To Denise, to Gaétane

It is by the persevering repetition of the warm-up, an exhaustive set of studies and musical exercises, that instrumentalists—like craftspeople — forge, sculpt and refine their technique and sound. In this piece, a denatured, virtualized and recomposed flute enters the electroacoustic medium through different exercise circuits, where material and gesture are organized into a dynamic of restarts.

Through local repetitions (loops) and global repetitions (anticipated or projected elements throughout the piece), 𝄆 Extensio:Warm:Up 𝄇 offers a path with multiple interior echoes. The electroacoustic part, essentially synthesized, wraps the flute in a more orchestral, instrumental approach. The sections of the work proceed in contrasting ways, allowing for moments of high density to counterbalance moments of almost motionless sound textures. In spite of these organizational, temporal and material foundations, the hope is that the technicality of the warm-up will be transcended by the work’s poetics. The impression of large spaces, saturation for its bewitching (and not discouraging) quality, the need for change, the desire to progress (extensio) and to metamorphose in spite of the repetition (warm-up) day after day, the alloying and meeting of contrasting universes, a fallow sound that aspires to be fertile and transformed…

— Martin Bédard, Marie-Hélène Breault [English translation: François Couture, ii-22]

𝄆 Extensio:Warm:Up 𝄇 was realized in 2015-17 at the composer’s studio in Montréal (Québec) and was premiered on May 4, 2017 during the concert Murmurations sur la ville presented by Erreur de type 27 (E27) at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, in Québec. It was commissioned by E27 with support from the Canada Council for the Arts (CCA).

Premiere

• May 4, 2017, Marie-Hélène Breault, flute; Martin Bédard, diffusion • Murmurations sur la ville, Pavillon central — Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Quebec City (Québec)