Henri Dutilleux
Encyclopedia
Henri Dutilleux is one of the most important French composers of the second half of the 20th century, producing work in the tradition of Maurice Ravel
, Claude Debussy
, and Albert Roussel
, but in a style distinctly his own. Although his output is relatively small, its quality and originality have won international acclaim.
, counterpoint
and piano
with Victor Gallois at the Douai
Conservatory before leaving for Paris
. There from 1933 to 1938 he attended the classes of Jean
and Noël Gallon
(harmony and counterpoint), Henri Büsser
(composition) and Maurice Emmanuel (history of music) at the Paris Conservatoire.
Dutilleux won the Prix de Rome
in 1938 for his cantata
L'anneau du roi but did not complete the entire residency in Rome due to the outbreak of World War II. He worked for a year as a medical orderly in the army and then came back to Paris in 1940 where he worked as a pianist
, arranger
and music teacher and in 1942 conducted the choir of the Paris Opera.
Dutilleux worked as Head of Music Production for French Radio from 1945 to 1963. He served as Professor of Composition at the École Normale de Musique de Paris
from 1961 to 1970. He was appointed to the staff of the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in 1970 and was composer in residence at Tanglewood
in 1995 and 1998. His students include French composers Gérard Grisey
and Francis Bayer, Canadian composers Alain Gagnon
and Jacques Hétu
, British composers Kenneth Hesketh
and Andrew McBirnie
, and American composers Derek Bermel
and David S. Sampson
. Invited by Walter Fink
, he was the 16th composer featured in the annual Komponistenporträt of the Rheingau Musik Festival
in 2006.
and Ravel
but is also clearly influenced by Béla Bartók
and Igor Stravinsky
. His attitude towards Serialism
is more ambiguous. While he has always paid attention to the developments of contemporary music and has incorporated some serialist techniques into his own compositions, he has also criticized the more radical and intolerant aspects of the movement ("What I reject is the dogma and the authoritarianism which manifested themselves in that period"). As an independent composer, Dutilleux has always refused to be associated with any school. Rather, his works merge the traditions of earlier composers and post-World War II innovations and translate them into his own idiosyncratic style. His music also contains echoes of jazz
as can be heard in the double bass
introduction to his First Symphony and his frequent use of syncopated rhythms.
Some of Dutilleux's trademarks include very refined orchestral textures; complex rhythms; a preference for atonality
and modality
over tonality
; the use of pedal point
s that serve as atonal pitch centers; and "reverse variation," by which a theme is not exposed immediately but rather revealed gradually, appearing in its complete form only after a few partial, tentative expositions. His music also displays a very strong sense of structure and symmetry. This is particularly obvious from an "external" point of view i.e., the overall organisation of the different movements or the spatial distribution of the various instruments, but is also apparent in the music itself (themes, harmonies and rhythms mirroring, complementing or opposing each other). "A passage may be conceived as a symmetrical shape of notes on paper and only later given musical substance. He loves symmetrical musical figures such as palindromes or fan-shaped phrases..."
Dutilleux's music has often been influenced by art and literature, such as the works of Vincent van Gogh
, Charles Baudelaire
, and Marcel Proust
. It also shows a concern for the concepts of time and memory, both in its use of quotations (notably from Béla Bartók, Benjamin Britten
and Jehan Alain
), and in short interludes that recall material used in earlier movements and/or introduce ideas that will be fully developed later.
A perfectionist with a strong sense of artistic integrity, he has allowed only a small number of his works to be published, and what he does publish he often revises and adjusts many times subsequently.
, whom he had married in 1946. He has renounced most of the works he composed before it because he did not believe them to be representative of his mature standards, considering many of them to be too derivative to have merit.
After the Piano Sonata, Dutilleux started working on his First Symphony (1951). It consists of four monothematic movements and has a perfectly symmetrical structure: music slowly emerges from silence (1st movement— a passacaglia
) and builds towards a fast climax (2nd—a scherzo and moto perpetuo), keeps its momentum (3rd—"a continuous melodic line the never goes back on itself"), and finally slowly fades out (4th—a theme and variations).
In 1953, Dutilleux wrote the music for the ballet
Le loup.
In his Second Symphony, titled Le double (1959), the orchestra is divided into two groups: a small one at the front with instruments taken from the various sections (brass, woodwind, strings and percussion) and a bigger one at the back consisting of the rest of the orchestra. Although this brings to mind the Baroque
concerto grosso
, the approach is different: in this piece, the smaller ensemble acts as a mirror or ghost of the bigger one, sometimes playing similar or complementary lines, sometimes contrasting ones.
His next work, Métaboles (for orchestra, 1965) explores the idea of metamorphosis, how a series of subtle and gradual changes can radically transform a structure. A different section of the orchestra dominates each of the first four movements before the fifth brings them all together for the finale. As a result, it can be considered as a concerto for orchestra. It quickly achieved celebrity and, following its première by George Szell
and the Cleveland Orchestra
, was performed in several North American cities, then in France. Métaboles is now one of his most often performed works.
In the mid-sixties, Dutilleux met Mstislav Rostropovich
, who commissioned him to write a cello concerto. Rostropovich premièred the work, titled Tout un monde lointain, in 1970. It is one of the most important additions to the cello
repertoire of the 20th century and is considered one of the composer's major achievements. In five movements, Tout un monde lointain is a nocturnal, mysterious work with a delicate orchestration and an eerily beautiful, yet highly virtuosic solo part. While most of the concerto is introspective and meditative, it also has occasional outbursts of violence and a frantic build-up to the ambiguous, suspended finale.
After the cello concerto, Dutilleux turned to chamber music
for the first time in more than 20 years and published various works for piano (3 Préludes, Figures de résonances) and 3 strophes sur le nom de Sacher (1976–1982) for solo cello. The latter work was originally composed on the occasion of Sacher's 70th birthday in 1976, on a request by Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich
to write compositions for cello solo using his name spelt out in musical notes as the theme (eS, A, C, H, E, Re). The compositions were partially presented in Zurich on 2 May 1976. The whole project will be (for the first time in complete performance) performed by Czech cellist František Brikcius in May 2011 in Prague.He also wrote the string quartet
Ainsi la Nuit (1976). Each of its movements highlights various special effects (pizzicato
, glissandi, harmonics, extreme registers, contrasting dynamics…) resulting in a difficult but fascinating work.
He then returned to orchestral works in 1978 with Timbres, espace, mouvement ou la nuit etoilée
, inspired by Vincent Van Gogh's The Starry Night
. In this composition, Dutilleux attempted to translate into musical terms the opposition between emptiness and movement conveyed by the painting. The work employs a string section of only lower-register instruments: cellos and double basses, no violins or violas.
In 1985, Isaac Stern
premiered L'arbre des songes, a violin concerto
that he had commissioned Dutilleux to write. Like its cello counterpart, it is an important addition to the instrument's 20th century repertoire. However, it is completely atonal, more in the mold of Arnold Schoenberg or Alben Berg, than of Ravel, Debussy or Roussel.
Dutilleux later wrote Mystère de l'instant (for cymbalum
, string orchestra and percussion, 1989), Les Citations (for oboe, harpsichord, double bass and percussion, 1991), The Shadows of Time (for orchestra and children voices, 1997), Slava's Fanfare (for Rostropovich's 70th birthday, 1997) and Sur le même accord
(for violin and orchestra, 2002 - dedicated to Anne-Sophie Mutter
).
In 2003, he completed , a song-cycle for soprano
and orchestra inspired by poems and letters by Prithwindra Mukherjee
, Rainer Maria Rilke
, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
and Vincent van Gogh
. This work has received a very enthusiastic reception and has been programmed several times since its première.
His latest work is another song-cycle entitled Le temps l'horloge
, written for American soprano Renée Fleming
. It consists of four pieces and an instrumental interlude on two poems by Jean Tardieu
, one by Robert Desnos
and one by Charles Baudelaire
. The first three songs were premièred at the Saito Kinen Festival Matsumoto
, Japan in September 2007. The American première of this partial version took place in November 2007 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra
. The complete work was unveiled on May 7, 2009 at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées
in Paris where the 16-minutes song-cycle was immediately encored.
Most recently, Dutilleux has added a third movement to his chamber work Les Citations. The expanded version was premiered at the Festival d’Auvers-sur-Oise on 24 June 2010. In 2011, Pascal Gallois transcribed, with Dutilleux's approval, his Deux sonnets de Jean Cassou for bassoon and piano (originally for baritone and piano).
As for future projects, Dutilleux has expressed the wish to write more chamber music
, notably a second string quartet, a genre he feels he has neglected.
and of composer Julien Koszul. He also had a long friendship with Maurice Boitel
, whose exhibitions he regularly visited.
Maurice Ravel
Joseph-Maurice Ravel was a French composer known especially for his melodies, orchestral and instrumental textures and effects...
, Claude Debussy
Claude Debussy
Claude-Achille Debussy was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures working within the field of impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions...
, and Albert Roussel
Albert Roussel
Albert Charles Paul Marie Roussel was a French composer. He spent seven years as a midshipman, turned to music as an adult, and became one of the most prominent French composers of the interwar period...
, but in a style distinctly his own. Although his output is relatively small, its quality and originality have won international acclaim.
Life
As a young man, Dutilleux studied harmonyHarmony
In music, harmony is the use of simultaneous pitches , or chords. The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Harmony is often said to refer to the "vertical" aspect of music, as distinguished from melodic...
, counterpoint
Counterpoint
In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more voices that are independent in contour and rhythm and are harmonically interdependent . It has been most commonly identified in classical music, developing strongly during the Renaissance and in much of the common practice period,...
and piano
Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
with Victor Gallois at the Douai
Douai
-Main sights:Douai's ornate Gothic style belfry was begun in 1380, on the site of an earlier tower. The 80 m high structure includes an impressive carillon, consisting of 62 bells spanning 5 octaves. The originals, some dating from 1391 were removed in 1917 during World War I by the occupying...
Conservatory before leaving for Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. There from 1933 to 1938 he attended the classes of Jean
Jean Gallon
Jean Gallon was a French composer, choir conductor, and music educator. His compositional output consists of six antiphons for strings and organ, one mass, one ballet, and several art songs....
and Noël Gallon
Noël Gallon
Noël Gallon was a French composer and music educator. His compositional output includes several choral works and vocal art songs, 10 preludes, a Toccata for piano, a Sonata for flute and bassoon, a Fantasy for piano and orchestra, an Orchestral Suite, and the lyrical drama Paysans et Soldats...
(harmony and counterpoint), Henri Büsser
Henri Büsser
Henri Büsser was a French classical composer, organist, and conductor.- Biography :Paul-Henri Büsser was born in Toulouse, of partly Teutonic ancestry. He entered the Conservatoire in Paris in 1889; there he studied organ with César Franck and composition with Ernest Guiraud...
(composition) and Maurice Emmanuel (history of music) at the Paris Conservatoire.
Dutilleux won the Prix de Rome
Prix de Rome
The Prix de Rome was a scholarship for arts students, principally of painting, sculpture, and architecture. It was created, initially for painters and sculptors, in 1663 in France during the reign of Louis XIV. It was an annual bursary for promising artists having proved their talents by...
in 1938 for his cantata
Cantata
A cantata is a vocal composition with an instrumental accompaniment, typically in several movements, often involving a choir....
L'anneau du roi but did not complete the entire residency in Rome due to the outbreak of World War II. He worked for a year as a medical orderly in the army and then came back to Paris in 1940 where he worked as a pianist
Pianist
A pianist is a musician who plays the piano. A professional pianist can perform solo pieces, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers, solo instrumentalists, or other performers.-Choice of genres:...
, arranger
Arranger
In investment banking, an arranger is a provider of funds in the syndication of a debt. They are entitled to syndicate the loan or bond issue, and may be referred to as the "lead underwriter". This is because this entity bears the risk of being able to sell the underlying securities/debt or the...
and music teacher and in 1942 conducted the choir of the Paris Opera.
Dutilleux worked as Head of Music Production for French Radio from 1945 to 1963. He served as Professor of Composition at the École Normale de Musique de Paris
École Normale de Musique de Paris
The École Normale de Musique de Paris is a leading conservatoire located in Paris, France. The school was founded by Auguste Mangeot and pianist Alfred Cortot in 1919...
from 1961 to 1970. He was appointed to the staff of the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in 1970 and was composer in residence at Tanglewood
Tanglewood
Tanglewood is an estate and music venue in Lenox and Stockbridge, Massachusetts. It is the home of the annual summer Tanglewood Music Festival and the Tanglewood Jazz Festival, and has been the Boston Symphony Orchestra's summer home since 1937. It was the venue of the Berkshire Festival.- History...
in 1995 and 1998. His students include French composers Gérard Grisey
Gérard Grisey
Gérard Grisey was a French composer of contemporary music.-Biography:Gérard Grisey was born in Belfort, France on 17 June 1946. He studied at the Trossingen Conservatory in Germany from 1963 to 1965 before entering the Conservatoire de Paris...
and Francis Bayer, Canadian composers Alain Gagnon
Alain Gagnon
Alain Gagnon is a Canadian composer and music educator. He joined the music faculty of the Université Laval in 1967 where he has taught music theory, music analysis, and music composition for more than 40 years. A member of the Canadian League of Composers and an associate of the Canadian Music...
and Jacques Hétu
Jacques Hétu
Jacques Hétu, OC was a Canadian composer and music educator from Trois-Rivières, Quebec. He was nominated for a 1989 Juno Award in the Best Classical Composition category...
, British composers Kenneth Hesketh
Kenneth Hesketh
Kenneth Hesketh is a British composer of contemporary classical music in numerous genres including opera, orchestral, chamber, vocal and solo...
and Andrew McBirnie
Andrew McBirnie
Andrew McBirnie is a British composer, educator and administrator.He studied at the University of Bristol with Adrian Beaumont and at the Royal Academy of Music with Justin Connolly, gaining a PhD in Composition from the University of London. He also studied at Tanglewood with Henri Dutilleux,...
, and American composers Derek Bermel
Derek Bermel
Derek Bermel is an American composer, clarinetist and conductor whose music blends various facets of world music, funk and jazz with largely classical performing forces and musical vocabulary...
and David S. Sampson
David S. Sampson
David Sampson is a prolific composer and trumpet player currently living in New Jersey. He is currently Composer-in-Residence with the Colonial Symphony Orchestra and plays with them as well....
. Invited by Walter Fink
Walter Fink
Walter Fink is a German retired executive and a patron of Contemporary music. He is mostly known for being a founding member, Executive Committee member and sponsor of the Rheingau Musik Festival.- Biography :...
, he was the 16th composer featured in the annual Komponistenporträt of the Rheingau Musik Festival
Rheingau Musik Festival
The Rheingau Musik Festival is an international summer music festival in Germany, founded in 1987. It is mostly for classical music, but includes other genres...
in 2006.
Influences and style
Dutilleux's music extends the legacies of earlier French composers such as DebussyClaude Debussy
Claude-Achille Debussy was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures working within the field of impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions...
and Ravel
Maurice Ravel
Joseph-Maurice Ravel was a French composer known especially for his melodies, orchestral and instrumental textures and effects...
but is also clearly influenced by Béla Bartók
Béla Bartók
Béla Viktor János Bartók was a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer...
and Igor Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
. His attitude towards Serialism
Serialism
In music, serialism is a method or technique of composition that uses a series of values to manipulate different musical elements. Serialism began primarily with Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, though his contemporaries were also working to establish serialism as one example of...
is more ambiguous. While he has always paid attention to the developments of contemporary music and has incorporated some serialist techniques into his own compositions, he has also criticized the more radical and intolerant aspects of the movement ("What I reject is the dogma and the authoritarianism which manifested themselves in that period"). As an independent composer, Dutilleux has always refused to be associated with any school. Rather, his works merge the traditions of earlier composers and post-World War II innovations and translate them into his own idiosyncratic style. His music also contains echoes of jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
as can be heard in the double bass
Double bass
The double bass, also called the string bass, upright bass, standup bass or contrabass, is the largest and lowest-pitched bowed string instrument in the modern symphony orchestra, with strings usually tuned to E1, A1, D2 and G2...
introduction to his First Symphony and his frequent use of syncopated rhythms.
Some of Dutilleux's trademarks include very refined orchestral textures; complex rhythms; a preference for atonality
Atonality
Atonality in its broadest sense describes music that lacks a tonal center, or key. Atonality in this sense usually describes compositions written from about 1908 to the present day where a hierarchy of pitches focusing on a single, central tone is not used, and the notes of the chromatic scale...
and modality
Musical mode
In the theory of Western music since the ninth century, mode generally refers to a type of scale. This usage, still the most common in recent years, reflects a tradition dating to the middle ages, itself inspired by the theory of ancient Greek music.The word encompasses several additional...
over tonality
Tonality
Tonality is a system of music in which specific hierarchical pitch relationships are based on a key "center", or tonic. The term tonalité originated with Alexandre-Étienne Choron and was borrowed by François-Joseph Fétis in 1840...
; the use of pedal point
Pedal point
In tonal music, a pedal point is a sustained tone, typically in the bass, during which at least one foreign, i.e., dissonant harmony is sounded in the other parts. A pedal point sometimes functions as a "non-chord tone", placing it in the categories alongside suspensions, retardations, and passing...
s that serve as atonal pitch centers; and "reverse variation," by which a theme is not exposed immediately but rather revealed gradually, appearing in its complete form only after a few partial, tentative expositions. His music also displays a very strong sense of structure and symmetry. This is particularly obvious from an "external" point of view i.e., the overall organisation of the different movements or the spatial distribution of the various instruments, but is also apparent in the music itself (themes, harmonies and rhythms mirroring, complementing or opposing each other). "A passage may be conceived as a symmetrical shape of notes on paper and only later given musical substance. He loves symmetrical musical figures such as palindromes or fan-shaped phrases..."
Dutilleux's music has often been influenced by art and literature, such as the works of Vincent van Gogh
Vincent van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh , and used Brabant dialect in his writing; it is therefore likely that he himself pronounced his name with a Brabant accent: , with a voiced V and palatalized G and gh. In France, where much of his work was produced, it is...
, Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the nineteenth century...
, and Marcel Proust
Marcel Proust
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental À la recherche du temps perdu...
. It also shows a concern for the concepts of time and memory, both in its use of quotations (notably from Béla Bartók, Benjamin Britten
Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He showed talent from an early age, and first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to...
and Jehan Alain
Jehan Alain
Jehan Ariste Alain was a French organist and composer.-Biography:Alain was born in Saint-Germain-en-Laye in the western suburbs of Paris, into a family of musicians. His father, Albert Alain was an enthusiastic organist, composer and organ-builder who had studied with Alexandre Guilmant and Louis...
), and in short interludes that recall material used in earlier movements and/or introduce ideas that will be fully developed later.
A perfectionist with a strong sense of artistic integrity, he has allowed only a small number of his works to be published, and what he does publish he often revises and adjusts many times subsequently.
Music
Dutilleux numbered as Op. 1 his Piano Sonata (1946–1948), written for pianist Geneviève JoyGenevieve Joy
Geneviève Joy was a French classical and modernist pianist who, at the end of World War II in 1945, formed a critically acclaimed duo-piano partnership with Jacqueline Robin which lasted for forty-five years, until 1990...
, whom he had married in 1946. He has renounced most of the works he composed before it because he did not believe them to be representative of his mature standards, considering many of them to be too derivative to have merit.
After the Piano Sonata, Dutilleux started working on his First Symphony (1951). It consists of four monothematic movements and has a perfectly symmetrical structure: music slowly emerges from silence (1st movement— a passacaglia
Passacaglia
The passacaglia is a musical form that originated in early seventeenth-century Spain and is still used by contemporary composers. It is usually of a serious character and is often, but not always, based on a bass-ostinato and written in triple metre....
) and builds towards a fast climax (2nd—a scherzo and moto perpetuo), keeps its momentum (3rd—"a continuous melodic line the never goes back on itself"), and finally slowly fades out (4th—a theme and variations).
In 1953, Dutilleux wrote the music for the ballet
Ballet
Ballet is a type of performance dance, that originated in the Italian Renaissance courts of the 15th century, and which was further developed in France and Russia as a concert dance form. The early portions preceded the invention of the proscenium stage and were presented in large chambers with...
Le loup.
In his Second Symphony, titled Le double (1959), the orchestra is divided into two groups: a small one at the front with instruments taken from the various sections (brass, woodwind, strings and percussion) and a bigger one at the back consisting of the rest of the orchestra. Although this brings to mind the Baroque
Baroque
The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...
concerto grosso
Concerto grosso
The concerto grosso is a form of baroque music in which the musical material is passed between a small group of soloists and full orchestra...
, the approach is different: in this piece, the smaller ensemble acts as a mirror or ghost of the bigger one, sometimes playing similar or complementary lines, sometimes contrasting ones.
His next work, Métaboles (for orchestra, 1965) explores the idea of metamorphosis, how a series of subtle and gradual changes can radically transform a structure. A different section of the orchestra dominates each of the first four movements before the fifth brings them all together for the finale. As a result, it can be considered as a concerto for orchestra. It quickly achieved celebrity and, following its première by George Szell
George Szell
George Szell , originally György Széll, György Endre Szél, or Georg Szell, was a Hungarian-born American conductor and composer...
and the Cleveland Orchestra
Cleveland Orchestra
The Cleveland Orchestra is an American orchestra based in Cleveland, Ohio. It is one of the five American orchestras informally referred to as the "Big Five". Founded in 1918, the orchestra plays most of its concerts at Severance Hall...
, was performed in several North American cities, then in France. Métaboles is now one of his most often performed works.
In the mid-sixties, Dutilleux met Mstislav Rostropovich
Mstislav Rostropovich
Mstislav Leopoldovich Rostropovich, KBE , known to close friends as Slava, was a Soviet and Russian cellist and conductor. He was married to the soprano Galina Vishnevskaya. He is widely considered to have been the greatest cellist of the second half of the 20th century, and one of the greatest of...
, who commissioned him to write a cello concerto. Rostropovich premièred the work, titled Tout un monde lointain, in 1970. It is one of the most important additions to the cello
Cello
The cello is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin, viola, and double bass. Old forms of the instrument in the Baroque era are baryton and viol .A person who plays a cello is...
repertoire of the 20th century and is considered one of the composer's major achievements. In five movements, Tout un monde lointain is a nocturnal, mysterious work with a delicate orchestration and an eerily beautiful, yet highly virtuosic solo part. While most of the concerto is introspective and meditative, it also has occasional outbursts of violence and a frantic build-up to the ambiguous, suspended finale.
After the cello concerto, Dutilleux turned to chamber music
Chamber music
Chamber music is a form of classical music, written for a small group of instruments which traditionally could be accommodated in a palace chamber. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers with one performer to a part...
for the first time in more than 20 years and published various works for piano (3 Préludes, Figures de résonances) and 3 strophes sur le nom de Sacher (1976–1982) for solo cello. The latter work was originally composed on the occasion of Sacher's 70th birthday in 1976, on a request by Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich
Mstislav Rostropovich
Mstislav Leopoldovich Rostropovich, KBE , known to close friends as Slava, was a Soviet and Russian cellist and conductor. He was married to the soprano Galina Vishnevskaya. He is widely considered to have been the greatest cellist of the second half of the 20th century, and one of the greatest of...
to write compositions for cello solo using his name spelt out in musical notes as the theme (eS, A, C, H, E, Re). The compositions were partially presented in Zurich on 2 May 1976. The whole project will be (for the first time in complete performance) performed by Czech cellist František Brikcius in May 2011 in Prague.He also wrote the string quartet
String quartet
A string quartet is a musical ensemble of four string players – usually two violin players, a violist and a cellist – or a piece written to be performed by such a group...
Ainsi la Nuit (1976). Each of its movements highlights various special effects (pizzicato
Pizzicato
Pizzicato is a playing technique that involves plucking the strings of a string instrument. The exact technique varies somewhat depending on the type of stringed instrument....
, glissandi, harmonics, extreme registers, contrasting dynamics…) resulting in a difficult but fascinating work.
He then returned to orchestral works in 1978 with Timbres, espace, mouvement ou la nuit etoilée
Timbres, espace, mouvement (Dutilleux)
Timbres, espace, mouvement is a work for orchestra composed by Henri Dutilleux in 1978.It is subtitled La nuit etoilée in reference to a painting by Vincent Van Gogh...
, inspired by Vincent Van Gogh's The Starry Night
The Starry Night
The Starry Night is a painting by Dutch post-impressionist artist Vincent van Gogh. The painting depicts the view outside his sanitarium room window at night, although it was painted from memory during the day. Since 1941 it has been in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New...
. In this composition, Dutilleux attempted to translate into musical terms the opposition between emptiness and movement conveyed by the painting. The work employs a string section of only lower-register instruments: cellos and double basses, no violins or violas.
In 1985, Isaac Stern
Isaac Stern
Isaac Stern was a Ukrainian-born violinist. He was renowned for his recordings and for discovering new musical talent.-Biography:Isaac Stern was born into a Jewish family in Kremenets, Ukraine. He was fourteen months old when his family moved to San Francisco...
premiered L'arbre des songes, a violin concerto
Violin concerto
A violin concerto is a concerto for solo violin and instrumental ensemble, customarily orchestra. Such works have been written since the Baroque period, when the solo concerto form was first developed, up through the present day...
that he had commissioned Dutilleux to write. Like its cello counterpart, it is an important addition to the instrument's 20th century repertoire. However, it is completely atonal, more in the mold of Arnold Schoenberg or Alben Berg, than of Ravel, Debussy or Roussel.
Dutilleux later wrote Mystère de l'instant (for cymbalum
Cymbalum
The cimbalom is a concert hammered dulcimer: a type of chordophone composed of a large, trapezoidal box with metal strings stretched across its top...
, string orchestra and percussion, 1989), Les Citations (for oboe, harpsichord, double bass and percussion, 1991), The Shadows of Time (for orchestra and children voices, 1997), Slava's Fanfare (for Rostropovich's 70th birthday, 1997) and Sur le même accord
Sur le Même Accord
Sur le même accord is a piece by French composer Henri Dutilleux. The work is for solo violin and orchestra and was composed for violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter. It was premiered on 28 Apr 2002 in London by the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Mutter was the violinist and the conductor was Kurt Masur...
(for violin and orchestra, 2002 - dedicated to Anne-Sophie Mutter
Anne-Sophie Mutter
Anne-Sophie Mutter is a German violinist.- Early life :Mutter was born in Rheinfelden, Germany. She began playing the piano at age five, and shortly afterwards took up the violin, studying with Erna Honigberger, a pupil of Carl Flesch...
).
In 2003, he completed , a song-cycle for soprano
Soprano
A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...
and orchestra inspired by poems and letters by Prithwindra Mukherjee
Prithwindra Mukherjee
Prithwindra Mukherjee retired in 2003 from a career as a researcher in the Human and Social Sciences Department of the French National Centre of Scientific Research in Paris...
, Rainer Maria Rilke
Rainer Maria Rilke
René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke , better known as Rainer Maria Rilke, was a Bohemian–Austrian poet. He is considered one of the most significant poets in the German language...
, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was aRussian and Soviet novelist, dramatist, and historian. Through his often-suppressed writings, he helped to raise global awareness of the Gulag, the Soviet Union's forced labor camp system – particularly in The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of...
and Vincent van Gogh
Vincent van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh , and used Brabant dialect in his writing; it is therefore likely that he himself pronounced his name with a Brabant accent: , with a voiced V and palatalized G and gh. In France, where much of his work was produced, it is...
. This work has received a very enthusiastic reception and has been programmed several times since its première.
His latest work is another song-cycle entitled Le temps l'horloge
Le Temps L'Horloge
Le temps l'horloge is a work for soprano and orchestra, written by French composer Henri Dutilleux, who composed the three songs in this cycle between 2006 and 2007...
, written for American soprano Renée Fleming
Renée Fleming
Renée Fleming is an American soprano specializing in opera and lieder. Fleming has a full lyric soprano voice.Fleming has performed coloratura, lyric, and lighter spinto soprano repertoires. She has sung roles in Italian, German, French, Czech, and Russian, aside from her native English. She also...
. It consists of four pieces and an instrumental interlude on two poems by Jean Tardieu
Jean Tardieu
Jean Tardieu was a French artist, musician, poet and dramatic author. He earned a degree in literature and worked for a publishing house. He published several poetry collections in the 1930s before starting to write for the stage...
, one by Robert Desnos
Robert Desnos
Robert Desnos , was a French surrealist poet who played a key role in the Surrealist movement of his day.- Biography :...
and one by Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the nineteenth century...
. The first three songs were premièred at the Saito Kinen Festival Matsumoto
Saito Kinen Festival Matsumoto
Saito Kinen Festival Matsumoto is an annual classical music festival held in August and September in the Japanese Alps near Matsumoto. Founded in 1992 by music director Seiji Ozawa, the festival's resident orchestra is the renowned Saito Kinen Orchestra....
, Japan in September 2007. The American première of this partial version took place in November 2007 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra
Boston Symphony Orchestra
The Boston Symphony Orchestra is an orchestra based in Boston, Massachusetts. It is one of the five American orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five". Founded in 1881, the BSO plays most of its concerts at Boston's Symphony Hall and in the summer performs at the Tanglewood Music Center...
. The complete work was unveiled on May 7, 2009 at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées
Théâtre des Champs-Élysées
The Théâtre des Champs-Élysées is a theatre at 15 avenue Montaigne. Despite its name, the theatre is not on the Champs-Élysées but nearby in another part of the 8th arrondissement of Paris....
in Paris where the 16-minutes song-cycle was immediately encored.
Most recently, Dutilleux has added a third movement to his chamber work Les Citations. The expanded version was premiered at the Festival d’Auvers-sur-Oise on 24 June 2010. In 2011, Pascal Gallois transcribed, with Dutilleux's approval, his Deux sonnets de Jean Cassou for bassoon and piano (originally for baritone and piano).
As for future projects, Dutilleux has expressed the wish to write more chamber music
Chamber music
Chamber music is a form of classical music, written for a small group of instruments which traditionally could be accommodated in a palace chamber. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers with one performer to a part...
, notably a second string quartet, a genre he feels he has neglected.
Links with painters
Henri Dutilleux is the great-grandson of painter Constant DutilleuxConstant Dutilleux
Constant Dutilleux was a 19th-century French painter, illustrator and engraver. He was the great-grandfather of the composer Henri Dutilleux.-External links:...
and of composer Julien Koszul. He also had a long friendship with Maurice Boitel
Maurice Boitel
Maurice Boitel Maurice Boitel Maurice Boitel (July 31, 1919 – August 11, 2007 in Audresselles (Pas-de-Calais), was a French painter.-Artistic life:Maurice Boitel belonged to the art movement called "La Jeune Peinture" ("Young Picture") of the School of Paris, with painters like Bernard Buffet, Yves...
, whose exhibitions he regularly visited.
Orchestral
- Symphony No. 1Symphony No. 1 (Dutilleux)Symphony no. 1 by Henri Dutilleux was written in 1951, the first of his two symphoniesIt is a composition from the composer's relatively early period, Dutilleux's first purely orchestral composition. It is written in a very classical form , but its language is rather free. It is orchestrated for...
(1951) - Symphony No. 2 Le double (1959)
- Métaboles (1964)
- Timbres, espace, mouvement ou la nuit etoiléeTimbres, espace, mouvement (Dutilleux)Timbres, espace, mouvement is a work for orchestra composed by Henri Dutilleux in 1978.It is subtitled La nuit etoilée in reference to a painting by Vincent Van Gogh...
(1978) - Mystère de l'instant (1989)
- The Shadows of Time, for 3 children voices and orchestra (1997)
- Slava's Fanfare for spatial ensemble (1997)
Concertante
- Cello Concerto - Tout un monde lointain [A whole distant world] (1970)
- Violin Concerto - L'arbre des songes [The Tree of Dreams] (1985)
- Nocturne for violin and orchestra Sur le même accordSur le Même AccordSur le même accord is a piece by French composer Henri Dutilleux. The work is for solo violin and orchestra and was composed for violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter. It was premiered on 28 Apr 2002 in London by the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Mutter was the violinist and the conductor was Kurt Masur...
[On just one chord] (2002)
Chamber/instrumental
- String Quartet Ainsi la nuit (1976)
- Trois strophes sur le nom de Sacher for solo cello (1976–1982)
- Les citations for oboe, harpsichord, double bass and percussion (1985/1991/2010)
- Deux sonnets de Jean Cassou for bassoon and piano (1954/2011 - same as the vocal work, transcribed by Pascal Gallois with the composer's approval)
Piano
- Au gré des ondes (1946)
- Piano Sonata (1948)
- Blackbird (1951)
- Tous les chemins mènent à Rome (1963)
- Bergerie (1963)
- Résonances (1965)
- Figures de résonances (1970) for two pianos
- Trois Préludes (1973–1988):
- D'ombre et de silence (1973)
- Sur un même accord (1977)
- Le jeu des contraires (1988)
- Air à dormir debout (1981)
Vocal
- Deux sonnets de Jean Cassou, for baritone and piano (1954)
- San Francisco Night, for voice and piano (1963)
- Hommage à Nadia Boulanger, for soprano, 3 violas, clarinet, percussion and zither (1967)
- , for soprano and orchestra (2003)
- Le temps l'horlogeLe Temps L'HorlogeLe temps l'horloge is a work for soprano and orchestra, written by French composer Henri Dutilleux, who composed the three songs in this cycle between 2006 and 2007...
, for soprano and orchestra (2007–2009)
Arrangements
- Choral, cadence et fugato for trombone and symphonic band (1995 - same as the chamber work, orchestrated by Claude Pichaureau)
Early works
Dutilleux has disowned most of these pieces, written before his Piano Sonata. Some of them are nonetheless played and recorded regularly, in particular the Sonatine for Flute and Piano.Chamber/instrumental
- Four Test Pieces for the Paris Conservatoire (1942–1954)
- Sarabande et cortège for bassoon and piano (1942)
- Sonatine for Flute and Piano (1943)
- Oboe Sonata (1947)
- Choral, cadence et fugato for trombone and piano (1950)
Vocal
- Barque d'or for soprano and piano (1937)
- Cantata L'anneau du roi (1938)
- Quatre mélodies, for voice and piano (1943)
- La geôle, for voice and orchestra (1944)
Awards and prizes
- Grand Prix de Rome (for his cantata L'Anneau du Roi) - 1938
- UNESCO’s International Rostrum of ComposersInternational Rostrum of ComposersThe International Rostrum of Composers is an annual forum organized by the International Music Council that offers broadcasting representatives the opportunity to exchange and publicize pieces of contemporary classical music...
(for Symphony No. 1) - 1955 - Grand Prix National de Musique (for his entire oeuvre) - 1967
- Praemium Imperiale (Japan - for his entire oeuvre) - 1994
- Prix MIDEM Classique de Cannes (for The Shadows of Time) - 1999
- Ernst von Siemens Music PrizeErnst von Siemens Music PrizeThe international Ernst von Siemens Music Prize is an annual music prize given by the Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste on behalf of the Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung , established in 1972. The foundation was established by Ernst von Siemens...
(for his entire oeuvre) - 2005 - Prix MIDEM Classique de Cannes (for his entire oeuvre) - 2007
- Cardiff University Honorary Fellowship (for his entire oeuvre) - 2008
- Gold Medal of the Royal Philharmonic SocietyRoyal Philharmonic SocietyThe Royal Philharmonic Society is a British music society, formed in 1813. It was originally formed in London to promote performances of instrumental music there. Many distinguished composers and performers have taken part in its concerts...
- 2008
External links
- Henri Dutilleux website
- Henri Dutilleux on The Living Composers Project
- Henri Dutilleux on the Ensemble Sospeso website
- Henri Dutilleux on the Schott MusicSchott MusicSchott Music is one of the oldest German music publishers. It is also one of the largest music publishing houses in Europe and is currently the second oldest music publishing house. The company headquarters of Schott Music was founded by Bernhard Schott in Mainz, Germany in 1770.Established in...
website - "Barque d'or" — an early Dutilleux song rediscovered Janet Obi-Keller, 2005
- Dutilleux at 90 Caroline Potter in Musical Times, 2006
- Henri Dutilleux classicalsource, articles on Dutilleux and CD and concert reviews
- Dutilleux awarded prestigious RPS Gold Medal Schott news, 2008