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Jacques Hétu (1938 -2010)

Jacques Hetu composerFrench-Canadian composer Jacques Hétu, for years one of his country's most prominent musicians and a teacher of considerable note, was born in Trois-Rivières, Quebec. In 1961, while attending the Montreal Conservatory, he won the school's premier prix in composition. After graduating, he was awarded a Canadian government scholarship to travel to Paris, where he studied with Henri Dutilleux and Olivier Messiaen. Hétu is prized throughout Quebec as perhaps its most gifted composer. He was for the most part a traditionalist-oriented composer; orchestral, chamber, and vocal music are his preferred genres. His vocal music naturally makes use of French texts and has a lyrical quality that disguises the dissonances in his music.
-  Blair Johnston, All Music Guide

COMPOSITIONS                                                            Hétu Links     ~ ~ ~     Works by Genre
Symphony, op. 2, string orchestra (1959)
Adagio and Rondo, op. 3, no. 1a, string quartet (1960)
Symphony No. 2, op. 4, orchestra (1961)
Sonata, op. 6, 2 pianos (1962)
Petite suite, op. 7, piano (1962)
Variations, op. 8, piano (1964)
Four Pieces, op. 10, flute and piano (1965)
Variations, op. 11, violin  (viola or violoncello) (1967)
Double concerto, op. 12, violin, piano and chamber orchestra (1967)
Quintet, op. 13, woodwinds (1967)
L'Apocalypse 'Fresque symphonique d'après saint Jean,' op, 14, orchestra (1967; version with speaker, 1973)
Concerto, op. 15, piano and orchestra (1969)
Cycle, op. 16, piano and winds (1969)                                                                                            ~ top of page ~
Passacaglia, op. 17, orchestra ( 1970)
Symphony No. 3, op. 18, orchestra (1971)
String Quartet, op. 19 (1972)
Les Clartés de la nuit, op. 20, soprano and piano/orchestra (1972; rev. 1987)
Fantasy, op. 21, piano and orchestra (1973)
Les Djinns, op. 22, double chorus, percussion and piano (1975)
Antinomie, op. 23, chamber orchestra (1977)
Prélude et danse, op. 24, piano (1977)
Rondo varié, op. 25, violin (1977)
Nocturne, op. 26, clarinet and piano (1977)
Aria, op. 27, flute and piano (1977)
Incantation, op. 28, oboe and piano (1978)
Lied, op. 29, horn and piano (1978)
Ballade, op. 30, piano (1978)
Concerto, op. 31, bassoon and orchestra (1979)
Elegy, op.  31a, basoon and piano (1979) [excerpt from Concerto, op. 31]
Au pays de Zom, film music (1980)
Mirages, op. 34, orchestra (1981)
Sonata, op. 35, piano (1984)
Les Abîmes du rêve, op. 36, bass and orchestra (1982)
Interlude (excerpt from Les Abîmes du rêve), orchestra (1982)
Concerto, op. 37, clarinet and orchestra (1983)
Missa pro trecentesimo anno, op. 38 chorus and orchestra (1985)
Four Interludes, op. 38a (excerpts from Missa pro trecentesimo anno), organ (1985)
Symphonie concertante, op. 40, wind quintet and string orchestra (1986)
Suite, op. 41, guitar (1986)
Variations, op. 42, organ (1986)
Four Miniatures, oboe, clarinet and bassoon (1987)
Concerto, op. 43, trumpet and chamber orchestra (1987)
Images de la Révolution, op. 44, orchestra (1988)                                                                    ~ top of page ~
Serenade, op. 45, flute and string quartet (1988)
Les Illusions fanées, op. 46, chorus (1988)
Poème, op. 47, string orchestra (1989)
Concerto, op. 49, ondes martenot and orchestra (1990)
Le Prix, opera (1992)
Scherzo, op. 54, string quartet (1992)
Symphonie No. 4, op. 55, orchestra (1993)
Concerto pour guitare, op. 56 (1993)
Concerto pour trombone, op. 57 (1995)
Sonate pour violon et piano, op. 58 (1996)
Fantaisie, op. 59, piano (1996)
Sonate pour treize instruments, op. 60 (1996)
Concerto pour marimba, vibraphone et string orchestra, op. 61 (1997)
Sérénade Héroïque, op. 62, horn and orchestra (1998)
Concerto pour piano No. 2, op. 64 (1999)
Passage, op. 65, chorus (1999)
Hear My Prayer, O Lord, op. 66, chorus (2000)
Faintaisie sur le nom de Bach, op. 67, flute (2000)
Concerto pour orgue, op. 68 (2000)
Triple Concerto, violin, cello, piano and orchestra, op. 69 (2001)
Impromptu, op. 70, piano (2004)
Sextuor à cordes, op. 71 (2004)
Concerto pour hautbois et cor anglais, op. 72 (2004)
Trio pour clarinette, violoncelle et piano, op. 73 (2004)
Variations concertantes, op. 74, orchestra (2005)
Concerto for Viola and Small Orchestra, op. 75 (2006)
Légendes, orchestra, op. 76 (2007)
Concerto, 2 amplified guitars and small orchestra, op. 77 (2007)
Sur les rives du Saint-Maurice, orchestra, op. 78 (2008)
Variations sur un thème de Mozart, 3 pianos and orchestra, op. 79 (2008)
Intermezzo, guitar, op. 80 (2009)
Symphony No. 5, "Liberté", chorus and orchestra, op. 81 (2009; fp. 2010)
Trio, oboe, violin and piano, op. 82 (2009)

 
WORKS BY GENRE                                                            Hétu Links     ~ top of page ~
Dramatic/Theater
Le Prix, opera (1992)

Orchestral
Symphony, op. 2, string orchestra (1959)
Symphony No. 2, op. 4, orchestra (1961)
L'Apocalypse 'Fresque symphonique d'après saint Jean,' op, 14, orchestra (1967; version with speaker, 1973)
Passacaglia, op. 17, orchestra ( 1970)
Symphony No. 3, op. 3 18, orchestra (1971)
Fantasy, op. 21, piano and orchestra (1973)
Antinomie, op. 23, chamber orchestra (1977)
Mirages, op. 34, orchestra (1981)
Interlude (excerpt from Les Abîmes du rêve), orchestra (1982)
Images de la Révolution, op. 44, orchestra (1988)
Poème, op. 47, string orchestra (1989)
Symphonie No. 4, op. 55, orchestra (1993)
Variations concertantes, op. 74, orchestra (2005)
Légendes, orchestra, op. 76 (2007)
Sur les rives du Saint-Maurice, orchestra, op. 78 (2008)
Symphony No. 5, "Liberté", chorus and orchestra, op. 81 (2009; fp. 2010)

Soloist(s) w/Orchestra
Double concerto, op. 12, violin, piano and chamber orchestra (1967)
Concerto, op. 15, piano and orchestra (1969)
Concerto, op. 31, bassoon and orchestra (1979)
Les Abîmes du rêve, op. 36, bass and orchestra (1982)
Concerto, op. 37, clarinet and orchestra (1983)
Missa pro trecentesimo anno, op. 38 chorus and orchestra (1985)
Symphonie concertante, op. 40, wind quintet and string orchestra (1986)
Concerto, op. 43, trumpet and chamber orchestra (1987)
Concerto, op. 49, ondes martenot and orchestra (1990)
Concerto pour guitare, op. 56 (1993)
Concerto pour trombone, op. 57 (1995)
Concerto pour marimba, vibraphone et string orchestra, op. 61 (1997)
Sérénade Héroïque, op. 62, horn and orchestra (1998)
Concerto pour piano No. 2, op. 64 (1999)
Concerto pour orgue, op. 68 (2000)                                                                                                ~ top of page ~
Triple Concerto, violin, cello, piano and orchestra, op. 69 (2001)
Concerto pour hautbois et cor anglais, op. 72 (2004)
Concerto for Viola and Small Orchestra, op. 75 (2006)
Concerto, 2 amplified guitars and small orchestra, op. 77 (2007)
Variations sur un thème de Mozart, 3 pianos and orchestra, op. 79 (2008)

Chorus w/Orchestra
Symphony No. 5, "Liberté", chorus and orchestra, op. 81 (2009; fp. 2010)

Choral
Les Djinns, op. 22, double chorus, percussion and piano (1975)
Les Illusions fanées, op. 46, chorus (1988)
Passage, op. 65, chorus (1999)
Hear My Prayer, O Lord, op. 66, chorus (2000)

Chamber
Adagio and Rondo, op. 3, no. 1a, string quartet (1960)
Quintet, op. 13, woodwinds (1967)
Cycle, op. 16, piano and winds (1969)
String Quartet, op. 19 (1972)
Four Miniatures, oboe, clarinet and bassoon (1987)
Serenade, op. 45, flute and string quartet (1988)
Scherzo, op. 54, string quartet (1992)
Sonate pour treize instruments, op. 60 (1996)
Trio pour clarinette, violoncelle et piano, op. 73 (2004)
Sextuor à cordes, op. 71 (2004)
Trio, oboe, violin and piano, op. 82 (2009)

Solo Instrument
Four Pieces, op. 10, flute and piano (1965)
Variations, op. 11, violin  (viola or violoncello) (1967)
Aria, op. 27, flute and piano (1977)
Nocturne, op. 26, clarinet and piano (1977)
Rondo varié, op. 25, violin (1977)
Incantation, op. 28, oboe and piano (1978)
Lied, op. 29, horn and piano (1978)
Elegy, op.  31a, basoon and piano (1979) [excerpt from Concerto, op. 31]
Suite, op. 41, guitar (1986)                                                                                                                ~ top of page ~
Sonate pour violon et piano, op. 58 (1996)
Faintaisie sur le nom de Bach, op. 67, flute (2000)
Intermezzo, guitar, op. 80 (2009)

Piano
Sonata, op. 6, 2 pianos (1962)
Petite suite, op. 7, piano (1962)
Variations, op. 8, piano (1964)
Prélude et danse, op. 24, piano (1977)
Ballade, op. 30, piano (1978)
Sonata, op. 35, piano (1984)
Four Interludes, op. 38a (excerpts from Missa pro trecentesimo anno), organ (1985)
Variations, op. 42, organ (1986)
Fantaisie, op. 59, piano (1996)
Impromptu, op. 70, piano (2004)

Vocal
Les Clartés de la nuit, op. 20, soprano and piano/orchestra (1972; rev. 1987)

Incidental/Film
Au pays de Zom, film music (1980)


HETU LINKS                                                            Works by Genre     ~ top of page ~
Jacques Hétu: Composer Whose Modernist Works Never Lost Sight of Traditional Forms (Martin Anderson, The Independent)
Jacques Hétu: The Joy of Composing (Rene Champigny, La scena musicale)
Quebec Composer Jacques Hétu Dies (CBC News)

Hétu @ Wikipedia
Hétu @ Arts Alive/NAC musicbox TIMELINE    also    here    and    here
Hétu @ The Canadian Encyclopedia
Hétu @ Canadian Music Centre
Hétu @ Classical Composers Database
Hétu @ Les Editions Doberman-Yppan
Hétu @ The Ensemble Sospeso
Hétu @ IMDb (Internet Movie Database)
Hétu @ IRCAM
Hétu @ The Living Composers Project
Hétu @ MusicWeb International
Hétu @ New Jersey Symphony Orchestra
Hétu @ The New York Times
Hétu @ This Blog Will Change the World
Hétu @ patrickkearney.ca

Publisher
Hétu @ Les Editions Doberman-Yppan

Streaming Audio
Hétu @ Arts Alive/NAC musicbox TIMELINE    also    here    and    here
Hétu @ last.fm
Hétu @ Rhapsody

Recordings
Hétu @ ArkivMusic
Hétu @ ClassicsOnline

Video
Hétu @ YouTube
Hétu @ Google Video


Quebec Composer Jacques Hétu Dies
Wednesday, February 10, 2010 - CBC News

Quebec classical composer Jacques Hétu died Tuesday at his home near Montreal after a battle with cancer. He was 71. The musician had been receiving palliative care at his home since September, when he learned that his lung cancer had metastasized. Just 10 days earlier, he was honoured for lifetime achievement at the annual Opus Awards for classical music.
Colleagues who have played, conducted and commissioned his work, including Walter Boudreau, Alain Trudel, Jacques Lacombe and Lise Beauchamp, hailed him as a "unique voice" in classical composition. Hétu was a professor of music for more than 40 years at Laval University, University of Montreal and University of Quebec in Montreal. He taught music analysis and established classes in composition at Laval and was a professor of composition in Montreal. Orchestras throughout Canada have commissioned his music, including the symphony orchestras of Montreal, Toronto, Quebec City, Edmonton and Ottawa. In 1990, Hétu toured with the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Germany, Denmark and Great Britain, with Pinchas Zukerman conducting two of his works — Third Symphony (1971) and Antinomie (1977). His Images de la Révolution, commissioned by the Montreal Symphony Orchestra for the bicentenary of the French Revolution, was performed by the New York Philharmonic, under the direction of Charles Dutoit. He has been in demand as a composer because of work that is well-structured, skillfully orchestrated, lyric and filled with emotion.

Hétu was born in Trois-Rivières on Aug. 8, 1938, and studied composition with Clermont Pépin at the Montreal Conservatory, where he won prizes in harmony, counterpoint and composition. In 1961, he won the composition prize at the Festival du Québec, the prestigious Prix d'Europe and a Canada Council award. He continued his studies with Henri Dutilleux in Paris and took Olivier Messiaen's class in analysis at the Conservatoire de Paris. He returned to Quebec in 1963 and began teaching at Laval. As his reputation as a composer grew, he created commissions for Robert Cram, Yegor Dyachkov, André Laplante, Alvaro Pierri, the Vancouver New Music Society, the CBC Orchestra and many others. Glenn Gould has played his Variations for Piano and singer Joseph Rouleau called on him to produce a work for voice and orchestra, Les Abimes du rêve.

His repertoire comprises more than 80 works, including:
    * Five symphonies.
    * 15 concertos.
    * An opera, Le Prix, composed in 1992 for the opening of Salle Pierre-Mercure in Montreal.
    * Numerous chamber works.
    * Music for the film Au Pays de Zom by Gilles Groulx.

Among his last public appearances was a performance Jan. 14 in Montreal of Concerto for two guitars by the Montreal's Orchestre Métropolitain, conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Hétu had hoped to attend the premiere of his 5th Symphony which is scheduled for March 3 during the New Creations Festival in Toronto. He is a multiple winner of the SOCAN prize for new classical music, a member of the Order of Quebec and the Order of Canada.


Jacques Hétu: Composer Whose Modernist Works Never Lost Sight of Traditional Forms
By Martin Anderson, The Independent, Wednesday, 26 May 2010

Jacques Hétu died just too soon to enjoy the first performance of his Fifth Symphony, on 3 March, with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra under its chief conductor Peter Oundjian. But he did not want for public hearings: although his music is unfamiliar in Britain, he was one of the most frequently performed of all contemporary Canadian composers. Despite a year-long battle with cancer, Hétu began 2010 on a wave, attending the first performance of his Concerto for Two Guitars and Orchestra on 14 January, and receiving a Prix Hommage from the Conseil Québécois de la Musique on 31 January, his Old-Testament beard and professorial pipe making him a familiar figure wherever he went.

Hétu was a late starter in music, taking up the piano only at 15 and composing prolifically soon after; it brought him relief from disruption in the family home. He began his formal musical education in 1955–56, studying piano, harmony and Gregorian chant with Father Jules Martel at the University of Ottawa before spending five years at the Montreal Conservatoire. There he broadened his abilities, studying composition and counterpoint with Clermont Pépin, and signing up for Jean Papineau-Couture's fugue class, though he never actually took it; there was also harmony with Isabelle Delorme, piano with Georges Savaria and oboe with Melvin Berman, while a summer course at Tanglewood in 1959 brought him under the aegis of Lukas Foss. He left in 1961 with prizes in composition, counterpoint and harmony. In 1961 a mix of prizes and bursaries – first prize in a composition competition run by the Quebec Music Festival, a Canada Council grant and the Prix d'Europe – allowed him to continue his training in Paris, where he studied composition with Henri Dutilleux at the École normale de Musique (1961–63) and took Olivier Messiaen's analysis course at the Conservatoire national (1962–63). He wrote his First Symphony, for strings, just before he went to Paris; while there he composed his Second Symphony, a Prélude for orchestra and a trio for flute, oboe and harpsichord.
Back in Canada, Hétu began the career as teacher that ran parallel to his life as composer. He taught at the Université Laval in Quebec from 1963 until 1977, with courses in analysis and music literature; he introduced classes in composition and orchestration. In 1979 he joined the University of Quebec in Montreal, remaining until his retirement in 2000; in 1980–82 and 1986–88 he was head of the music department. Over those years he became an important factor in shaping the skills of the generations following in his wake.

Hétu's earliest influences, he said, were Schubert and Puccini, with his teachers Pépin and Dutilleux also inflecting his language. He explained that his music grew slowly, from small thematic cells, often in a slow movement, which would then expand outwards as he built up a work as a whole. Those cells could be chromatic, even atonal, but they were always set in a firmly tonal framework. That allowed Hétu to have his cake and eat it: his music sounds modern without rejecting the tradition from which it emerged – although his refusal to write what he called "du Boulez" cost him the support of the modern-music establishment. Instead, his music has something of the angularity of Bartók and the astringent lyricism of Honegger; a keen sense of drama and colour gives it immediacy; and his readiness to invoke extra-musical images – as in the arresting and moving five-movement suite Images de la Révolution of 1989 – allowed audiences ready points of contact. Musicians, too, took to his music from the start. His early Adagio et Rondo (1960) is one of the most frequently performed Canadian works for strings. Glenn Gould's iconic status in Canadian culture meant that his recording of Hétu's Variations for Piano of 1967 carried extra-musical punch, helping bring attention to the young composer. From then on Hétu enjoyed a steady stream of commissions. Major Canadian soloists came to him for something new for their instrument, explaining the unusual number – over 20 – of concertos in his output: works for piano (1969 and 1999), bassoon (1979), clarinet (1983), trumpet (1987), ondes Martenot (1990), flute (1991), guitar (1994), trombone (1995), marimba (1997), horn (1998), organ (2001), a triple concerto for violin, cello and piano (2002), a double concerto for oboe and cor anglais (2004), viola (2006) and, most recently, the Variations on a Theme of Mozart, in effect a concerto for three pianos (2009). The choral Fifth Symphony was Hétu's Op. 81, the final addition to a voluminous vocal output that ranges in scale from songs to a one-act opera, Le prix (1992). A fondness for the poetry of Émile Nelligan produced the song-cycles Les Clartés de la Nuit (1972/87) for voice and piano/orchestra, Les Abîmes du Rêve (1982) for bass and orchestra and the choral Les Illusions Fanées (1988). Other large-scale pieces involving the voice are Les djinns (1975), for small and large chorus, six percussionists and piano, and the Missa pro trecentesimo anno for chorus, organ and orchestra (1985). There is also a generous quantity of chamber music.

Hétu's work, said the conductor Jacques Lacombe, "always bears a very personal signature". Singling out "his lyricism, his harmonic language, his sense of structure, the clarity of his orchestration", Lacombe described Hétu as "a real musician who knew how to write for musicians, without laying traps for them – not that his music doesn't present challenges or difficulties for its performers. But ... he always wrote well for the orchestra and that is doubtless one of the reasons that orchestral musicians take so much pleasure in playing his music and that he is one of the Québecois and Canadian musicians most performed both at home and internationally." Hétu himself despatched the idea of any "Canadian" qualities in his music: he was a Canadian composer, he said, because he lived in Canada but the music would have sounded the same if he had lived in Australia. Nevertheless, in 1990 it was Hétu whom Pinchas Zukerman chose to accompany the National Arts Centre Orchestra of Ottawa, taking the Third Symphony (1971) and Antinomie (1979) on a tour of Germany, Denmark and Britain. One sees why Zukerman might choose the Third Symphony: its driving energy makes it an ideal visiting card for a musical culture insufficiently appreciated outside Canada's borders.
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