Composers have always taken each others’ ideas, and if they didn’t, there would be no composing. But now the big music companies would want us to believe that this is somehow wrong. It is, certainly, wrong to profit from the work of others without making any contribution oneself, but there are many uses of existing music that do make new, meaningful contributions. For this reason, I’ve taken an interest in quotation, collage, and related techniques. It’s a way to pay homage to the music that has influenced me while at the same time exposing the false idea that creativity comes out of nothingness. So here I am, cards on the table, showing everyone the music I was thinking of when working on this piece—by quoting that music.

Thus the title Elegy of Others. I wanted to write a piece that was reflective and sombre, and I wanted to make it a collage of the work of others. This was a particular challenge, because I have found collage better suited to fast, upbeat music than it is to the slow and sombre; quotations tend to lose their character when the tempo is slow, and phrases made up of long quotes do not cohere very well. For this reason, I had to approach this piece differently than in my previous work, transforming the material in more extreme ways for the sake of musical expression. In Elegy of Others, therefore, the quotations are not always immediately recognizable, though they do come to the surface periodically. Nevertheless, almost every note in Elegy of Others is quoted, with few exceptions. The pieces quoted are, in order of appearance:

1. The Four Seasons, “Drunkards Asleep”, Antonio Vivaldi, 1723
2. “The Girl from Ipanema”, Antonio Carlos Jobim, 1962
3. “Everybody Hurts”, R.E.M., 1992
4. “Dazed and Confused”, Led Zeppelin, 1968
5. Die schöne Müllerin, “Des Müllers Blumen”, Franz Schubert, 1823
]]> http://aarongervais.com/music/elegy-of-others/feed/ 0 http://aarongervais.com/cv/professional-experience/ http://aarongervais.com/cv/professional-experience/#comments Sat, 24 Oct 2009 12:29:00 +0000 Aaron Gervais http://aarongervais.com/wp/?p=38
Apr 2011
Quatuor Bozzini Composers Kitchen
Montréal, Canada
Workshop and residency with the string quartet. Development and performance of new work.
Jan–Mar 2010
Judge
JUNO Awards, Classical Composition of the Year Category
Sep 2009–present
Consultant and Web Writer
San Francisco Contemporary Music Players
Developing and implementing strategies for audience building. Involving graduate students from San Francisco–area music departments in volunteer publicity activities for the ensemble. Writing interviews.
Jul 2009
Composition Fellow
Chamber Music Conference and Composers’ Forum of the East
Bennington VT, USA
By invitation. Duties include composing a work for amateur musicians and coaching the ensemble.
Feb 2009
orkest de ereprijs Young Composers Meeting
Apeldoorn, the Netherlands
Winner of the 2009 competition. Wrote a piece for the ensemble, participated in masterclasses.
2008
Artistic Director
Recycled 80s Live
Canada
Conceived and organized the creation of a concert-length, amplified piece for nightclubs based on quotations of ‘80s pop songs, including composition of the score, hiring of musicians, arranging for performances, and creating audio–video support materials.
Nov–Dec 2009
Banff Centre Fall Creative Music Residency
Banff, Canada
Sep–Dec 2007
Koninklijk Conservatorium Residency
the Hague, the Netherlands
Professional development residency and composition masterclasses with Martijn Padding.
Aug 2007
Domaine Forget Academy New Music Seminar
St-Irénée QC, Canada
Participated in masterclasses. Rehearsals and performance with the Nouvel ensemble moderne.
Feb 2007
Arditti Quartet Residency, UC San Diego Visiting Artist Program
San Diego, USA
Composed a piece for the Arditti Quartet. Rehearsals, recording, and masterclasses with the quartet.
2005–2007
Teaching Assistant
University of California, San Diego
Preparation: Three-month, intensive pedagogy seminar on teaching critical reading and writing to undergraduates.
Duties: Attending lectures and meetings with professors, creating lesson plans based on course reading, teaching classes, holding office hours, helping students develop research papers, and grading written assignments and exams.
Classes Taught: (Music) MUS1B Music Theory, MUS12 Intro to Opera, MUS4 Introduction to Western Music History, LTEN159 Popular Music of the ‘60s; (World Literature) MMW2 The Great Classical Traditions, MMW3 The Medieval Heritage.
2005–2006
Composer in Residence
Ensemble contemporain de Montréal Génération 2006
Montréal, Canada
Wrote a piece for the ensemble, gave a masterclass on my music at the École de musique Vincent d’Indy, rehearsals with student musicians, workshop and rehearsals with the ensemble, cross-Canada tour.
Aug 2005
Tapestry New Opera Works Composer–Librettist Laboratory
Toronto, Canada
Composition of four short opera scenes with four librettists, daily masterclasses and discussions, rehearsals with performers, performances.
Sep 2004–Jan 2005
University of Toronto Contemporary Opera Showcase Programme
Toronto, Canada
Only undergraduate student invited to participate. Wrote a chamber opera for U of T students, rehearsed with the singers and ensemble, held meetings with the music director.
Spring 2004
Artistic Director, Organizer
University of Toronto – Harvard Composition Exchange
Organized a student-run exchange between composition students at both universities. Curated a concert of student works.
Spring 2004
Artistic Director, Organizer
Curated a concert of new music for saxophone in Toronto. Responsible for finding performers, composing a new piece, making programming decisions for other repertoire, and publicizing the concert.
Summer 2002
Artistic Director, Organizer
Curated a concert of new music for student composers at the University of Alberta. Responsible for finding performers, composing a new piece, making programming decisions for other repertoire, and publicizing the concert.
1995–2007
Private music instructor in percussion, composition, music theory, and history.
]]> http://aarongervais.com/cv/professional-experience/feed/ 0 http://aarongervais.com/music/love-in-the-time-of-connectivity/ http://aarongervais.com/music/love-in-the-time-of-connectivity/#comments Wed, 07 Jan 2009 08:05:05 +0000 Aaron Gervais http://aarongervais.com/wp/?p=411 Love in the Time of Con­nec­tiv­ity is a col­lage. In fact, even the title is a col­lage: I took the title of Gabriel García Márquez’s novel, Love in the Time of Cholera, and com­bined it with a ref­er­ence to the cul­ture of Inter­net file shar­ing. I have been inter­ested in col­lage and the reap­pro­pri­a­tion of mate­r­ial for some time, because as the saying goes, good artists borrow but great artists steal. Col­lage is the most honest way to honour that prin­ci­ple, and I spent most of 2008 work­ing in this direction.

Col­lage, as well as related ideas such as sam­pling, remix, and mash-up, are among the few uni­fy­ing forces dri­ving artis­tic change today. Through video sites like YouTube and audio sites like ccMix­ter, these ideas have been respon­si­ble for renew­ing ama­teur art on a mass scale, for chal­leng­ing the stan­dards of cre­ativ­ity, for expand­ing musi­cal taste, and even for influ­enc­ing legal prece­dent.

For the first time in his­tory, we are drown­ing in art. There is too much music of the high­est artis­tic qual­ity for anyone to ever hope to expe­ri­ence. So how can artists con­tribute to cul­ture in a sit­u­a­tion like this? I think col­lage is an impor­tant part of the answer, and the proof is in the atti­tudes of those who grew up with the Inter­net. For many of them, art is not some­thing simply to be expe­ri­enced, it is a resource to be adapted, changed, built upon, and shared.

While com­pos­ing Love in the Time of Con­nec­tiv­ity, I gave myself some restric­tions in order to inspire cre­ativ­ity. For exam­ple, I decided to try to present all quo­ta­tions in as rec­og­niz­able a form as pos­si­ble. I did not allow myself to trans­pose frag­ments from their orig­i­nal tonal­i­ties, and I did not allow myself to com­pose my own new mate­r­ial to bridge together the quo­ta­tions—every note is bor­rowed. I also made tempo an inte­gral part of the musi­cal devel­op­ment, and I tried to make gram­mat­i­cal sense of all the text frag­ments I com­bined. Finally, every quote relates to the others in some way, either in terms of theme, title, text, artist, or (obvi­ously) musi­cal sounds.

]]> http://aarongervais.com/music/love-in-the-time-of-connectivity/feed/ 0 http://aarongervais.com/music/nothing/ http://aarongervais.com/music/nothing/#comments Fri, 07 May 2004 08:09:38 +0000 Aaron Gervais http://aarongervais.com/wp/?p=413 Why call a piece Nothing? Well, in a word, curios­ity—most of my music has as its theme the ques­tion, “What hap­pens if…?” At the time I was writ­ing Noth­ing (winter 2004), I was both­ered by the almost total reliance on motivic devel­op­ment and form to gen­er­ate local and long-term inter­est in West­ern music. I won­dered if it might be pos­si­ble to “hear” some­thing as a coher­ent (and enjoy­able) piece of music with­out recourse to any formal or motivic rep­e­ti­tion. Hence, the title Noth­ing is a ref­er­ence to the cen­tral prob­lem of the piece: “What hap­pens if I have noth­ing (in the tra­di­tional sense) to con­nect with?”

I have since come to view this issue as a spe­cific case of the gen­eral prob­lems of musi­cal cog­ni­tion and our (largely) unques­tioned appro­pri­a­tion of orga­ni­za­tional par­a­digms devel­oped for and by eighteenth-century empiri­cism. Nev­er­the­less, the result remains the same, and as anyone who has tried to com­pose can tell you, having noth­ing is the same as having every­thing—there are end­less choices. So I had to find an alter­na­tive focus, and I decided to return to very basic meth­ods of hear­ing as a way of con­nect­ing musi­cal mate­r­ial. For exam­ple, instead of using melodic/harmonic motives, the open­ing of the piece uses a jux­ta­po­si­tion of pitched and non-pitched ele­ments to grab the listener’s atten­tion. Exactly which spe­cific pitched and non-pitched ele­ments are used is rel­a­tively unim­por­tant; the low-level con­trast between har­monic and inhar­monic sound spec­tra is what makes the music interesting.

Of course, this doesn’t com­pletely side­step motivic and formal orga­ni­za­tion, but it does push it back to a level that is gen­er­ally not dealt with exclu­sively. Motives and form become syn­ony­mous with tech­niques and mate­r­ial: pitched versus non-pitched; rhyth­mic versus non-rhythmic; these instru­ments together versus those instru­ments together; and so on. Nothing is not the kind of piece that is inspired by sym­met­ri­cal pat­terns or pyra­mi­dal short-term/long-term inter­re­la­tion—there are con­nect­ing links, as demanded by musi­cal cog­ni­tion, but if you come look­ing for devel­op­men­tal strate­gies of that sort, be pre­pared to end up with a whole lot of nothing.

]]> http://aarongervais.com/music/nothing/feed/ 0 http://aarongervais.com/music/she-said-you-meddle-i-dare-you/ http://aarongervais.com/music/she-said-you-meddle-i-dare-you/#comments Tue, 07 Jan 2003 08:39:57 +0000 Aaron Gervais http://aarongervais.com/wp/?p=427 http://aarongervais.com/music/she-said-you-meddle-i-dare-you/feed/ 0