Hugues Dufourt: Music Project 2012
The Aesthetics of Ardour and Courage
The music of my young contemporaries reminds me of the re-emergence of infernal elements from the underworld. Their ‘gestures’ evocate those of the Chants de Maldoror by virtue of their aggressive vitality and the ferment of conquest which, rising from the depths, emerge with disarming effervescence. Thunder and lightning, lashing seas, stormy skies, harsh and sarcastic sonorities: all convulsive signs of an era and perhaps also of a destabilisation of the spirit (and indeed of the mind).
The two composers who have honoured me by accepting my presence and participation in this evening of composition – Mariana Ungureanu and Marco Momi – are expert musicians, with a long career under their belts and widely recognised works. Our meeting in Banna is more one between professionals than a transmission of knowledge.
I believe we do share a number of ideas. The naïve exaltation of the technological universe now seems to us more a cult object than an artistic project. The same goes for our experimentation on language, bringing together the poetics of detachment and estranged stylistic references. Formalism is thus weakened, and syncretism withers. Today, music cannot elude the need to come face to face once more with the writing of history, its own first and foremost.
The first part of the concert will, hopefully, develop a sort of resonance with the music of Schoenberg. The homage to his Symphonie de chambre op. 9 (1906), in the reduced version by Webern, is not included by chance. For in a certain sense, this work is moved by two contrary impulses. The driving force that powers it – in a rising surge of conquest – is systematically nipped in the bud by the urgent sense of contraction, by a precise shift towards adjustment. This eternal controversy between rigour and fecundity will, I believe, provide a unity of tone to the concert as a whole.
This the sixth edition of the Progetto Musica of the Spinola Banna per l’Arte Foundation is held with the participation of the artists of the Divertimento Ensemble, conducted by Andrea Pestalozza.
For the sixth edition of the Progetto Musica, the Banna Foundation will welcome an exceptional tutor, Hugues Dufourt, with the piece entitled L’Afrique d’après Tiepolo performed by the Divertimento Ensemble and solo piano. There are also works by two young composers, Marco Momi (Almost quiver for E.P.) and Mariana Ungureanu (Dramma). The concert programme, which concludes the workshop, will also feature the Kammersinfonie op. 9 (transcription for pianoforte and string quintet by Anton Webern) by Arnold Schoenberg.
Hugues Dufourt Biography
The French composer and philosopher Hugues Dufourt was born in Lyon on 28 September 1943. He received his musical training at the Geneva Conservatory of Music, where he studied piano with Louis Hiltbrand (1961–68) and composition and electroacoustics with Jacques Guyonnet (1965–70).
After earning his teaching certificate (Agrégation) in 1967, he served as an instructor at the University of Lyon, and in 1973 he went to work for the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). He was a member of the ensemble L’Itinéraire, which he also co-led from 1976 to 1981. In 1977, he founded the Collectif de Recherche Instrumentale et de Synthèse Sonore. From 1982 to 1998, he headed the music information and documentation centre Recherche musicale at the CNRS, which was to become a mixed research unit of the CNRS, the École Normale Supérieure and IRCAM. He founded a doctoral program for 20th-century music and musicology in which the École Normale Supérieure and IRCAM are also involved, and which he oversaw until 1999. In addition to numerous commissions from renowned French and Italian orchestras and from the most highly regarded contemporary music ensembles, Dufourt was a recipient of the Great Chamber Music Award (SACEM) in 1975, the Grand Prix du Disque of the Académie Charles Cros in 1980, the award of the Koussevitzky Foundation in 1985, the Jury Award of the Festival Musique en cinéma in 1987, the Prix des Compositeurs of SACEM in 1994, and the Prix du Président de la République of the Académie Charles-Cros for his life’s work in 2000. The Présences Festival programmed Lucifer with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France in 2001, and the cycle Les Hivers (1992–2001) was performed at the Festival d’Automne by Ensemble Modern conducted by Dominique My. 2004 saw the world première of Cyprès blanc for viola and orchestra, as well as of L’origine du monde for piano and ensemble. Au plus haut fait de l’instant received its première in 2006, played by Francesco Pomàrico (oboe) and the RAI National Symphony Orchestra of Turin under Emilio Pomàrico. Dufourt’s most important writings so far are compiled in the volumes Musique, Pouvoir, Ecriture (1991) and Mathesis et subjectivité (2007)