sensibility became refined and increasingly I drew a veil around myself: finally I was protected!"

In 2005, Serbian-German composer Marko Nikodijević wrote the ensemble piece chambres de ténèbres / tombeau de claude vivier in remembrance of the composer. He would later write and premiere the 2014 opera Vivier at the Munich Biennale, to a libretto by Gunther Geltinger. It is mostly biographical and focuses on the last few years of his life.

The Société de musique contemporaine du Québec (SMCQ) commissioned the graphic novelist Zviane in 2007 to write a work on Vivier as part of their "Tribute" series, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the composer's death. Zviane, working with cowriter Martine Rhéaume, published Des étoiles dans les oreilles (lit. "The Stars in the Ears") the same year. The inner sleeve, written by Zviane, says, "Vivier. Claude Vivier. As we say Mozart. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart... Isn't it normal to recognize our own heroes? If music is a fundamental expression of humanity, then Claude Vivier knew how to express the quintessence of [Quebec] culture, our history, our dreams. Vivier is a real 'national treasure'".

Lists of works Complete list of musical works In chronological order:

L'homme (1967; lost) for organ Prélude pour piano (1967; lost) for piano Invention sur un thème pentatonique (1967; unfinished) for organ Quatuor à cordes (1968) for string quartet Ojikawa (1968) for soprano, clarinet and timpani Musique pour une liberté à bâtir (1968–69) for women's voices and orchestra Prolifération (1969, rev. 1976) for ondes Martenot, piano and percussion Hiérophanie (1970–71) for soprano and ensemble Musik für das Ende (1971) for twenty voices and percussion Deva et Asura (1971–72) for chamber orchestra Variation I (1972) for tape [untitled] (1972) for tape Hommage: Musique pour un vieux Corse triste (1972) for tape Désintégration (1972) for two pianos and optional tape Chants (1973) for seven female voices O! Kosmos (1973) for soprano and SATB choir Jesus erbarme dich (1973) for soprano and choir Lettura di Dante (1974) for soprano and mixed septet Hymnen an die nacht (1975) for soprano and piano Liebesgedichte (1975) for four voices and ensemble Pièce pour flûte et piano (1975) for flute and piano Pièce pour violon et clarinette (1975) for violin and clarinet Pièce pour violon et piano (1975) for violin and piano Pièce pour violoncelle et piano (1975) for cello and piano Pour guitare (1975) for guitar Pianoforte (1975) for piano Improvisation pour basson et piano (1975) for bassoon and piano Siddhartha (1976) for orchestra Woyzeck (1976) for tape Learning (1976) for four violins and percussion Journal (1977) for four voices, choir and percussion Love Songs (1977) ballet for seven vocalists Pulau Dewata (1977) for any combination of instruments Shiraz (1977) for piano Les Communiantes (1977) for organ Nanti Malam (1977) for seven voices Paramirabo (1978) for flute, violin, cello and piano Greeting Music (1978) for flute, oboe, percussion, piano and violoncello Kopernikus (1979), an opera in two acts Orion (1979) for orchestra Aikea (1980) for three percussionists Zipangu (1980) for string orchestra Lonely Child (1980) for soprano and orchestra Cinq chansons pour percussion (1980) for solo percussionist Bouchara (1981) for soprano and chamber ensemble Et je reverrai cette ville étrange (1981) for chamber ensemble A Little Joke (1981) for SATB choir Prologue pour un Marco Polo (1981) for soprano, alto, tenor, baritone and bass soloists and ensemble Samarkand (1981) for wind quintet and piano Wo bist du Licht! (1981) for mezzo-soprano, orchestra and tape Trois airs pour un opéra imaginaire (1982) for soprano and ensemble Rêves d'un Marco Polo (1981–83; unfinished) for choir, narrator and chamber ensemble Glaubst du an die Unsterblichkeit der Seele? (1983; unfinished) for choir, narrator and chamber ensemble Tchaïkovski, un réquiem Russe (1983; unfinished), opera

Complete list of published poems In chronological order:

Musique (1964–65) En musicant (1964–65) L'Amour (1965) Serge Bélisle (1965) Noël (1965) Postulat (1965) Not' petit bonheur (1965) Le clown (1965–66)