1. General Overview

A leading French composer of the latter half of the 20th century, alongside Messiaen and Boulez. In France during the latter half of the 20th century, the total serialism championed by Boulez in the 1950s and Messiaen's innovative musical language, which drew upon both Eastern and Western musical heritage, exerted dominant influence. However, Dutilleux, without aligning himself with either, continued to explore his own fresh and vibrant sonic world. Works from around the time of his relatively early Piano Sonata (1947-1948) are often noted for influences from Debussy, Ravel, and Fauré. However, Dutilleux himself disliked adjectives such as 'clarity' and 'grace,' which are often considered inherent to 'French music,' and was wary of being regarded as a successor to such traditions. It is interesting that while he reacted against the tradition of the Paris Conservatoire and the neoclassicism represented by Les Six, Dutilleux also kept his distance from movements such as Boulez's Domaine Musical and the Darmstadt summer courses. Nevertheless, Dutilleux maintained an interest in contemporary music and frequently served as a jury member for music festivals and competitions. Dutilleux's curiosity and open-mindedness led to collaborations with various musicians such as Rostropovich and Stern, which in turn contributed to the international recognition of his works. From the 1960s onwards, Dutilleux's works were performed worldwide, often receiving repeat performances shortly after their premieres. The Piano Sonata and a series of short pieces for wind instruments have become established repertoire for music college examinations and competitions, and along with his numerous orchestral works, they now hold a position as 20th-century classics.

2. Biography

Henri Dutilleux was born on January 22, 1916, in Angers, the youngest of four siblings. His paternal great-grandfather, Henri-Joseph-Constant Dutilleux (1807-1865), was a painter who had close ties with Delacroix, Corot, and others. The famous portrait of Chopin by Delacroix, now housed in the Louvre Museum, was once in the possession of this great-grandfather. His maternal grandfather, Julien Koszul, was a Polish-descended composer and organist who served as director of the Roubaix Conservatoire. He was a classmate of Fauré at the Niedermeyer School in Paris and maintained a lifelong friendship with him. His father, Paul Dutilleux (1881-1965), and mother, Thérèse Koszul (1881-1948), were both amateur musicians; his father played the violin and his mother the piano. Their repertoire reportedly included sonatas by Franck, Fauré, Lekeu, Pierné, and Debussy.

Shortly after his birth, Dutilleux moved with his family to Douai, where he studied harmony, counterpoint, and piano under Victor Gallois, director of the Douai Conservatoire *1 . Following Gallois's advice, Dutilleux played percussion in the local orchestra. This is why timpani are used so effectively in works such as his Symphony No. 1 (1950-1951). On his 12th birthday, he was given the score of Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande *2.

In 1933, he moved to Paris and entered the Paris Conservatoire, where he studied harmony with Jean Gallon, fugue with Noël Gallon, music history with Maurice Emmanuel, conducting with Philippe Gaubert, and composition with Henri Büsser. His classmates included Jean-Jacques Grunenwald, Raymond Gallois-Montbrun, Henri Challan, Gaston Litaize, and Marcel Landowski, among others. During his time at the Conservatoire, he also attended rehearsals of the late Ravel. In 1938, he won the Prix de Rome for his cantata L'Anneau du Roi, his third attempt. After graduating from the Conservatoire, he delved into d'Indy's Cours de composition musicale and independently studied the works of Stravinsky and Roussel.

As a Prix de Rome laureate, he stayed in Rome, but his stay was cut short after four months due to escalating international tensions, and he served one year of military service in France. Upon his discharge in August 1940, he joined the composers' group 'Front National' formed primarily by composer Claude Delvincourt and others. Through the mediation of Romanian composer Marcel Mihalovici, he had the opportunity to study the works of Bartók and the Second Viennese School. Around this time, he worked for several months as a chef de chant (coach) at the Paris Opéra, arranged music for cabarets, and gave private lessons in harmony and counterpoint to make a living. He also wrote several pieces for wind instrument examinations at the request of Delvincourt, director of the Paris Conservatoire.

In 1942, he met Geneviève Joy (1919-2009), a pianist who had graduated with honors from the Paris Conservatoire, and they married in 1946. The Piano Sonata, written for her, was in a sense Dutilleux's 'Opus 1,' and he removed most of his previously composed works from his catalog. Some of the discarded works were performed and recorded during Dutilleux's lifetime, but he wished to minimize such occurrences as much as possible.

In 1945, he was appointed head of the incidental music department at Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française (RTF), the French national radio. At that time, French national radio was led by cultural figures such as writers and musicians, who sought to create an art form unique to radio by blending sound and words. As part of these experiments, various composers, primarily young ones, were commissioned to write music for radio, and Dutilleux was in charge of managing these commissions. It was in 1963, after resigning from his RTF post, that he decided to dedicate himself solely to composition.

In 1951, his self-composed Symphony No. 1 was premiered by the Orchestre National de France under the baton of Roger Désormière and received high acclaim. In 1953, his ballet Le Loup was premiered by Roland Petit's Ballets de Paris. His Symphony No. 2, 'Le Double,' commissioned by the Koussevitzky Foundation, was premiered in 1959 by the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Charles Munch. It was around this time that Dutilleux began to establish his international reputation.

In 1961, he moved to Île Saint-Louis in Paris and took charge of a composition class at the École Normale de Musique (until 1970). Students who studied with Dutilleux there included Gérard Grisey, Yoshihisa Taira, and Renaud Gagneux. In 1970, he also taught a composition class at the Paris Conservatoire. In 1962, he was named a member of the 'National Council for the Study of Musical Problems,' established by André Malraux, the Minister of Cultural Affairs. While Messiaen and Boulez were, in a sense, mavericks in the French compositional scene, Dutilleux was involved in French music administration while also receiving commissions for large-scale works from American foundations. This position was highly unusual for a French composer at the time.

In 1995 and 1998, he served as composer-in-residence at the Tanglewood Music Festival. Since 1990, a composition competition bearing Dutilleux's name has been held every three or four years in Tours near Saint-Pierre-des-Corps, with Régis Campo and others having received awards. In 1997, at the request of Toru Takemitsu shortly before his death, Dutilleux was invited to be the first jury member for the newly established 'Next Millennium Composition Award' (now the Toru Takemitsu Composition Award). Furthermore, his entire creative output was recognized with numerous awards, including the Praemium Imperiale (1994), and he was granted honorary positions by various organizations such as the Royal Academy of Music in London.

In addition to inspiration drawn from literary works and paintings, interactions with numerous world-renowned musicians often served as catalysts for his compositions. Mstislav Rostropovich (Cello Concerto Tout un monde lointain... [1967-1970], solo cello piece Trois Strophes sur le nom de Sacher [1976/1982]), Isaac Stern (Violin Concerto L'Arbre des songes [1979-1985]), Anne-Sophie Mutter (Violin Concerto Sur le même accord [2001]), and Renée Fleming (for soprano and orchestra Le temps l'horloge [2006-2009]) not only premiered these respective works but also played a decisive role in providing Dutilleux with concrete images during the creative process.

He died in Paris on May 22, 2013.

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*1 Gallois was a recipient of the Prix de Rome in 1905, the year Ravel failed to win the award.

*2  Messiaen also received the score of Pelléas when he was 10 years old.