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Topic: Hugues Dufourt (1943-)
Author Topic: Hugues Dufourt (1943-) (Read 5842 times)
petrarch
Luigi Nono (1924-1990)
Hugues Dufourt (1943-)
Hugues Dufourt is a French composer and philosopher associated with the spectral school of composition. Born in Lyon on September 28, 1943, Dufourt studied piano and composition at the Geneva Conservatory.
Dufourt became co-director of the Ensemble l'Itinéraire in 1973 and founded CRISS (Collectif de Recherche Instrumentale et de Synthèse Sonore—Instrumental and Sound Synthesis Research Collective) in 1977. It was for CRISS that he composed in 1978–79 his best-known work, Saturne, for percussion, wind ensemble, and electronics—a work inspired by Erwin Panofsky's analysis of etchings by Albrecht Dürer (Castanet 2001; Pasler 2011, 227).
Many of Dufourt's larger works have been inspired by the paintings of artists as various as Brueghel, Giorgione, Rembrandt, Poussin, Guardi, Goya, and Pollock (Pasler 2011, 198, 227).
//p
The music collection.
The hi-fi system: Esoteric X-03SE -> Pathos Logos -> Analysis Audio Amphitryon.
A view of the whole
Re: Hugues Dufourt (1943-)
Picking up a tangential discussion about Dufourt from the Grisey thread:
Quote from: petrarch on September 13, 2012, 06:14:31 AM
Speaking of Dufourt, I really have to give Erewhon a listen. I tried his works based on Tiepolo's paintings on Africa and Asia a while back and they did nothing to me. Are you familiar with them?
Quote from: snyprrr on September 13, 2012, 08:54:43 AM
No, but 'scarecrow''s Amazon review kept me away. I have been desperately trying to get a copy of the Accord disc of Saturn and Surgir. I would recommend the Timpani disc with Surgir and the viola concerto. btw- yes, by all means give Erewhon a spin.
Giving the Africa and Asia works another try. I think the lack of expectations this time around is proving to be much more satisfying than before.
« Last Edit: September 16, 2012, 11:31:13 AM by petrarch »
snyprrr
Do let me know if you ever find a copy of that Accord disc of Saturn & Surgir.
It seems you've gotten into a Dufourt frenzy! Which is a shame since so little is available. I wasn't too interested in the seemingly bland saxophone Quartet,... and none of his String Quartet Music has been recorded. I have the flute concerto on Erato, which is a sweet piece, typical of the Ensemble Intercontemporain.
Not hearing of any new works...
San Antone
Hugues Dufourt ... L'origine du monde (2004)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mujQmKqIcJ8
Inspired by the famous painting by Gustave Courbet (1866), which had once belonged to Jacques Lacan and now hangs in the Musée d'Orsay, L'Origine du monde was commissioned by the French government and premiered at the Musica Festival in Strasbourg 2004 with pianist Ancuza Aprodu and the Ensemble Orchestral Contemporain (EOC) conducted by Daniel Kawka. It is in fact a concerto for piano and small ensemble focused not on pianistic virtuosity, but on a peculiar integration of the piano and instrumental sounds. The percussion is conceived as an extension to the piano's resonating chamber, giving the instrument an almost elastic appearance.
The treatment of the instrumental ensemble often resembles that of a synthesized sound being integrated into the piano resonance as if into a sphere of coloured potentialities. This work was influenced by the reintroduction of spatial volume in music. It behaves like the outcome of a single malleable force eroding away its surroundings, developing its own setting and shaping its expansion like an indeterminate organisational and developmental power.
The scheme is to infer evolving forms, articulated motions, and to give the listener, with singular perception, the impression of a process unfolding according to laws of generative dynamism. Time is treated in a paradoxical manner - it unfolds both slowly and quickly. Its evolution is unique, accountable to the law of internal distortion, with a contradictory character that is the source of the form. Time is dependent on variable dominants, its course is interrupted then reinstated, never ceasing to progress, sometimes oscillating, sometimes polarised, able to distend or contract in upon itself. (Hugues Dufourt; translated from the French by Jacqueline Rose)
Les Chasseurs dans la neige d'après Bruegel (2001)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfYzFavVZMQ
Soleil de Proie (2005) for two pianos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--8LlPlC5E0
L'Asie d'après Tiepolo (2009)
https://www.youtube.com/v/TUth69fLE5g
Dufourt's works typically appear to be something like the slow differentiation of an overarching "structural sound" (Lachenmann), like a "texture which tears apart and grows back together again, albeit with a unified note that prevents the work from disintegrating." Here, harmonic objects are endlessly weighed, turned over, put under a magnifying glass, stretched, distorted slightly, filtered and rubbed to dust via instrumentation, with the fine line between chord and timbre drifting this way and that. (Martin Kaltenecker)
Quote from: sanantonio on February 07, 2014, 05:15:28 AM
You don't have that Accord disc with 'Saturn' and 'Surgir'? Never available, ugh. Also, the first Timpani disc is $$$ Used. I did like that viola concerto on there (YT). It's ridiculous- only his most criticized cds are available. There's about five of these Frenchy type Erato/Accord Composers that have their Discographies either unavailable for years, or hundreds for a used copy. double ugh... Dufourt is the worst. I've been waiting for that one for quite a decade or so.
Hopefully the Arditti will record his SQs. (this Post is just a dupe of my last one here above, oy bey) (ee bey...
Sergei Prokofiev (1891 - 1953)
Location: Northeast GA, US
Entartete Musik
I, too, want that first disc of Dufourt's orchestral music on Timpani, but it's so freakin' expensive. You'd have to take out a loan just to buy it.
"My chief virtue (or if you like, defect) has been a tireless lifelong search for an original, individual musical idiom. I detest imitation, I detest hackneyed devices." - Sergei Prokofiev
Quote from: Mirror Image on February 07, 2014, 06:34:04 PM
Timpani is getting addictive! The seem to go OOP pretty quick tho- must get on that Maderna (not Timpani, but Neos- paranoia still though!).
Can't one get it from Timpani?
Quote from: snyprrr on February 08, 2014, 07:35:56 AM
Timpani doesn't have a webshop unfortunately.
torut
I think Voyage par-dela les Fleuves et les Monts (2010) is his latest orchestral work. (EDIT: There is On the wings of the morning (2012) for Piano and Orchestra but it does not seem to have been recorded.)
Orchestral Works, Vol. 2: Lucifer d'apres Pollock / Voyage par-dela les Fleuves et les Monts
Voyage par-delàles fleuves et les monts de Hugues Dufourt (short clip with interview)
https://www.youtube.com/v/fISrESHl2TQ
(I can't understand what he is telling. )
Recently I have been hearing L'Afrique & L'Asie d'après Tiepolo, Le Cypres Blanc & Surgir, Les Hivers, and the album above. His music is like waves breaking on the shore, and each wave is different. it kind of resembles Feldman's music, but more colorful & dynamic. I can let myself keep hearing the music, feeling like floating on tide.
« Last Edit: April 05, 2014, 11:06:50 AM by torut »
Quote from: torut on April 05, 2014, 10:54:51 AM
ack- the most EXPENSIVE and OOP Composer I know, gaaah!! What IS it with Timpani?,... makes one feel like a crackhead. Otherwise, yea, I'll still lift up 'Erewhon', a timbral tornado!
Quote from: snyprrr on April 05, 2014, 06:39:47 PM
"Erewhon", "Saturne - Surgir", and "The Watery Star" are available as mp3 download at amazon.co.uk, but unfortunately, they cannot be purchased from USA.
Quote from: torut on April 05, 2014, 07:20:22 PM
yea, I reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally want that old gray Accord disc of 'Saturn' and Surgir'. NEVER ONCE been available anywhere... I know, I'm living in the past on this one, haha!!
Hello, little man. I will destroy you.
For those able to persuade 7digital that they're in the UK, there are some ridiculously cheap Dufourt downloads available, including that Saturne / Surgir disc I've been looking for for years. Unfortunately, they're 320 kbps mp3s rather than flac, but the price may appeal:
https://www.7digital.com/search/release?q=dufourt
"I don't at all mind actively disliking a piece of contemporary music, but in order to feel happy about it I must consciously understand why I dislike it. Otherwise it remains in my mind as unfinished business."
-- Aaron Copland, The Pleasures of Music
A follow-up on buying the Dufourt recordings on the UK version of 7digital from outside the UK: if you've got access to a VPN that offers UK addresses, you can use it create an account as a fake Briton, then buy the tracks. Once you've bought the tracks, you can then disconnect from the VPN and download them using normal internet. Handy if the only VPN you have access to doesn't offer a lot of bandwidth, though a thoroughly convoluted process.
As a result of this, I've now had a chance to hear Saturne, though I wasn't hugely impressed on a first listening, to be honest. It's very Scelsian in its focus on the growth and decay of single sounds (except for the more conventionally rhetorical central passage, I was also reminded of Cage's orchestral number pieces, too). There's some great moments in the work, but it felt very long and some of the electronic effects are rather 1970s... the sort of piece I think you have to be in the right mood for.
Don't buy Surgir from this source. The mp3 chops the music off a couple of bars before the end...
Fortunately the Timpani recording of Surgir is quite satisfactory and comes with the otherwise unrecorded viola concerto Le cypres blanc, with Gerard Caussé as soloist.
« Last Edit: June 08, 2015, 06:38:18 AM by edward »
GioCar
A new acquisition:
Hugues Dufourt: Burning Bright (2014)
W. Blake (1794)
Nearly forty years after Erewhon, a new massive piece 'like an immense adagio in the manner of Bruckner' for multi-percussionists, by this amazing (but somehow a bit forgotten) composer. Quoting his liner notes: 'Following Blake's example, Burning Bright rallies elementary energies: a drama with neither narrative nor anecdote, its unit emerges through telluric rumblings. Not unlike the films of Stanley Kubrick, it uncovers a vast space, which could well become, despite the hopes of our times, a space of eternal confinement.'
Ambitious, but also an impressive listen, indeed.
Quote from: GioCar on August 06, 2017, 09:19:46 PM
any highlights? what fancy instruments do you hear? kaleidoscopic? grey? I love 'Erewhon'...
I love Erewhon as well but Burning Bright is different imo.
Erewhon is the pleasure to experiment new sonorities with something like 150 different instruments. it's an orgy of sounds, a sonic tempest (the second part in particular) but also a more 'traditional' work with instruments of the same family being played in each one of the four parts.
Burning Bright is one long movement, lasting more than one hour, where you always have a sort of low rumble which changes shape and 'colour' along the piece, and flashes or blocks of sounds built on it. It's very captivating for the first 40 minutes or so, then it tends to be a bit repetitive.