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51-461: Michel Garcin became the label's artistic director and producer and built up the catalogue with contemporary French composers such as Henri Dutilleux and French artists: Jean-François Paillard (234 records), Marie-Claire Alain (234 records), Maurice André (198 records), Jean-Pierre Rampal (127 records), and Lily Laskine . Erato Records released first recordings of : Warner Music Group acquired Teldec Records in 1988. Erato Records

102-463: A constrained writing technique similar to those employed by the avant-garde Oulipo group. In let me tell you , Ophelia tells her story in a first-person narrative devised by Griffiths using only the 481-word vocabulary given to her in Shakespeare's Hamlet . Griffiths uses the same 481-word constraint in the 2023 sequel let me go on . Griffiths's first excursion as an opera librettist

153-468: A libretto that appealed to him. Those who commissioned works from Dutilleux include Szell ( Métaboles ), Rostropovich ( Tout un monde lointain… and Timbres, espace, mouvement ), Stern ( L'arbre des songes ), Mutter ( Sur le même accord ), Charles Munch (Symphony No. 2 Le double ), and Seiji Ozawa ( The Shadows of Time and Le temps l'horloge ). After Dutilleux's death, the composer and conductor Laurent Petitgirard paid tribute to him as "one of

204-550: A "prequel" to the composer's 1689 opera, Dido and Aeneas . It premiered in 1995 at the University of Maryland 's Ulrich Recital Hall conducted by Kenneth Slowik. Griffiths's libretto for Tan Dun 's Marco Polo was his first for an opera by a living composer. In the late 1980s, Tan Dun was commissioned by the Edinburgh International Festival to compose an original opera. As he recounted in

255-524: A 1997 interview: I first tried to write the libretto myself, about something from myself, and wasn't getting anywhere. Then someone, in 1990, said why not read Paul Griffiths's novel Myself and Marco Polo ? I read it and phoned him at his home near Oxford. And he agreed to write a libretto. Marco Polo finally received its world premiere in 1996, not in Edinburgh as originally planned, but in Munich at

306-596: A Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2011, when he also won a Deems Taylor Award for his notes for Miller Theatre. In 1989, Griffiths published his first novel, Myself and Marco Polo: A Novel of Changes , which went on to win the 1990 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for the best first novel in the Europe and South Asia region. The novel is a fictional version of Marco Polo 's memoirs which he dictated to Rustichello da Pisa , his fellow inmate in

357-592: A concert performance by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra the following year. In addition to his original libretti, Griffiths has produced modern English translations of those for Stravinsky 's Histoire du soldat , Mozart's Die Zauberflöte , and Puccini 's La bohème . Griffiths has also written original texts for non-operatic settings, including The General , which premiered in Montreal on 16 January 2007, with Kent Nagano conducting

408-419: A difficult, elaborate work. Dutilleux also published various works for piano ( 3 Préludes , Figures de résonances ) and 3 strophes sur le nom de Sacher (1976–1982) for solo cello. The latter was originally composed on the occasion of Paul 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

459-433: A fast climax (second—a scherzo and moto perpetuo ), keeps its momentum (third—"a continuous melodic line that never goes back on itself"), and finally slowly fades out (fourth—a theme and variations ). In 1953, Dutilleux wrote the music for the ballet Le loup ("The Wolf"). In his Second Symphony , titled Le double (1959), the orchestra is divided into two groups: a small one at the front with instruments taken from

510-534: 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." In an obituary in The 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." The Daily Telegraph said, "Because Dutilleux

561-573: A song cycle for soprano and orchestra inspired by poems and letters by Van Gogh, Prithwindra Mukherjee , Rainer Maria Rilke , and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn . This work received a very enthusiastic reception and has been programmed several times since its première. Dutilleux's last major work was the song cycle Le temps l'horloge , written for American soprano Renée Fleming . It consists of four pieces and an instrumental interlude on two poems by Jean Tardieu , one by Robert Desnos and one by Charles Baudelaire . The first three songs were premièred at

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612-501: A string quartet known as Ainsi la nuit ("Thus the night"); and two symphonies: No. 1 (1951) and No. 2 Le Double (1959). Works were commissioned from him by such major artists as Charles Munch , George Szell , Mstislav Rostropovich , the Juilliard String Quartet , Isaac Stern , Paul Sacher , Anne-Sophie Mutter , Simon Rattle , Renée Fleming , and Seiji Ozawa . In addition to composing, he worked as

663-423: A string section of only lower-register instruments: cellos and basses, no violins or violas. In 1985, Isaac Stern premiered L'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

714-512: 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? Dutilleux numbered as Op. 1 his Piano Sonata (1946–1948), written for

765-667: 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". Dutilleux's music was influenced by art and literature, such as the works of Vincent van Gogh , Charles Baudelaire and Marcel Proust . It also shows a concern for the concepts of time and memory, both in its use of quotations (notably from Bartók, Benjamin Britten , and Jehan 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

816-536: A theme is revealed gradually, appearing in its complete form only after a few partial, tentative expositions. 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

867-511: Is E ♭ in German, H is B ♮ in German, and Re is D in French; see Sacher hexachord ). He then returned to orchestral works in 1978 with Timbres, espace, mouvement ou la nuit etoilée , inspired by Van Gogh's The Starry Night . In this composition, Dutilleux attempted to translate into musical terms the opposition between emptiness and movement the painting conveys. It employs

918-560: 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." The critic Tom Service wrote for the BBC , "Dutilleux's exquisite catalogue of pieces is becoming, rightly, ever more popular with performers and listeners all over the world". An obituary in Gramophone commented, "Dutilleux represented

969-518: Is still time , subtitled "scenes for speaking voice and cello", with spoken narration accompanying music by the cellist-composer Frances-Marie Uitti . The work was recorded in 2003 by ECM Records with Griffiths himself as the narrator. More directly connected to the novel is a concert work by Hans Abrahamsen , also titled let me tell you and composed for Barbara Hannigan with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, who gave

1020-623: 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." Dutilleux's later works include Mystère de l'instant (for cymbalum , 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) and Sur le même accord (for violin and orchestra, 2002, dedicated to Anne-Sophie Mutter ). In 2003, he completed Correspondances ,

1071-533: The BBC 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 was Tout un monde lointain .... Paul Griffiths (writer) Paul Anthony Griffiths OBE (born 1947) is a British music critic, novelist and librettist . He is particularly noted for his writings on modern classical music and for having written

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1122-545: The Genoese prison where he had been incarcerated upon his return from China. (Rustichello is the "myself" of the title.) Two years later, he published his second novel, The Lay of Sir Tristram , a retelling of the Tristan and Iseult legend interjected with the narrator's own love story and his meditations on the legend's fluctuating influence and interpretation over time. Griffiths's third novel, let me tell you (2008), uses

1173-736: The Montreal Symphony Orchestra . The General , a concert piece for symphony orchestra, narrator, soprano and Nagano conceived chorus as a tribute to the Canadian General Roméo Dallaire . Griffiths's narrative texts, inspired by Dallaire's attempts to stop the Rwandan genocide , are interwoven with the music from Beethoven 's complete Egmont score, other theatre music and Opferlied ( Song of Sacrifice ). Other musical collaborations have come out of his novel let me tell you , including there

1224-513: The Munich Biennale . Although Griffiths's libretto was not directly related to or based on his novel, the first line of the opera, "I have not told one half of what I saw", was the novel's final statement. Griffiths's next commission as a librettist was for Elliott Carter 's only opera, What Next? . The work premiered in 1999 at Berlin's Staatsoper Unter den Linden , conducted by Daniel Barenboim who also conducted its US premiere in

1275-1007: The Saito Kinen Festival Matsumoto , Japan in September 2007. The American première of this partial version took place in November 2007 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra . The complete work was unveiled on 7 May 2009 at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris. In 2010, Dutilleux added a third movement to his chamber work Les citations . 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

1326-684: The Virgin Classics artists roster and catalogue while the EMI Classics label's artists roster and catalogue was absorbed into the Warner Classics label but not the rights to the EMI Classics or Virgin Classics names due to the trademark rights being retained by seller Universal Music Group . Henri Dutilleux Henri Paul Julien Dutilleux ( French: [ɑ̃ʁi dytijø] ; 22 January 1916 – 22 May 2013)

1377-676: The chief music critic for The Times , a post which he held for ten years. From 1992 to 1996, he was a music critic for The New Yorker , and from 1997 to 2005, for The New York Times . A collection of his musical criticism for these and other periodicals was published in 2005 as The substance of things heard: writings about music , Volume 31 of Eastman Studies in Music . In 1978, he also began writing reference books and monographs on classical music and composers starting with Modern music: A Concise History from Debussy to Boulez and Boulez (Volume 16 of Oxford Studies of Composers ). Although

1428-800: The Head of Music Production for Radio France for 18 years. He also taught at the École Normale de Musique de Paris and at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique , and was twice composer in residence at the Tanglewood Music Center in Lenox , Massachusetts . Among Dutilleux's many awards and honours were the Grand Prix de Rome (1938) and the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize (2005). When describing him,

1479-671: The University of Southern California, IRCAM , Oxford University, Harvard University, Cornell University (Messenger Lectures, 2008) and the City University of New York Graduate Center (Old Lecture, 2013), and has served on juries for international competitions, among them the Premio Paolo Borciani and the ARD Musikwettbewerb. He was named a Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2002 and

1530-456: The brass section, which seems to indicate the influence of big band music . Dutilleux was greatly enamoured of vocalists, especially the jazz singer Sarah Vaughan and the great French chanson singers. Some of Dutilleux's trademarks include very refined orchestral textures; complex rhythms; a preference for atonality and modality over tonality ; the use of pedal points that serve as atonal pitch centers; and "reverse variation", whereby

1581-539: The cellist Paul Tortelier ), Henri Büsser (composition) and Maurice Emmanuel (history of music). Dutilleux won the Prix de Rome in 1938 for his cantata L'anneau du roi but did not complete his entire residency in Rome due to the outbreak of World 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 and music teacher . In 1942, he conducted

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1632-717: The choir of the Paris Opera . Dutilleux worked as Head of Music Production for Radio France from 1945 to 1963. He served as professor of composition at the École 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 at Tanglewood in 1995 and 1998. His students included Gérard Grisey , Francis Bayer , Alain Gagnon , Jacques Hétu , and Kenneth Hesketh . Invited by Walter Fink , in 2006 he

1683-655: The early cycle for voice and piano Quatre mélodies ) and Deux sonnets de Jean Cassou (originally for baritone and piano). He played them in a concert at the Hôtel de Lauzun in Dutilleux's presence. Dutilleux allowed only a small fraction of his work to be published. He often expressed a wish to write more chamber music, notably a second string quartet, a piece for clarinet and ensemble, one for solo double bass, and more piano préludes. He long considered composing an opera but abandoned that project because he could not find

1734-586: The first time in more than 20 years and wrote the string quartet Ainsi 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. It is based on a hexachord (C ♯ –G ♯ –F–G–C–D) that highlights the intervals of fifth and major second . Each movement emphasizes various special effects ( pizzicato , glissandi , harmonics , extreme registers, contrasting dynamics...), resulting in

1785-611: The great-grandson of the painter Constant Dutilleux and grandson of the composer Julien Koszul . He was also a cousin of the mathematician Jean-Louis Koszul . He studied harmony , counterpoint , and piano with Victor Gallois at the Douai Conservatoire  [ fr ] before leaving for the Conservatoire de Paris . There, between 1933 and 1938, he attended the classes of Jean and Noël Gallon (harmony and counterpoint, in which he won joint first prize with

1836-472: The idea of metamorphosis , 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. It quickly achieved celebrity and, following its première by George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra ,

1887-449: The legacies of French composers such as Debussy and Ravel but is also clearly influenced by Béla Bartók and Igor Stravinsky . Among his favourite pieces, he mentioned Beethoven 's late string quartets and Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande . His attitude toward serialism was ambiguous. While he always paid attention to developments in contemporary music and incorporated some serialist techniques into his work, he also criticized

1938-499: The libretti for two 20th-century operas, Tan Dun 's Marco Polo and Elliott Carter 's What Next? . Paul Griffiths was born on 24 November 1947 in the Welsh town of Bridgend to Fred and Jeanne Griffiths. He received his BA and MSc in biochemistry from University of Oxford , and from 1971 worked as a freelance music critic. He joined the editorial staff of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians in 1973 and in 1982 became

1989-480: The majority of these publications have dealt with 20th-century composers and their music, he has also written more general works on classical music, including The String Quartet: A History (1985), The Penguin Companion to Classical Music (2005), and A Concise History of Western Music (2006). The last of these has been translated into seven languages. Griffiths has been a guest lecturer at institutions including

2040-456: The more radical and intolerant aspects of the movement: "What I reject is the dogma and the authoritarianism which manifested themselves in that period." Dutilleux refused to be associated with any school. Dutilleux's music contains distant echoes of jazz , as can be heard in the plucked double bass strings at the beginning of his First Symphony and his frequent use of syncopated rhythms . He often calls for Ray Robinson-style cup mutes in

2091-453: The music critic Paul Griffiths wrote that "Mr. Dutilleux’s position in French music was proudly solitary. Between Olivier Messiaen and Pierre 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." Henri Dutilleux was born on 22 January 1916 in Angers , Maine-et-Loire . He was

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2142-565: The pianist Geneviève 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. After the Piano Sonata, Dutilleux started working on his First Symphony (1951). It consists of four monothematic movements and has a perfectly symmetrical structure: music slowly emerges from silence (first movement—a passacaglia ) and builds towards

2193-495: 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 Baroque concerto 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. His next work, Métaboles for orchestra (1965) explores

2244-528: 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". 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 composer Esa-Pekka Salonen said of Dutilleux, "His production

2295-525: Was The Jewel Box which used music from Mozart 's unfinished operas Lo sposo deluso and L'oca del Cairo as well as several arias and ensembles that he had written for insertion into operas by other composers. The storyline is an imagined reconstruction of a pantomime in which Mozart and Aloysia Weber are said to have taken part in 1783. The Jewel Box premiered in 1991 in Nottingham performed by Opera North and conducted by Elgar Howarth . It

2346-507: Was a French composer of late 20th-century classical music . Among the leading French composers of his time, his work was rooted in the Impressionistic style of Debussy and Ravel , but in an idiosyncratic, individual style. Among his best known works are his early Flute Sonatine and Piano Sonata ; concertos for cello, Tout un monde lointain... ("A whole distant world") and violin, L'arbre des songes ("The tree of dreams");

2397-665: 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 critic Philip Hensher called Dutilleux "the Laura Ashley of music; tasteful, unfaultable, but hardly ever daring ... Personally, I can’t stick him." Rob Cowan ,

2448-676: Was distributed in the USA on the RCA Red Seal label for many years. In 1992, Erato Records was acquired by Warner Music Group . In 2001, Warner Music Group closed down both Teldec Records and Erato Records to cut operating costs in classical music business and streamline the Warner Classics label. In 2013, the Erato Records label was revived with Warner Music Group acquisition of EMI Classics and Virgin Classics , which became part of Warner Classics . Erato Records absorbed

2499-498: Was performed in several North American cities, then in France. Métaboles is one of his most often performed works. In the 1960s, Dutilleux met Mstislav 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. After the cello concerto, Dutilleux turned to chamber music for

2550-521: Was subsequently performed in the United States by Skylight Opera Theatre (1993), Wolf Trap Opera (1994), Chicago Opera Theater (1996), and New Jersey State Opera (1996). It was revived by Bampton Classical Opera in 2006 for the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth. His second work of this type, Aeneas in Hell , was set to songs and dance music from Purcell 's theatre scores and was devised as

2601-559: Was the 16th composer featured in the Rheingau Musik Festival 's annual Komponistenporträt . For many years, Dutilleux had a studio on Île Saint-Louis . He died on 22 May 2013 in Paris, aged 97, and was buried in Montparnasse Cemetery , in the same grave as Geneviève , his wife who died in 2009. His tombstone is made of grey granite and bears the epitaph "Compositeur". Dutilleux's music extends

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