Contemporary music at the fringe: The example of 'musique actuelle' in Canada

Abstract

The International Week of Today's Music (SIMA), organised in 1961 by Pierre Mercure within the framework of the Montreal Festivals, is a master event: beside the works of Serge Garant, Karlheinz Stockhausen or Iannis Xenakis, this event permitted to the experimental music of today to be heard as provocative and heterogeneous as it may be, in particular with Cage Atlas Eclipticalis' creation or Richard Maxfield's Piano Concert for David Tudor. Mercure challenged an American experimental aesthetic's different from Europeans experimentations. The hypothesis of this paper is that what has been called 'musique actuelle' since 1979 in Quebec, refers to Mercure's artistic perspectives. How affiliated is musique actuelle to the SIMA? This paper seeks to answer this question by looking at the different uses of the expression of musique actuelle so as to bring to light the historical reasons, roots and fundaments of the expression since its first uses. The actualist movement has in common with Mercure's project more than a name: it carries and maybe focuses for the Mercure's aesthetic and social policy by refusing certain zone system within cultural poles with creation methods such as free and collective improvisation. But beyond this project, it's definitely of Mercure event's tradition that actualists arose and built their identity field.