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Animating the Object: Marcelle Deschênes and acousmatic education in Quebec

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 November 2017

Patrick Valiquet
Patrick Valiquet*
Affiliation:
42 Woodbridge Road, Birmingham, B13 8EH
*
Email: p.valiquet@gmail.com
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Abstract

This article examines the early reception of Pierre Schaeffer’s theoretical work in Quebec through the teaching of Marcelle Deschênes, principal author of the first electroacoustic theory and ear training curricula at both Université Laval and Université de Montréal. An account of Deschênes’s educational career is provided, along with remarks on the contents of her early courses in Morpho-typology and her listening workshops for children, using newly excavated primary material from her private archives. While existing scholarship presumes that Schaefferian thinking arrived in Quebec with the ‘orthodox’ acousmatic approach of Francis Dhomont, this article asserts that a pluralist and multidisciplinary interpretation of Schaeffer’s work can be discerned which pre-dated Dhomont’s teaching and has had an equally lasting impact overall. A methodological argument is also made for including education and other forms of ‘reproductive labour’ in the history of electroacoustic music.

Type
Articles
Information
Organised Sound , Volume 22 , Special Issue 3: Which Words Can We Use Related to Sound and Music? , December 2017 , pp. 385 - 393
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2017 

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Footnotes

Research for this article was funded by a postdoctoral fellowship from the Fonds de Recherche du Québec – Société et Culture, grant number 2015-B3–182905. The author would like to thank Marcelle Deschênes for access to her archives and comments on earlier drafts.

References

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Discography

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