Henri Dutilleux | |
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.jpg) Dutilleux in 2004 | |
| Born | Henri Paul Julien Dutilleux (1916-01-22)22 January 1916 Angers,Maine-et-Loire, France |
| Died | 22 May 2013(2013-05-22) (aged 97) Paris, France |
| Occupation |
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| Works | List of compositions |
Henri Paul Julien Dutilleux (French:[ɑ̃ʁidytijø]; 22 January 1916 – 22 May 2013) was a French composer of late20th-century classical music. Among the leading French composers of his time, his work was rooted in theImpressionistic style ofDebussy andRavel, but in an idiosyncratic, individual style. Among his best known works are his earlyFlute Sonatine andPiano Sonata; concertos forcello,Tout un monde lointain... ("A whole distant world") andviolin,L'arbre des songes ("The tree of dreams"); a string quartet known asAinsi la nuit ("Thus the night"); and two symphonies:No. 1 (1951) andNo. 2Le Double (1959).[1]
Works were commissioned from him by such major artists asCharles Munch,George Szell,Mstislav Rostropovich, theJuilliard String Quartet,Isaac Stern,Paul Sacher,Anne-Sophie Mutter,Simon Rattle,Renée Fleming, andSeiji Ozawa. In addition to composing, he worked as the Head of Music Production forRadio France for 18 years. He also taught at theÉcole Normale de Musique de Paris and at theConservatoire National Supérieur de Musique, and was twice composer in residence at theTanglewood Music Center inLenox,Massachusetts.
Among Dutilleux's manyawards and honours were theGrand Prix de Rome (1938) and theErnst von Siemens Music Prize (2005). When describing him, the music criticPaul Griffiths wrote that "Mr. Dutilleux’s position in French music was proudly solitary. BetweenOlivier Messiaen andPierre Boulez in age, he was little affected by either, though he took an interest in their work. But his voice, marked by sensuously handled harmony and color, was his own."[2]
Henri Dutilleux was born on 22 January 1916 inAngers,Maine-et-Loire. He was the great-grandson of the painterConstant Dutilleux and grandson of the composerJulien Koszul. He was also a cousin of the mathematicianJean-Louis Koszul. He studiedharmony,counterpoint, and piano with Victor Gallois at theDouai Conservatoire [fr] before leaving for theConservatoire de Paris. There, between 1933 and 1938, he attended the classes ofJean andNoël Gallon (harmony and counterpoint, in which he won joint first prize with the cellistPaul Tortelier),[3]Henri Büsser (composition) andMaurice Emmanuel (history of music).
Dutilleux won thePrix de Rome in 1938 for hiscantataL'anneau du roi but did not complete his entire residency in Rome due to the outbreak ofWorld War II. He worked for a year as a medical orderly in the army and returned to Paris in 1940, where he worked as a pianist, arranger andmusic teacher. In 1942, he conducted the choir of theParis Opera.
Dutilleux worked as Head of Music Production forRadio France from 1945 to 1963. He served as professor of composition at theÉcole 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 atTanglewood in 1995 and 1998. His students includedGérard Grisey,Francis Bayer,Alain Gagnon,Jacques Hétu, andKenneth Hesketh. Invited byWalter Fink, in 2006 he was the 16th composer featured in theRheingau Musik Festival's annualKomponistenporträt.
For many years, Dutilleux had a studio onÎle Saint-Louis.[4] He died on 22 May 2013 in Paris, aged 97,[5] and was buried inMontparnasse Cemetery, in the same grave asGeneviève, his wife who died in 2009.[6] His tombstone is made of grey granite and bears the epitaph "Compositeur".[6]
Dutilleux's music extends the legacies of French composers such asDebussy andRavel but is also clearly influenced byBéla Bartók andIgor Stravinsky. Among his favourite pieces, he mentionedBeethoven'slate string quartets and Debussy'sPelléas et Mélisande.[7]
His attitude towardserialism was ambiguous. While he always paid attention to developments in contemporary music and incorporated some serialist techniques into his work,[8][9] he 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."[9] Dutilleux refused to be associated with any school.[10]
Dutilleux's music contains distant echoes ofjazz, as can be heard in the pluckeddouble bass strings at the beginning of hisFirst Symphony and his frequent use ofsyncopated rhythms. He often calls for Ray Robinson-style cupmutes in the brass section, which seems to indicate the influence ofbig band music. Dutilleux was greatly enamoured of vocalists, especially the jazz singerSarah Vaughan and the great Frenchchanson singers.[11]
Some of Dutilleux's trademarks include very refined orchestral textures; complex rhythms; a preference foratonality andmodality overtonality; the use ofpedal points that serve as atonal pitch centers;[12] and "reverse variation", whereby a theme is revealed gradually, appearing in its complete form only after a few partial, tentative expositions.[13][14] His music also displays a strong sense of structure and symmetry. This is particularly obvious from an "external" point of view, in 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). According to Stuart Jefferies, "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".[15][16]
Dutilleux's music was influenced by art and literature, such as the works ofVincent van Gogh,[17]Charles Baudelaire[18] andMarcel Proust.[19] It also shows a concern for the concepts of time and memory, both in its use ofquotations (notably from Bartók,Benjamin Britten, andJehan 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 allowed only a small number of his works to be published; what he did publish he often repeatedly revised. In his own words:
I always doubt my work. I always have regrets. That's why I revise my work so much and, at the same time, I regret not being more prolific. But the reason I am not more prolific is because I doubt my work and spend a lot of time changing it. It's paradoxical, isn't it?[20]
Dutilleux numbered as Op. 1 hisPiano Sonata (1946–1948), written for the pianistGeneviève Joy, whom he married in 1946. He 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.[21]
After the Piano Sonata, Dutilleux started working on hisFirst Symphony (1951). It consists of fourmonothematic movements and has a perfectly symmetrical structure: music slowly emerges from silence (first movement—apassacaglia) and builds towards a fast climax (second—ascherzo andmoto perpetuo), keeps its momentum (third—"a continuous melodic line that never goes back on itself"), and finally slowly fades out (fourth—atheme and variations).[22]
In 1953, Dutilleux wrote the music for the balletLe loup ("The Wolf").
In hisSecond Symphony, titledLe 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 Baroqueconcerto 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.[23]
His next work,Métaboles for orchestra (1965) explores the idea ofmetamorphosis, 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. As a result, it can be considered as a concerto for orchestra.[24] It quickly achieved celebrity and, following its première byGeorge Szell and theCleveland Orchestra, was performed in several North American cities, then in France.[25]Métaboles is one of his most often performed works.[26]
In the 1960s, Dutilleux metMstislav Rostropovich, who commissioned a cello concerto from him. Rostropovich premièred the work,Tout un monde lointain… (A whole distant world...), in 1970. It is considered one of Dutilleux's major achievements.[27][28][29]
After the cello concerto, Dutilleux turned tochamber music for the first time in more than 20 years and wrote thestring quartetAinsi la nuit (1976). It consists of seven movements, some of which are linked by short "parentheses". The parentheses' function is to recall material that has already been heard and to introduce fragments that will be fully developed later.[30] It is based on ahexachord (C♯–G♯–F–G–C–D) that highlights the intervals offifth andmajor second.[31] Each movement emphasizes various special effects (pizzicato,glissandi,harmonics, extreme registers, contrasting dynamics...), resulting in a difficult, elaborate work.[30]
Dutilleux also published various works for piano (3 Préludes,Figures de résonances) and3 strophes sur le nom de Sacher (1976–1982) for solo cello. The latter was originally composed on the occasion ofPaul Sacher's 70th birthday in 1976, on a request by Rostropovich to write compositions for cello solo using his name spelt out in musical notes as the theme eS-A-C-H-E-Re (Es is E♭ in German,H is B♮ in German, andRe is D in French; seeSacher hexachord). He then returned to orchestral works in 1978 withTimbres, espace, mouvement ou la nuit étoilée, inspired by Van Gogh'sThe Starry Night. In this composition, Dutilleux attempted to translate into musical terms the opposition between emptiness and movement the painting conveys. It employs a string section of only lower-register instruments: cellos and basses, no violins or violas.[30]
In 1985,Isaac Stern premieredL'arbre des songes (The Tree of Dreams), a violin concerto he had commissioned from Dutilleux. According to the composer, it is based on a process of continual growth and renewal: "All in all the piece grows somewhat like a tree, for the constant multiplication and renewal of its branches is the lyrical essence of the tree. This symbolic image, as well as the notion of a seasonal cycle, inspired my choice of 'L'arbre des songes' as the title of the piece."[32]
Dutilleux's later works includeMystère de l'instant (forcymbalum, 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) andSur le même accord (for violin and orchestra, 2002, dedicated toAnne-Sophie Mutter). In 2003, he completedCorrespondances, a song cycle forsoprano and orchestra inspired by poems and letters by Van Gogh,Prithwindra Mukherjee,Rainer Maria Rilke, andAleksandr Solzhenitsyn. This work received a very enthusiastic reception and has been programmed several times since its première.[33]
Dutilleux's last major work was the song cycleLe temps l'horloge,[10] written for American sopranoRenée Fleming. It consists of four pieces and an instrumental interlude on two poems byJean Tardieu, one byRobert Desnos and one byCharles Baudelaire. The first three songs were premièred at theSaito Kinen Festival Matsumoto, Japan in September 2007. The American première of this partial version took place in November 2007 with theBoston Symphony Orchestra.[34] The complete work was unveiled on 7 May 2009 at theThéâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris.[35][36]
In 2010, Dutilleux added a third movement to his chamber workLes citations.[37] The expanded version was premiered at the Festival d’Auvers-sur-Oise.
In 2011, with Dutilleux's approval,Pascal Gallois transcribed three of his early vocal works for bassoon and piano:Regards sur l'Infini (from the early cycle for voice and pianoQuatre mélodies) andDeux sonnets de Jean Cassou (originally for baritone and piano). He played them in a concert at the Hôtel de Lauzun in Dutilleux's presence.[38]
Dutilleux allowed only a small fraction of his work to be published.[39] He often expressed a wish to write more chamber music,[40] notably a second string quartet, a piece for clarinet and ensemble, one for solo double bass, and more piano préludes.[22][41][42][43] He long considered composing an opera but abandoned that project because he could not find alibretto that appealed to him.[22][41]
Those who commissioned works from Dutilleux include Szell (Métaboles), Rostropovich (Tout un monde lointain… andTimbres, espace, mouvement), Stern (L'arbre des songes), Mutter (Sur le même accord),Charles Munch (Symphony No. 2Le double), andSeiji Ozawa (The Shadows of Time andLe temps l'horloge).
After Dutilleux's death, the composer and conductorLaurent Petitgirard paid tribute to him as "one of the very rare contemporary composers" whose music became part of the repertoire in his lifetime, predicting that "[h]is work will remain intensely present after his death".[44]
Several major musicians and conductors championed Dutilleux's works, notably Stern, Sacher, Mutter, Fleming, Ozawa, Munch, Szell, Rostropovich, Simon Rattle, and the Juilliard String Quartet.
The conductor and composerEsa-Pekka Salonen said of Dutilleux, "His production is rather small but every note has been weighed with golden scales... It's just perfect – very haunting, very beautiful. There’s some kind of sadness in his music which I find very touching and arresting."[45]
The criticTom Service wrote for theBBC, "Dutilleux's exquisite catalogue of pieces is becoming, rightly, ever more popular with performers and listeners all over the world".[46]
An obituary inGramophone commented, "Dutilleux represented a generation of musicians with roots almost back into the 19th century; certainly his music can be seen in a direct line from that of his great predecessors Debussy and Ravel."[47] In an obituary inThe Guardian,Roger Nichols described him as "the outstanding French composer between Messiaen and Boulez", adding that he "achieved a wholly individual synthesis of ear-catching colours and harmonies with formal rigour."[48]
The Daily Telegraph said, "Because Dutilleux was a perfectionist and self-critical to a fault, his output was small. He wrote barely a dozen major works in his career, destroyed much of his early music and often revised what he had written. His early work was clearly derivative of Ravel, Debussy and Roussel; but his later music, though influenced by Bartok and Stravinsky, was entirely original and often seemed—in its scale—more German than French."The Daily Telegraph's criticPhilip Hensher called Dutilleux "the Laura Ashley of music; tasteful, unfaultable, but hardly ever daring ... Personally, I can’t stick him."[49]
Rob Cowan, theBBC Radio 3 presenter and critic, recalled in June 2013 an interview with Dutilleux in which he told Cowan that his personal favourite among his own works wasTout un monde lointain....[50]
Dutilleux pushes the boundaries even further than Bartok, making use of all types of symmetry, retrograde (as in the opening of his quartetAinsi la nuit (1974–76) or in mirror symmetry
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