Les Quatre Saisons du Québec: Musical Pleasure According to François Dompierre

After having left his mark on our homegrown cinema by composing the scores for such notable films as Le Matou (The Alley Cat), Le Déclin de l’empire américain (The Decline of the American Empire), and IXE-13, François Dompierre continues to enrich our musical landscape with the same passion he brought to his soundtracks. 

Since officially retiring from film music in the early 2000s—with a notable exception for Léa Pool’s La Passion d’Augustine (The Passion of Augustine) in 2015—, the 83-year-old composer is fully enjoying his creative freedom. “I write piano preludes, I write concert music, strictly useless music!” he jokes. 

Together with the FILMharmonique Orchestra at the Maison symphonique, he is bringing us his latest “useless” work, Les Quatre Saisons du Québec (The Four Seasons of Quebec), as part of the concert The Four Seasons: From Vivaldi to Dompierre, in which he embraces the tradition of the great masters while keeping both feet firmly planted on our soil. 

A Visual and Popular Work 

Written for strings and solo violin, Les Quatre Saisons du Québec takes the form of a little concerto, following in the footsteps of Antonio Vivaldi’s famous Four Seasons. Dompierre’s ambition is not to offer a dense or complex work, but to reconnect with the spirit of the Venetian master. “I was somewhat inspired by what he wanted to do, that is to say, to compose a popular work, a work of pleasure,” he confides. 

To create this fresco, the composer looked to the folk traditions that have shaped Quebec, drawing on Acadian, Irish, and American influences. Just as Astor Piazzolla was inspired by his homeland for his Four Seasons of Buenos Aires (also on the program), Dompierre infuses each movement of his work with a bit of la belle province’s cultural DNA. 

The Vivaldian inspiration is also reflected in Dompierre’s poetic approach. Before beginning the composition, he wrote four poems to guide his work, just as Vivaldi had done in his time. “I imagined spring coming from the depths of the forests with native drums, summer as a song our grandmothers would sing to lull us to sleep, autumn as a waltz under apple trees, and winter as a quadrille danced at family gatherings while waiting for the cold season to pass.” 

This very descriptive approach reminded him of his decades spent composing for the big screen. Dompierre also draws a natural parallel between Vivaldi’s masterpiece—which he describes as a “visual work”—and his own instinct as a film composer. In fact, Dompierre believes if Vivaldi were alive in the 21^st century, he would probably be writing film music. 

Virtuosity and Rigadoon 

Behind the apparent accessibility of the music of his Quatre Saisons there nevertheless lies a real challenge for the artists performing it. While folk music is usually based on oral tradition and simple harmonic structures, Dompierre enriches the repertoire by injecting it with the codes of classical development. “It’s not easy to play, especially for the soloist,” he emphasizes. “It requires a great deal of virtuosity.” 

Making its world premiere as part of the concert The Four Seasons: From Vivaldi to Dompierre, this new work will share the stage at the Maison symphonique with Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, as well as those by Astor Piazzolla, on September 11 and November 6. The album will be released at the end of August.