Henri Dutilleux
Henri Dutilleux (born January 22, 1916, Angers, France—died May 22, 2013, Paris) was a French composer who produced a relatively small body of carefully crafted compositions that were frequently performed outside France, particularly in Great Britain and the United States.
Dutilleux was born into a creative family that had produced painters and musicians. He was educated at the Paris Conservatory beginning in 1933 and received the Grand Prix de Rome in 1938. Because of the outbreak of World War II, Dutilleux’s study in Rome lasted only four months. In 1942 he worked at the Paris Opéra, and when the war ended he began an association with Radio France that lasted until 1963. He taught composition at the École Normale de Musique from 1961 to 1970 and at the Paris Conservatory in 1970–71. After that time he devoted himself entirely to composing.
Dutilleux wrote in a number of genres, including works for orchestra, various instrumental combinations, and solo instruments; chamber music; vocal works; ballets; incidental music for the theatre; and film scores. He destroyed most of the music he had composed before World War II, and thus his first major work was a piano sonata premiered in 1948 by his wife, Geneviève Joy. A number of his works were commissioned or were written for specific performers. These include Symphony No. 2, subtitled Le Double for the use of a chamber orchestra within the orchestra, commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Koussevitzky Music Foundation (1959); Métaboles, commissioned by the Cleveland Orchestra and premiered in 1965; and Tout un monde lointain, for cello and orchestra, written for Mstislav Rostropovich (1970). Ainsi la nuit, a string quartet, also was commissioned by the Koussevitzky foundation (1977), and Timbres, espace, mouvement by Rostropovich for the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C. (1978). L’Arbre des songres, a concerto for violin, was written for Isaac Stern (1985). Correspondances, for soprano and orchestra, received its premiere in 2003. Le Temps l’horloge, written for the American soprano Renée Fleming, premiered in 2007.
Although Dutilleux’s works bore influences of Claude Debussy, Albert Roussel, and Maurice Ravel, as well as of jazz, he wrote in a highly individual modernist style that conveyed a sense of spirituality. He had an affinity for variation form and liked to quote from other works, including his own. Though his body of work was small—he was known as a slow, painstaking worker—it was impressive.
Dutilleux was the recipient of many honours, including the Grand Prix National de la Musique (1967). The Koussevitzky International Recording Award for 1976 went to a recording of Tout un monde lointain, and a number of other recordings received Grands Prix du Disque. In 1994 Dutilleux received the Japan Art Association’s Praemium Imperiale prize for music. In 2005 he received the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize, considered the world’s most prestigious music award. He was a Commander of the Legion of Honour, and in 1981 he was made an honorary member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.