Jacques Hétu
was born in Trois-Rivières on August 8, 1938. In 1956 he was
accepted into the Montréal Conservatory where he studied
composition with Clermont Pépin. In 196l he completed his studies
at the Conservatory, winning prizes in harmony, counterpoint and
composition. In the same year he won the composition prize of the
Festival du Québec, the prestigious Prix d'Europe and a Canada
Council award. From 1961 to 1963 he studied with Henri Dutilleux at the
École Normale de Musique in Paris and took Olivier Messiaen's
class in analysis at the Conservatoire de Paris.His first four compositions, including two symphonies, date from his student years in Montréal, but far from being considered schoolboy exercises, these works are performed regularly. Bartók was a major influence on Hétu's works of the Montréal period: his language was that of a broadened tonality. After a foray into twelve-tone technique, Hétu practised modal serialism from 1963 onward and his lyrical expression grew more intense. In 1978, he wrote: "The main thing is not to search for an outlandish way of arranging sounds, but to identify one's own way of imagining music".
Hétu gives priority to poetry, emotion and to coherent discourse; he is also sensitive to the plastic aspects of sonority and the structural rigour of his contemporaries. Within traditional forms, he arranges elements in a cyclical manner based on the affirmative force of the thematic material, rigourous writing and the requirement for unity. Currently, Hétu is preoccupied with simplifying his language by broadening his framework and also developing ever more lyrical expression.