Biography

Born to unknown parents in Montreal

Montreal

Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...

, Vivier was adopted at the age of three by a poor French-Canadian family. From the age of thirteen, he attended boarding schools run by the Marist Brothers

Marist Brothers

The Marist Brothers, or Little Brothers of Mary, are a Catholic religious order of brothers and affiliated lay people. The order was founded in France, at La Valla-en-Gier near Lyon in 1817 by Saint Marcellin Champagnat, a young French priest of the Society of Mary...

, a religious order that prepared young boys for a vocation in the priesthood. At the age of eighteen, Vivier was asked to leave the novitiate

Novitiate

Novitiate, alt. noviciate, is the period of training and preparation that a novice monastic or member of a religious order undergoes prior to taking vows in order to discern whether they are called to the religious life....

. His earliest works date from this period.

In 1971, he began a period of three years' study in Europe, first at the Institute for Sonology in Utrecht

Utrecht (city)

Utrecht city and municipality is the capital and most populous city of the Dutch province of Utrecht. It is located in the eastern corner of the Randstad conurbation, and is the fourth largest city of the Netherlands with a population of 312,634 on 1 Jan 2011.Utrecht's ancient city centre features...

, and then in Cologne

Cologne

Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...

 with Karlheinz Stockhausen

Karlheinz Stockhausen

Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Another critic calls him "one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music"...

. Vivier learned much from Stockhausen, and his early works have aspects that are clearly, and sometimes audibly, derivative of his teacher, even though his later works bear little audible resemblance. In 1974, he returned to Montreal and began to establish his reputation.

Vivier's opera Kopernikus, to his own libretto, was premièred on 8 May 1980, at the Monument-National

Monument-National

The Monument-National is a historic Canadian theatre located at 1182 Saint Laurent Boulevard in Montreal, Quebec. Erected between 1891 and 1894, it was originally the Cultural centre of the Saint-Jean-Baptiste Society.-Yiddish theatre:...

 in Montreal.

Selected works

• Ojikawa for soprano, clarinet and percussion (1968)
• Prolifération for ondes Martenot, piano and percussion (1969)
• Musik für das Ende for twenty voices and percussion (1971)
• Deva et Asura for chamber orchestra (1972)
• Chants for seven female voices (1973)
• O! Kosmos for soprano and choir (1973)
• Désintégration for two pianos, four violins and two violas (1974)
• Lettura di Dante for soprano and mixed septet (1974)
• Liebesgedichte for voices and ensemble (1975)
• Hymnen an die nacht for soprano and piano (1975)
• Siddhartha for orchestra (1976)
• Learning for four violins and percussion (1976)
• Pulau Dewata for any combination of instruments (1977)
• Shiraz for piano (1977)
• Journal for voices and percussionist (1977)
• Paramirabo for flute, violin, cello and piano (1978)
• Greeting Music for flute, oboe, percussion, piano and violin (1978)
• Kopernikus: Rituel de la Mort opera in two acts, premiered in Montreal on 8 May 1980 (1979)
• Orion for orchestra (1979)
• Lonely Child for soprano and orchestra (1980)
• Zipangu for string orchestra (1980)
• Cinq chansons pour percussion (1980)
• Bouchara for soprano and chamber orchestra (1981)
• Prologue pour un Marco Polo for thirteen instruments, four voices and narrator (1981)
• Samarkand for wind quintet and piano (1981)
• Wo bist du Licht! for mezzo-soprano, orchestra and tape (1981)
• Et je reverrai cette ville étrange for ensemble (1981)
• Trois Airs pour un opéra imaginaire for soprano and ensemble (1982)
• Glaubst du an die Unsterblichkeit der Seele for voices and ensemble (unfinished) (1983)

Sources

• Gilmore, Bob. 2007. "On Claude Vivier’s Lonely Child". Tempo, new series 61, no. 239:2–17.
• Gilmore, Bob. 2009. "Claude Vivier and Karlheinz Stockhausen: Moments from a Double Portrait". Circuit: musiques contemporaines 19, no. 2:35–49. (Subscription access)
• Lesage, Jean. 2008. "Claude Vivier, Siddhartha, Karlheinz Stockhausen: La nouvelle simplicité et le râga". Circuit: musiques contemporaines 18, no. 3:107–20.
• Mijnheer, Jaco. 2001. "Vivier, Claude". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan Publishers.
• Tannenbaum, Peter. 1991. "Claude Vivier Revisited". SoundNotes SN1:12–27.

External links

• "Eternal Recurrence: Aspects of Melody in the Orchestral Music of Claude Vivier" by Janette Tilley. Discourses in Music 2, no. 1 (Fall 2000).
• Claude Vivier @ Boosey & Hawkes
• "A Response to Janette Tilley's Eternal Recurrence: Aspects of Melody in the Orchestral Music of Claude Vivier", by Ross Braes. Discourses in Music 2, no. 2 (Winter 2000–2001).
• L'écriture à haute voix: Lonely Child de Claude Vivier abstract and of article by Jacques Tremblay. Circuit 11, no. 1.
• On Claude Vivier's Lonely Child abstract of article by Bob Gilmore
  Bob Gilmore
  Bob Gilmore is a musicologist, educator and keyboard player, born in Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland in 1961. He studied at York University, England, Queen's University, Belfast , and, on a Fulbright Scholarship, at the University of California, San Diego...
  
  in Tempo (2007), 61: 2-17, Cambridge University Press. (Article access by subscription only)