DUTILLEUX STROPHES FULL

I met Henri Dutilleux in the summer of 1979 at the Conservatoire américain in Fontainebleau. The brevity of the list of his published works is due to his relentless self-criticism and his ceaseless curiosity that led him to attend the most diverse concerts and cultural events when a more self-centered creator might have elected to remain in his studio. No less breathtaking was the acuity of his sonic palette in other domains-the works for piano solo and two pianos, stretching from Au gré des ondes (which, like all of his music before the magisterial piano sonata of 1948, Dutilleux later disowned) to the hallucinatory three preludes (1973-1988) the atmospheric string quartet Ainsi la nuit, the dyptique Les citations, scored for the unlikely combination of oboe, harpsichord, contrabass, and percussion (1985/1991/2010), to the Trois strophes sur le nom de Sacher for solo cello (1976-1982). His virtuoso deployment of the orchestra, from his two numbered symphonies (1951, 1959) through such pathbreaking works as Métaboles (1964) and the dazzling Timbres, Espace, Mouvement-a depiction of Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night (1978)-to Mystère de l’instant (1989), is equally in evidence in his cello concerto, Tout un monde lointain (1970), for Mstislav Rostropovich, his violin concerto, L’arbre des songes (1985), for Isaac Stern, his adaptation of Sur un même accord (derived from the second of his three preludes for piano), for Anne-Sophie Mutter, and in his works for voice(s) and orchestra: The Shadows of Time (1997), Correspondances (2003), and Le temps l’horloge (2007-2009), the latter for Renée Fleming. The death of Henri Dutilleux in his 98 th year silences the revelatory creative imagination of an infallible ear.Īn artist of humility, whose integrity and quest for perfection caused him to compose at a glacial pace, repeatedly withdrawing works before their world premieres until the last detail met his exacting vision, Dutilleux evolved from his impressionistic inheritance to create a language of iridescent and uncanny radiance, assembling molecule by molecule a musical narrative as astonishing as it is inevitable. 2, “Le Double,” for orchestra with integral chamber ensemble from1959 through (the jointly commissioned) The Shadow of Time, which debuted here in 2007.

It speaks volumes for American creative taste that so many of Dutilleux’s works were commissioned for premieres by American orchestras-the BSO first and foremost. The BSO list runs from Symphony No.

DUTILLEUX STROPHES FULL

Nor did he, as did Pierre Boulez, proclaim that “Schoenberg est mort.” Dutilleux was, rather, a Frenchman in the Debussy tradition: he wrote relatively little music compared with any number of his more famous countrymen, but his works are exquisitely crafted, full of ideas that are all his own, pellucid and luminous in timbre, and totally sensitive to harmony. He sought no solace in bird calls (although he did write a solo piano piece entitled Blackbird). He was neither a trend-setter nor a populist he belonged to no “school” in the nation that brought forth “Les Six,” “La jeune France,” “l’École d’Arceuil,” and so many others. Henri Dutilleux’s long and distinguished career ended on May 22 nd.

Dutilleux strophes