Claude Vivier ( ; baptised as Claude Roger; 14 April 19487 March 1983) was a Canadian composer, pianist, poet and ethnomusicologist of Québécois origin. After studying with Karlheinz Stockhausen in Cologne, Vivier became an innovative member of the "German Feedback" movement, a subset of what is now known as spectral music. Between 1976 and 1977, Vivier travelled to Egypt, Japan, Iran, Thailand, Singapore, and Bali, where he came under the influence of aspects of their respective traditional musics.
Despite working at a slow pace and leaving behind a small œuvre, Vivier's musical language is vast and diverse. His place in the spectral movement of Europe entailed the manipulation of the harmonic series and led to music that incorporated microtones to replicate these frequencies, a compositional technique he would later refer to as the jeux de couleurs. He is also known for incorporating elements of serialism, dodecaphony, musique concrète, extended techniques, surrealism, traditional Québécois folk songs, and more. The themes of Vivier's pieces are largely seen as autobiographical, often centring around loneliness and ostracization, the search for love and companionship, or voyaging to foreign lands. He used his personal experiences to advance an avant-garde style, having written multilingual vocal music and devising his so-called (invented languages). He is considered to be among the greatest composers in Canada's history – György Ligeti would revere Vivier as "the most important and original composer of his generation."
Vivier was openly gay. After ending his brief relationship with Christopher Coe, he frequented Parisian gay bars where he solicited male prostitutes, one of whom violently attacked him in January 1983. Despite warnings from friends and his own increasing paranoia over his safety, Vivier had continued to engage in the same behaviour. On the night of 7 March, he was killed by a serial murderer who routinely deceived gay men in the Marais to rob and assault them.
Early life Childhood
Claude Vivier is believed to have been born on 14 April 1948 in the vicinity of Montréal, Québec, and was voluntarily placed in the orphanage of La Crèche Saint-Michel (no longer in operation) that same day by his mother.Cherney, Lawrence (2018). "The tragic real-life story of Quebec composer Claude Vivier is mirrored in his music" CBC Radio. Retrieved 5 July 2022. Her name, ethnicity, and origin, as well as that of Vivier's father, are unknown.Griffiths, Paul (1996). "From the Edge of Experience, a New Sound". The New York Times. Retrieved 2 July 2022.Kustanczy, Catherine (2019). "Claude Vivier: A Cosmic Seeker's Star Ascends" Opera Canada. Retrieved 5 July 2022.Brown, Jeffrey (2016). "Black Magic" VAN Magazine. Retrieved 6 July 2022.
Vivier himself would posit in later years that he was likely not of French Canadian heritage. He would often mythicize the story and heritage of his parents, at times telling people his family was German, Eastern European, or Jewish. His friend Philippe Poloni would relay: "he thought that his father was a conductor, or his mother was a musician, and they met in Montréal. Or something like that, something very romantic. He always said he spoke good German and good Italian because he had a natural connection with those two languages as he had some Italian and some Jewish German blood in his veins". He searched his whole life in the hope of finding his birth parents, to no avail. This frustration and the feeling of a hollow identity inspired many of his works, including Lonely Child (1980).Clements, Andrew (2022). "Claude Vivier weekend review – unruly and utterly distinctive". The Guardian. Retrieved 30 June 2022.
After receiving the young boy, the Sœurs Grises who ran the orphanage gave him the name of Claude Roger and he was subsequently baptized at the Église Saint-Enfant-Jésus.Hickling, Alfred (2008). "Soul's rebirth". The Guardian. Retrieved 6 July 2022. He was considered mentally disabled, as the nuns believed him to be "deaf and dumb." Apart from this, however, very little is known from his early life in the orphanage due to a lack of record-keeping; any learning disability that he may have had, went undiagnosed.
He was adopted at the age of two and a half by the working-class Vivier family from Mile End, consisting of parents Armand and Jeanne (née Masseau) and their two biological children.Bowness, Gordon (2021). "Claude Vivier is the most famous composer you've never heard of" Xtra Magazine. Retrieved 6 July 2022. The couple had suffered a miscarriage many years prior and were looking for a young girl to adopt, only to find each of the Montréal orphanages having solely boys. It is unknown why Claude was chosen out of the many in Saint-Michel. He was a charismatic and excitable child, but his time in the large and strictly Catholic Vivier household was fraught with incidents. He is reported to have learned to speak at the age of six, before which the family had considered sending him to a mental institution. After Christmas in 1950, Claude was briefly brought back to the orphanage by his adoptive family for unspecified reasons, but was soon taken back in by them around half a year later in August 1951.Gervasoni, Pierre (2018). "All the ghosts of Claude Vivier" Le Monde. Retrieved 20 July 2022.
At the age of eight, Vivier was raped by his adoptive uncle, Joseph.Rodgers, Caroline (2014). "Le destin tragique de Claude Vivier" La Presse. Retrieved 20 July 2022. He revealed this to a priest during a routine confession, and the priest reportedly told the young Claude that he would not be forgiven unless he told his parents. Vivier's parents became infuriated after he eventually recounted the sexual assault, believing he was either lying or responsible for the incident. This caused a significant strain in their relationship, and Vivier would ultimately spend less and less time interacting with his family. Despite this, Joseph's sexual abuse continued for years after. The family moved north to the suburb of Laval when Vivier was nine or ten, and frequently migrated from house to house as they continued to struggle financially. These near-constant moves depressed Vivier and he became ever more lonely: "I remember when I was a child and we moved house – I went around the streets looking for friends, but came back to the house with my head down, still with no friends".
Adolescence
At the age of thirteen, Vivier's parents enrolled him in the boarding schools run by the Frères Maristae, a French Catholic organisation that prepared young men for a vocation in the priesthood. Vivier recalled poetry being his favourite course, being especially fascinated with the works of the French poet Arthur Rimbaud and the Canadian poet Émile Nelligan. He also developed a strong interest in linguistics and historical literature, studying the mechanics of ancient Greek and Latin, which would later prove influential for his . His relatively high grades let him rise to the ranks of church postulant, and he began to develop a group of friends with similar interests. His grades were ranked the highest in a class of thirty-four at the Juvénat Supérieur Saint-Joseph, with a two-year average exam mark of eighty per cent. Vivier's first documented poems, including Noël and the dada-inspired Not' petit bonheur (1965), date from this period.
Vivier discovered he was gay while attending classes and experiencing what he called "" towards his fellow male classmates. In 1966, aged 18, he had already come out to his friends and family during a time when homosexuality was still illegal and heavily frowned upon in Canada.Bridle, Marc (2022). "Zipangu and Lonely Child: Two Claude Vivier masterpieces in magnificent performances by the London Sinfonietta" Opera Today. Retrieved 6 July 2022. He was subsequently expelled from the novitiate of Saint-Hyacinthe halfway through the school year, with the official reason given by the Frères Maristae being his "inappropriate behaviour" and a "lack of maturity"; but it is generally accepted by music historians that the Christian intolerance towards homosexuality was the true motivation. Vivier reportedly sobbed for hours after receiving his notice of expulsion, having believed his time with the Frères Maristae to be the only time he was ever truly happy. He would, however, make no attempt to hide his sexuality from then onward.
First musical education
Vivier's first exposure to music was through singing hymns in the family's church during mass; he would later recall an experience in a midnight Mass on Christmas Eve as a "revelation." His adoptive parents purchased an upright piano and helped provide him occasional piano lessons when he was fourteen. His earliest known works date from this period, and he began to profit from his music around the same time: according to his adoptive sister Gisèle, he gave music lessons to his peers and played piano accompaniment for the ballet school in nearby Ahuntsic throughout his early teens. He also developed an interest in the organ, searching for various churches in the Pont-Viau neighbourhood where he could practice and perform. As he didn't receive much if any musical education from the Frères Maristae, he was almost entirely self-taught. One of his schoolmates, Gilles Beauregard, recalled his fascination with playing and studying the works of Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Bartók and Schoenberg. Vivier is believed to have written a handful of songs for voice and piano as well as several organ preludes before the age of twenty, nearly all of which have since been lost or destroyed. Vivier's friend Michel-Georges Brégent recalled a Bartók-inspired Prélude pour piano being written in 1967, but it was apparently destroyed by Vivier at a later time.
Despite being a devout Catholic himself, Vivier eventually decided a career in the church would be impossible given his prior expulsion.Bratishenko, Lev (2017). "SCRUTINY | Kopernikus Heralds Opera in the 21st Century" Ludwig Van Toronto. Retrieved 20 July 2022. He worked various odd jobs to stay afloat financially after leaving the novitiate, including positions at a hardware store, an Eaton's, and a restaurant in the Laval area. In the fall of 1967, he was finally able to enroll at the Conservatoire de musique du Québec à Montréal (CMQM).
He studied piano with Irving Heller, harmony and counterpoint with Isabelle Delorme, fugue with Françoise Aubut-Pratte, and composition with Gilles Tremblay. Vivier was one of Tremblay's more enthusiastic and dedicated pupils, with Tremblay recalling: "He was eager to know. He was so eager to know that he was sometimes very tiring, because he would follow me in the corridors after the lessons and ask me questions". Tremblay, a pupil of Olivier Messiaen, refused to focus on specific historical periods and styles of music, believing the concept of music composition was all-encompassing. He analyzed contrasting genres with his students, including Gregorian chant, and the music of Johannes Sebastian Bach and Alban Berg. This unique outlook for the time inspired Vivier's future style in combining disparate influences. His Quatuor à cordes (1968), Ojikawa (1968) and Prolifération (1969, rev. 1976) are among the few works he completed at the conservatory. Tremblay would come to support Vivier and elevate his status as a serious composer, and the two developed a close friendship.
Vivier began his first known romantic relationship in Montréal with a man named Dino Olivieri. A postcard from this period to Olivieri reads, "Perhaps, I love you very much".
Career Studies in Europe