Philippe Manoury is a French composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

.

Biography

Philippe Manoury was born in Tulle

Tulle

Tulle is a commune and capital of the Corrèze department in the Limousin region in central France. It is also the episcopal see of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Tulle...

. His first composition studies were at the Ecole 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...

, with Gérard Condé and Max Deutsch

Max Deutsch

Max Deutsch was an Austrian-French musical composer, conductor, and teacher.He was a pupil of Arnold Schoenberg and founded the theater Der Jüdische Spiegel in Paris. Here, many works of composers like Schoenberg, Anton Webern, or Alban Berg were debuted in France...

. He continued his studies from 1974 to 1978 at the Conservatoire de Paris

Conservatoire de Paris

The Conservatoire de Paris is a college of music and dance founded in 1795, now situated in the avenue Jean Jaurès in the 19th arrondissement of Paris, France...

 with Michel Philippot

Michel Philippot

Michel Paul Philippot was a French composer, mathematician, acoustician, musicologist, aesthetician, broadcaster, and educator.-Life:...

, Ivo Malec, and Claude Ballif

Claude Ballif

Claude Ballif was a French composer.His music is known as a combination of tonality and serialism - a system that he named metatonality....

. From 1975 he undertook studies in computer assisted composition with Pierre Barbaud. He joined IRCAM

IRCAM

IRCAM is a European institute for science about music and sound and avant garde electro-acoustical art music. It is situated next to, and is organizationally linked with, the Centre Pompidou in Paris...

 in 1980. He is currently on the composition faculty at the University of California, San Diego where he teaches courses in composition, real-time signal processing, and musical analysis.

Music

Manoury's work is strongly influenced by Pierre Boulez

Pierre Boulez

Pierre Boulez is a French composer of contemporary classical music, a pianist, and a conductor.-Early years:Boulez was born in Montbrison, Loire, France. As a child he began piano lessons and demonstrated aptitude in both music and mathematics...

, Karlheinz Stockhausen

Karlheinz Stockhausen

Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Another critic calls him "one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music"...

, and Iannis Xenakis

Iannis Xenakis

Iannis Xenakis was a Romanian-born Greek ethnic, naturalized French composer, music theorist, and architect-engineer. He is commonly recognized as one of the most important post-war avant-garde composers...

, and his early work from 1972–76 combines serial Punctualism

Punctualism

Punctualism is a style of musical composition prevalent in Europe between 1949 and 1955 "whose structures are predominantly effected from tone to tone, without superordinate formal conceptions coming to bear"...

 with the densely massed elements characteristic of the music of Stockhausen and Xenakis, and the paintings of Jackson Pollock

Jackson Pollock

Paul Jackson Pollock , known as Jackson Pollock, was an influential American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. During his lifetime, Pollock enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety. He was regarded as a mostly reclusive artist. He had a volatile personality, and...

.

Works such as Sound and Fury are of interest because of the use of computer assisted composition. Sound and Fury also uses a very large orchestra, which is symmetrically disposed, and makes quite extensive use of left-right spatial effects. The Sonus ex machina series of works, which were developed in collaboration with Miller Puckette

Miller Puckette

Miller Smith Puckette is the associate director of the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts as well as a professor of music at the University of California, San Diego, where he has been since 1994....

, are among the first pieces to utilize real-time audio signal processing.

His substantial "Abgrund—pour grand orchestre" was commissioned

Commission (art)

In art, a commission is the hiring and payment for the creation of a piece, often on behalf of another.In classical music, ensembles often commission pieces from composers, where the ensemble secures the composer's payment from private or public organizations or donors.- Commissions for public art...

 by the Bavarian State Opera together with the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal and premiered by the Bavarian State Orchestra on November 26, 2007. It has been described as "a work that will neither disturb nor annoy [...] a pleasant and perhaps harmless string of dissonant semi-climaxes, little jolts, and resting phases. It has an invigorating effect, is easy to concentrate on. . . ." In it "Manoury [...] mercifully knows how to use [the abundance of percussion instruments] in ways far more discriminately than his contemporaries beholden to one bongo-frenzy after another." "Philippe Manoury hit[s] the right mix between shallow and deep, melodic and dissonant, placating and strident, stasis and progress, simplicity and complexity. The steady run-up—stop—tighten—burst—relax scheme may not be novel at all, but it paid dividends [in 'Abgrund']."

Writings

• Manoury, Philippe. 1998. La note et le son: Écrits et entretiens, 1981-1998, with a foreword by Danielle Cohen-Lévinas. Musique et musicologie: Les dialogues. Paris: L'Harmattan. ISBN 273846985X

• Manoury, Philippe. 2001. Entretiens avec Daniela Langer. Paris : Musica falsa. ISBN 2951238630

Selected compositions

Operas

• 60e Parallèle for 9 singers, large orchestra and electronics (1995–1996)
• K… (2001)
• La Frontière, Chamber Opera for 6 singers, 9 instruments and electronics (2003)
• La Nuit de Gutenberg, opera in a prologue and 12 scenes. Premiered at the Opéra national du Rhin, Strasbourg, 24 September 2011

Orchestral works

• Numéro huit, op. 8 (1980, revised 1987)
• Pentaphone, 5 Pieces for large orchestra, op. 24 (1993)
• Prelude and Wait (1995)
• Sound and Fury (1999)

Chamber music

• Numéro cinq for piano and 13 instruments, op. 5 (1976)
• Instantanés (1983)
• Version La Rochelle, op. 10a (1983)
• Version Étude, op. 10b (1983)
• Version Baden-Baden, op. 10c (1985)
• La Partition du Ciel and de l’Enfer, op. 19 (1989)
• Passacaille pour Tokyo for piano and 17 instruments (1994)
• Fragments pour un portrait, 7 Pieces for ensemble of 30 instruments (1998)
• Épitaphe for 7 instruments, op. 29 (1995)
• Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man for 10 instruments (2004)
• Identités remarquables for 23 instruments (2005)
• Strange Ritual for 21 instruments (2005)
• Focus (1973)
• Le Tempérament variable (1978)
• String Quartet, op. 6 (1978)
• Musique I for 2 harps, guitar, mandolin and 2 percussionists (1986)
• Musique II for 7 brass (2.2.2.1) and 2 marimbas ,op. 14 (1986)
• Petit aleph (1986)
• Solo de vibraphone (1986)
• Le Livre des claviers, Six pieces for 6 percussionists (1987)
• Deux mélodies (1988)
• Michigan Trio for clarinet, violin and piano (1992)
• Gestes for string trio (1992)
• Métal for sixxens sextett (1995)
• Ultima for clarinet, cello and piano (1996)
• Last for bass-clarinet and bass-marimba (1997)

Live electronics

• Zeitlauf for choir, 14 instruments and electronics, op. 9 (1982)
• Jupiter for flute and live electronics, op. 15a (1987, revised 1992)
• Pluton for piano and live electronics (1988, revised 1989)
• Neptune for 3 percussionists and live electronics, op. 21 (1991)
• En écho for soprano and live electronics (1993–1994); words by Emmanuel Hocquart
• Partita I for viola and live electronics (2006)

Piano

• Sonate for 2 pianos (1972, revised 1994)
• Cryptophonos (1974)
• Puzzle (1975)
• Toccata (1998) from de « Passacaille pour Tokyo »
• La Ville (…Première sonate) (2001–2002)

Vocal

• Aleph for 4 singers and orchestra (1985–1987)
• Xanadu for soprano and clarinet (1989); words by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
  Samuel Taylor Coleridge
  Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla...
  
  
• Chronophonies I and II for mezzo-soprano, baritone-bass and large orchestra (1994)
• Douze moments for mezzo-soprano and large orchestra (1998)
• Slova for choir (2001–2002)
• Fragments d'Héraclite for choir (2003)
• Noon for soprano, choir, large orchestra, and electronics (2003)
• Blackout, Melodrama for alto and 13 instruments (2004)
• On-iron for choir, electronics and video (2005)

Discography

• Quatuor à cordes – Quatuor Arditti MFA, Harmonia Mundi, C 5139, 1984
• Cryptophonos – Claude Helffer (pno) MFA Harmonia Mundi, C 5172, 1986
• Petit Aleph – Pierre-André Valade (Flute), ADDA, 581 075, 1988
• Zeitlauf – Groupe Vocal de France, Ensemble Intercontemporain, conducted by Peter Eotvös, Erato, ECD, 75552, 1990
• Le livre des claviers – Les percussions de Strasbourg, Philips Classics, 444 218-2, 1993
• Epitaphe – Ensemble FA, conducted by Dominique My, MFA 216007, 1995
• Jupiter and La Partition du Ciel et de l'Enfer – Sophie Cherrier (flute) and Ensemble Intercontemporain. Conducted by Pierre Boulez. In Compositeurs d'aujourd'hui, Adès, 206 062, 1996
• Pluton – Ilmo Ranta, piano, Technique Ircam Ondine Records, ODE 888-2, 1996
• 60ème parallèle – Orchestre de Paris, conducted by David Robertson, Naxos 8.554249/50, 1997
• En écho and Neptune – Donatienne Michel-Dansac (soprano); Roland Auzet, Florent Jodelet, and Eve Payeur (percussion), Technique Ircam ACCORD, 465 526-2, 1998
• Complete Chamber Music – Ensemble Accroche Note, Assai 222052, 2002

External links

• http://www.philippemanoury.com
• http://www.durand-salabert-eschig.com/formcat/catalogues/manoury_philippe.pdf (in French)
• http://mediatheque.ircam.fr/articles/textes/Brindeau97a/ (in French)
• Profile at UCSD (in English)