Pierre MICHEL
After gaining his degrees in Musicology at the Sorbonne (Paris IV), Pierre Michel taught at the Strasbourg Conservatory before taking up the post of Lecturer at the University of Metz and then at the University of Strasbourg in 1998 (where he was appointed Professor in 2008). Pierre Michel had met Ligeti at the Acanthes-Academy (Aix-en-Provence) in 1979, and the composer supported him in the project of writing a book on his music: the result was the first book to be published in French in 1985 (Éditions Minerve, Paris), with interviews made in Vienna in 1981. After that Pierre Michel published several other papers on the “Chamber concerto” and “Le Grand Macabre”, and produced a webdocumentary in 2016 on the “Trio for violin, horn and piano” for UOH (Université Ouverte des Humanités : http://www.uoh.fr/front/notice?id=22d63080-640a-4af2-b934-d61b5fae7c0e), then produced together with Philippe Lalitte a special issue of Musimédiane concerning Ligeti's "Ten Pieces for Woodwindquintet". He translated an important part of the second French volume of Ligeti’s writings entitled “L’atelier du compositeur” (Éditions Contrechamps, Geneva). He has organised numerous conferences and workshops with musicians, has published also articles and books about composers like Luigi Dallapiccola, B.A. Zimmermann, Klaus Huber, Hans Zender, Franco Donatoni, Wolfgang Rihm, Gilbert Amy, Paul Méfano, Walter Zimmermann. He edited several volumes of writings by composers in France : Ferruccio Busoni, Luigi Dallapiccola, Gilbert Amy, Tristan Murail (also available in English), Hans Zender, Wolfgang Rihm. He has supervised many MA and PhD theses. He also edits several French publications. He implemented the project to set up the GREAM Centre of Research Excellence (in 2011) whose director he was till 2016. He is also a musician, mainly in the field of jazz, with bands like "Bise de Buse" and "Ovale". His research work covers Western art music since 1945, including modern jazz.
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His music’s timbral qualities have never been examined in depth, even though they struck me as soon as I began researching it. Back then I read an article by Gérard Grisey whose musical thought I found stimulating, and occasionally close to some of the Italian composer’s concerns, even though Dallapiccola’s style by no means resembles that of Grisey.
Beyond the obvious links between his works and those of the Second Viennese School, I argue that this rapprochement with some of the musicians of later generations with a particular interest in timbre is relevant today in relation to the research on timbre and orchestration undertaken by the ACTOR project, and in particular the work of Touizrar and McAdams.
The focus here is primarily on vocal works from Goethe Lieder (1953) to Commiato (1972), centered on the ‘super-instrument’ described by Alain Galliari (in his book on Webern), with a few orchestral exceptions (as techniques are occasionally comparable).
A number of pieces that combine voice or several voices with instruments (without getting into opera) are examined, in an effort to carve a path for research on the composite timbre of vocal and instrumental works. The paper is divided into six parts : I – Counterpoints, canons and timbre ; II Conception and perception of timbres beyond the study of combinatorics ; III Timbre and form ; IV A distinctive instrumental group ; V - Proposals for a textural auditive (listening) analysis ; VI – Segmental grouping and instrumental voicing: Commiato. It concludes by discussing the question of interpretation, based on recordings by various singers and on a few ideas put forward by singer and theoretician Valérie Philippin, emphasizing the importance of achieving a suitable timbral fusion between voices and instruments.
Videos of the rehearsals on 20 and 21 April 2016 in Zurich
Video interviews with the conductor and some of the musicians
Photos of personal scores annotated by the conductor
https://www.musimediane.com/numero-13/
To explore this new path in Ligeti's work, which was followed by several choral pieces or pieces for vocal ensembles with texts, Pierre Michel and Maryse Staiber propose a multidisciplinary musicological and literary approach that they have already developed around other composers and poets (Wolfgang Rihm and Paul Celan, Paul Méfano and Paul Éluard or Yves Bonnefoy, etc.). This essay will also make it possible to better acquaint the English-speaking public with the context of German poetry and the profound references of these poems, as well as the musical specificities of this important work.
musical works are understood, taking into account the approaches adopted by the
musician, the composer, the scholar-analyst and the scholar-musician. The aim is
to encourage readers to take a fresh look at the functions of the score within the
general context of non-tonal works in post-1945 Europe. Theoretical approaches
based on several criteria that should help us understand such music will also be
proposed, including the performing process and interpretation of works in terms
of listening and music reception, above all during a concert or a rehearsal. From
this standpoint, the performer is a key stakeholder in the music ‘as act’. An attempt
will also be made to define approaches for a pluralistic evaluation of works by
affirming the status of a living, sonorous and visual art that lies beyond the score
and the composer’s indications.
His music’s timbral qualities have never been examined in depth, even though they struck me as soon as I began researching it. Back then I read an article by Gérard Grisey whose musical thought I found stimulating, and occasionally close to some of the Italian composer’s concerns, even though Dallapiccola’s style by no means resembles that of Grisey.
Beyond the obvious links between his works and those of the Second Viennese School, I argue that this rapprochement with some of the musicians of later generations with a particular interest in timbre is relevant today in relation to the research on timbre and orchestration undertaken by the ACTOR project, and in particular the work of Touizrar and McAdams.
The focus here is primarily on vocal works from Goethe Lieder (1953) to Commiato (1972), centered on the ‘super-instrument’ described by Alain Galliari (in his book on Webern), with a few orchestral exceptions (as techniques are occasionally comparable).
A number of pieces that combine voice or several voices with instruments (without getting into opera) are examined, in an effort to carve a path for research on the composite timbre of vocal and instrumental works. The paper is divided into six parts : I – Counterpoints, canons and timbre ; II Conception and perception of timbres beyond the study of combinatorics ; III Timbre and form ; IV A distinctive instrumental group ; V - Proposals for a textural auditive (listening) analysis ; VI – Segmental grouping and instrumental voicing: Commiato. It concludes by discussing the question of interpretation, based on recordings by various singers and on a few ideas put forward by singer and theoretician Valérie Philippin, emphasizing the importance of achieving a suitable timbral fusion between voices and instruments.
Videos of the rehearsals on 20 and 21 April 2016 in Zurich
Video interviews with the conductor and some of the musicians
Photos of personal scores annotated by the conductor
https://www.musimediane.com/numero-13/
To explore this new path in Ligeti's work, which was followed by several choral pieces or pieces for vocal ensembles with texts, Pierre Michel and Maryse Staiber propose a multidisciplinary musicological and literary approach that they have already developed around other composers and poets (Wolfgang Rihm and Paul Celan, Paul Méfano and Paul Éluard or Yves Bonnefoy, etc.). This essay will also make it possible to better acquaint the English-speaking public with the context of German poetry and the profound references of these poems, as well as the musical specificities of this important work.
musical works are understood, taking into account the approaches adopted by the
musician, the composer, the scholar-analyst and the scholar-musician. The aim is
to encourage readers to take a fresh look at the functions of the score within the
general context of non-tonal works in post-1945 Europe. Theoretical approaches
based on several criteria that should help us understand such music will also be
proposed, including the performing process and interpretation of works in terms
of listening and music reception, above all during a concert or a rehearsal. From
this standpoint, the performer is a key stakeholder in the music ‘as act’. An attempt
will also be made to define approaches for a pluralistic evaluation of works by
affirming the status of a living, sonorous and visual art that lies beyond the score
and the composer’s indications.
The present volume is the result of an international colloquium entitled Les jeux subtils de la poétique, des mathématiques et de la philosophie and organized in Strasbourg in March 2018 by the Labex GREAM of the Université de Strasbourg, the HEAR (Haute École des Arts du Rhin) and the Ensemble Accroche Note, in the presence of the composer. The objective was to examine the close links between mathematics and music, sometimes through philosophy, the questions of writing or composition, of intonation, and the fundamental links of these musics with the poetry of various times.