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Dutilleux at 90

Author(s): Caroline Potter


Source: The Musical Times, Vol. 147, No. 1894 (Spring, 2006), pp. 51-58
Published by: Musical Times Publications Ltd.
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CAROLINE POTTER
Dutilleux
at
90
The extracts
from
Dutilleux 's
The shadows of time and
Sur le m?me accord are
? Schott Music and used
by
kind
permission.
i.
Cited in Claude
Glayman:
Myst?re
et m?moire des sons:
entretiens avec Henri Dutilleux
(Paris:
Actes
Sud, 1997),
pp. 138-39:
'Mon cher
ami,
je
me fais
vieux, je
me sens
archi-vieux,
et
puis je
deviens
sourd,
tout ? fait sourd.
Aussi,
il est
temps que
j'?crive
mes derniers
quatuors!' dayman's
book
of interviews was translated
by Roger
Nichols for
Ashgate
in
2003
as Henri
Dutilleux: music
?
mystery
and
memory.
2.
Information
kindly passed
on
by
Robert
Orledge.
3.
Interview with
Mark Satola for Cleveland
Freetimes, 24
November
2004
(www.freetimes.com,
accessed
15 June 2005).
4.
The work's
original
title
is in
English, perhaps
because
it was commissioned
by
an
American orchestra.
Towards the end
of his
life,
Erik Satie
poked
fun at the
post
Beethovenian notion that a
composer
should have
a 'late manner'. He
told his friend Roland-Manuel:
'My
dear
friend,
I'm
old,
I feel
hugely
old,
and I'm
going
deaf
too,
completely
deaf. So it's time for me to write
my
late
quartets!'1
Satie died in
1925
at the
age
of
59,
and never
did write a
string
quartet, though
he told his friend Robert
Caby
that the
only thing
he
regretted
in his
professional
life was not
writing
down
a
quartet
he had com
posed.2
Although early
in his
career,
Henri Dutilleux
may,
on
the
surface, appear
to have embraced the Austro-German
genres
of the sonata and the
sym
phony,
since his Second
Symphony
of
1955?59
he has
preferred poetic
or
descriptive
titles. And as a
notorious
perfectionist,
his
catalogue
of works is
small and he has
only composed
one
string quartet
{Ainsi
la
nuit, 1973-77),
though
he has said
many
times that he would like to
compose
a
second.
Dutilleux's
contemporaries
have
amply
demonstrated that in the
early
21st
century
there is no such
thing
as a
single identifiably
'late
style
'. For
example,
Elliott Carter's first
opera,
What
next?,
was written at
the
age
of
90,
and his
recent scorrevole instrumental works and concertos are
hardly
the reflective
musings
of an old man.
Recently,
Dutilleux said that he 'cannot have the am
bition to imitate Elliott Carter
who,
at his
age,
dared to take on the adventure
of the
opera
and won his bet!'3 On the other
hand,
Olivier Messiaen
composed
several short works towards the end of his life which seemed
minor
chippings
off the rocks of his earlier
output, re-using
ideas based
on
birdsong
or
stained
glass
in
pieces
such
as Un vitrail et des oiseaux.
However,
his final
completed
work,
Eclairs sur
l'au-del?
(1987?92),
is a
massive
summation of his musical
language, concluding
most
appropriately
with a
hushed violin line
ascending, seemingly,
into heaven. And Pierre
Boulez,
Dutilleux's
only
real rival for the crown of
greatest
living
French
composer
(who recently
claimed in a
pre-concert
interview in London: 'I am a
cow'),
continues to
proliferate
ideas from his works in
progress,
chewing
his
percussion-and-harp
based cud in sur
Incises
(2000?02).
Dutilleux, however,
has moved into new
territory
in recent
years.
He has
said several times that he
regrets
the small number of vocal works in his cata
logue,
and his orchestral work The shadows
of
time
(1995?97),
commissioned
by
the Boston
Symphony Orchestra,
was his first for
many years
to include
a
vocal
part.4
Dutilleux introduced a
child's voice
(which,
according
to the
score,
can
be
replaced by
three voices in
unison)
in the third of the work's
the musical times
Spring
2006
51
5
2
Dutilleux
at
go
five
movements,
'M?moire des ombres'. The short text:
'Pourquoi
nous?
Pourquoi
l'?toile?'
(Why
us?
Why
the
star?)
is written
by
Dutilleux himself.
The
separate
dedication of the movement
?
unique
in Dutilleux's
output
so
far- 'to Anne Frank and all innocent children of the world
(1945-1995)' sug
gest
that the text alludes to the
yellow
star
Jewish people
were
obliged
to wear
during
the Second World War
years.
Dutilleux is the first to admit that his
own wartime service
was
undistinguished (he
acted
as a
stretcher bearer from
the outbreak of the War until the fall of Paris in
August 1940),
but he lost
several friends
(including
the
composer
and
organist Jehan Alain)
and
joined
a
group
of
musicians,
the Front
national,
which offered
practical
and moral
support
to
those affected
by
the war
(and
was
nothing
to do with the contem
porary far-right political party).
On a more mundane
level,
Dutilleux told
me
that he often walks
past
the M?moriale de la
d?portation
statue,
which is
near his Paris home on
the lie
Saint-Louis;
and he said that the vocal
part
in
The shadows
of
time was
also
inspired by
the sound of children
playing
in a
neighbouring
school
building
which he heard from his workroom.
Always
concerned with
timbre, too,
Dutilleux has also
emphasised
that the child's
voice
provides
a
lighter, higher
sound to contrast with the
predominantly
dark orchestral
surrounding.
The child's voice in 'M?moire des
ombres',
and the woodwind instru
ments with which it
dialogues,
are,
according
to the
score,
intended to evoke
'the
spirit
of
Gregorian
chant'. These
Gregorian
echoes are
commonplace
in
Dutilleux's
work,
also
being
exhibited in movements
including
'Litanies II'
from the
string quartet
Ainsi la
nuit,
and the
identically
titled movement in
Myst?re
de l'instant
(1985?89)
for
24
strings, percussion
and cimbalom. But
in 'M?moire des
ombres',
the voice is
interrupted by aggressive
orchestral
gestures
which
eventually
overwhelm it
(ex.i).
This
silencing
of the human
voice
by
a loud and
powerful
external voice has
an obvious
symbolism.
ON 28
April
2002,
Dutilleux's Sur le m?me accord?Nocturne
pour
violon
et
orchestre^
a London Philharmonie Orchestra
commission,
was
premiered
in London. It is dedicated to its first
soloist,
Anne-Sophie
Mutter,
to whom Dutilleux had been introduced
by
Paul Sacher some
15
years
previously.
Dutilleux's introduction to the
published
score
partly
explains
the title: 'In both the solo
part
and the orchestral
texture,
a six-note
chord can be heard
throughout
the
work,
either concealed
or more
overtly,
given
to soloists drawn from the orchestra. At the start of the
work,
the solo
violin
announces these six
pitches,
first
as a
monody,
then
double-stopped;
this material is then distributed
vertically [played
as a
chord] by
various
instrumental
groups.'
(Ex.2
illustrates the six-note
chord.)
But in this
preface,
Dutilleux does not choose to mention that he had used
a
very
similar
title and idea
previously,
for his
piano prelude
Sur un m?me
accord(1977).
The
Bassoons i &
Double bassoon
Ex.i: Dutilleux: The shadows
of time,
third
movement,
from two bars before
fig.28
the musical times
Spring
2006
53
54
Dutilleux
at
go
Ex.2: Sur le m?me
accord,
six-note chord
Ex.3:
Sur un m?me
accord,
focal
chord,
two versions
focal chord of this
piece
is
similar,
but not
identical,
to the six-note chord in
the violin and orchestral work
(ex.3).
This use of
pivot
chords
(or
pivot
notes)
is a constant of Dutilleux's
mature
style,
and
provides
a
point
of
reference for the listener within
an
essentially
atonal context. The
composer
is also fond of the term
'Nocturne',
having
used it as a subtitle for two
movements in Ainsi la nuit
and,
more
generally, being
an admirer of Bart?k's
'night
music' and
highly
sensitive to the
mystery suggested by
a nocturnal
setting.
Dutilleux also shares with Bartok
a
fondness for
symmetrical
musical
shapes,
as illustrated in bars
24?25
of Sur le m?me accord
(ex.4).
This shows
the rather traditional
relationship
between the solo violin and the
orchestra,
the violin
being essentially
an
elaboration of the orchestral
part.
But while
the violin
part
is
rhapsodic
in
style,
the six-note chords in the
accompaniment
form
a
palindrome
and,
when
analysed according
to Allen Forte's
pitch
class
set
theory,
are all identical
(o, 1, 3, 5, 7,
8).
Dutilleux is
always
reluctant to
discuss his works in
any
analytical
detail,
but he
must
surely
have wanted to
create a sense of
unity
here
by ensuring
the
common
identity
of these chords.
There
are
often close connections between
one Dutilleux work and
another,
connections which in
my
view
are more overt than the
stylistic
fingerprints
one
expects
to encounter in the works of
any composer
with
a
developed
individual
style.
In
particular,
Dutilleux often links a work with
the
one
immediately preceding
it in his
catalogue.
This is evident in the
concluding
bars of Sur le m?me accord
(?rom
bar
169),
which
closely
resemble
the
ending
of The shadows
of
time: both works feature
repeated
marimba
semiquavers (Fjt
in Sur le m?me
accord, C||
in The shadows
of time)
which
Violin
Pianos
rJ>
=
i3o]
Ex.4:
Sur le m?me
accord,
bars
24?25
pervade
the texture and herald the end. At the end of The shadows
of time,
there is no
double bar
-
simply
a
gradual
decrescendo that can continue as
long
as the conductor feels is
appropriate
?
but the end of Sur le m?me accord
could not be
more different:
a
loud octave G acts as an
emphatic
full
stop,
as
well
as
being
one of the notes of the
pivot
chord. Not
surprisingly,
Sur le
m?me accord also has
some features in common
with the violin concerto
Dutilleux wrote for Isaac
Stern,
L'arbre des
songes (1979?85).
In the
opening
bars of this
work,
the solo line focuses
on the lowest note of the
instrument,
gradually moving
away
from this low G
only
to return to it. This
gesture
is
repeated
elsewhere in the violin
concerto and also
appears
in Sur le m?me
accord,
for
example
in bars
56?57 (ex.5).
THE MUSICAL TIMES
Spring
2006
55
<)6
Dutilleux at
go
Lento
(
J>
=70)
Violin
p legato
Ex.5:
Sur le m?me
accord,
bars
56?57
5-
'Si vari?s
que
soient ces
textes
par
leur forme et leur
contenu,
ils ont en commun
de refl?ter chez leurs auteurs
une
?gale
incluation ? la
pens?e mystique.
Avec l'id?e
du
Cosmos,
c'est ce
qui
a
sembl? servir d'?l?ment
unificateur au
compositeur.'
6. ibid.
Dutilleux's most recent
completed
work,
Correspondances (2002-03),
takes his renewed interest in vocal
writing
one
step
further. This work was
written to fulfil a commission from the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra
dating
back
to
1983.
Dutilleux
originally
intended to write for chorus and
orchestra,
but later abandoned this idea in favour of
a series of orchestral
songs
to texts
by
different authors. The
composer
has written in the
preface
to the
score:
'Though
the texts differ in their form and
content,
they
all reflect
the
mystical thinking
of their authors.
Together
with the idea of the
Cosmos,
this is what strikes me as a
unifying
element.'5
Certainly,
the authors of the
texts used
-
Prithwindra
Mukherjee,
Alexander
Solzhenitsyn,
Rainer Maria
Rilke and Vincent Van
Gogh
?
have little else in common. All the texts are
translated into French
and,
with the
exception
of the first
song,
set in a
largely parlando style.
The overall
title, Correspondances,
has
a
double
signifi
cance,
the first
being
a
literal translation of the French
term: two of the
settings (the Solzhenitsyn
and Van
Gogh)
are of extracts of letters.
Secondly,
as in other works and most
notably
his cello concerto Tout un monde lointain...
(1967?70),
Dutilleux is
intrigued by
the Baudelairian notion of connections
between the senses
('correspondances').
But while the third and fourth texts
in
particular
focus
on
timbre and
colours,
Dutilleux has
always
denied that
he
consistently
associates certain musical timbres with individual colours.
Another Baudelaire fixation reflected in this work is his belief that 'in our
world,
the divine
inevitably
finds its mirror
image
in a
devilish form.'6
Correspondances
is also
typical
of Dutilleux's works in that the
composer
produced
a
revised version after its first
performances.
For the work's UK
premieres (Birmingham, February
2005; Proms, July 2005) by
the
City
of
Birmingham Symphony
Orchestra conducted
by
Sakari
Oramo,
the audi
ence
discovered that the
original
four-movement work had been
expanded
into five
movements. The additional movement is a second
setting
of a Rilke
poem;
the first is entitled
'Gong'
and the
second, slightly longer, setting
'Gong
2'. In
my view,
Dutilleux decided to add
a fifth movement to
satisfy
his desire for
unity
in a musical work: the second Rilke
setting
features clear
references
to other
movements,
not least in its use of
ascending figurations
reminiscent of ex.i
which also
appear
in the first
song.
Double bass har
y.
In
1997,
Dutilleux
composed
the four
minute Slava 's
Fanfare
for
Rostropovich's
70th
birthday
concert;
written
for the unusual combination
of four
trumpets,
four
trombones,
three
piccolos
and
percussion,
it was first
performed
in March
1997
in
Paris,
and
reprised
for
the cellist's
75th birthday
by
the London
Symphony
Orchestra on
27
March 2002.
It alternates brass fanfares
with material reminiscent of
Timbres, espace,
mouvement.
For the latter
work,
originally
a two-movement
piece,
Dutilleux decided
to
compose
an interlude to
act as a
link between the
movements in
1991.
The
interlude is scored for 12
cellos
(plus
a celesta which is
introduced
only
at the
end),
though
Dutilleux denies that
it was his deliberate intention
to
surround
Rostropovich
with cellists.
8. Information
kindly
passed
on
by Roger
Nichols.
Tardieu
(1903?95)
was a
French
poet
and
playwright
who loved music
(his
mother
was a
harpist). Many
of his
works focus
on the
problem
of communication and the
ambiguity
of
language.
9.
Glayman: op. cit., p.220;
'J'ai
toujours
conserv? des
?bauches
ou,
parfois,
un
peu
plus que
des ?bauches de
pieces
commenc?es
jadis
et
je m'y reporte
de
temps
en
temps,
mais cela ne va
jamais
tr?s loin. Ce sont
quelques
id?es
destin?es, par exemple,
? des
pi?ces pour piano;
l'une
d'elles est d'ailleurs
presque
faite,
une sorte de nouveau
pr?lude. Je
le
garde pour
le
jour
o?...'.
monies
open
and close both
'Gong'
movements,
and the titular instrument is
the final sound heard in
'Gong
2'.
While the
second,
third and fourth
songs
are
reflective in
character,
the
outer two are more
aggressive.
Both feature
rapid rising
and
falling
wood
wind lines almost identical
to ex.i
above,
suggesting
that this is a
gesture
Dutilleux found
particularly
effective for
conveying images
of
danger
or
instability.
To
manage
the transition between the first two
songs,
Dutilleux
includes
an
interlude
?
a
device
previously
used in
many
of his
works,
including
Ainsi la nuit and L'arbre des
songes.
These interludes tend either to
recall
previously
heard material
or,
as in
Correspondances,
to
anticipate
what
is to come.
Here,
and in
'Gong 2',
Dutilleux introduces the accordion
(the
first time he has written for this
instrument),
which will
play
a
significant
role
in the
Solzhenitsyn setting, presumably
because it is intended
to
evoke the
Russian
bayan.
This rather unusual
text is taken not from one
of the Russian novelist's
published
works but from
a
letter he wrote to Mstislav
Rostropovich
and his
wife Galina
Vishnevskaya
on
9
February 1984,
thanking
them for their
sup
port during
his
years
of
being
hounded
by
the Soviet authorities. It is
hardly
surprising, given
this
connection,
that the cello is one of the
principal
orchestral voices in this movement.
Rostropovich
is the dedicatee of Tout un
monde lointain... and also of
Timbres, espace,
mouvement
(1976?78),
an
orchestral work
inspired by
Van
Gogh's painting
La nuit ?toil?e whose
pre
miere was
conducted
by Rostropovich.7
The third
song, 'Gong',
is the
shortest; indeed,
in his
preface
to
the
score
Dutilleux describes this
song
as an 'interlude' rather than
a
fully-fledged
movement. While its static
conception
and focus
on a limited
range
of timbres
recalls
'Torpide ',
the fourth movement o?M?taboles
(1959-64),
the harmonic
and melodic
language
used is
considerably simpler.
The melodic line uses
only
notes from the whole-tone mode
beginning
on
D,
and the chordal
sequence
consists almost
entirely
of
superposed
common
triads
or
sevenths.
The
harp generally
acts as a
link between the two
superposed
chords,
sharing
this function with the
vibraphone
for the final bars of the
piece.
Dutilleux is
currently writing
another vocal work for Ren?e
Fleming
and
the Saito Kinen Orchestra conducted
by Seiji Ozawa,
a
long-time champion
of his
music,
which will be
performed
at the Festival Saito Kinen in Matsu
moto,
Japan,
for his
90th birthday.
At the time of
writing,
he was
considering
setting
texts
by
Jean
Tardieu for this work.8 As for his future
projects,
Dutilleux
intriguingly
said in
1997:
'I have
always kept
sketches
-
which
sometimes are more than sketches
?
of
pieces
I started in the
past,
and
sometimes I
go
back to
them,
but that never
progresses
far. For
instance,
these could be ideas for
piano pieces;
one of them is
actually
almost
finished,
a sort of new
prelude.
I am
keeping
it for the moment.'9
Perhaps
this is the
THE MUSICAL TIMES
Spring
2006
57
5
8 Dutilleux
at
go
io.
Nichols,
trans.: Henri
Dutilleux, p.135.
piano piece which,
according
to
Roger Nichols,
he has written for
Krystian
Zimerman?10 And even
though
it is unrealistic to
expect
that Dutilleux will
write an
opera,
one does
hope
that he will have time to write his late
quartets.
Caroline Potter is Senior Lecturer in music
at
Kingston University
and the author
of
Henri Dutilleux
(Ashgate, 1997)
and Nadia and Lili
Boulanger (Ashgate,
forthcoming).

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