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HOME | MUSICA | MUSIC PROJECT 2012 | Hugues Dufourt - Biografia

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).

Hugues Dufourt