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Hugues Dufourt: La Cité des Saules

for electric guitar and electronics

(1997)

The Cité des Saules (City of Willows) is a metaphor for departure. The entire pièce is conceived as a form of reciprocal genesis between inwardness and space. There is no motif, no outline, no figure derived from a background. All that matters is the spatialization process.

The piece comes down to a process of emergence with the only distinctive features being the degrees of depth and opening. Articulations are reduced to the strict minimum: interstices, active voids, coloured segments, luminous events, interplay of transparencies, dark rumblings. The work ends by turning in on itself, by being reabsorbed into its own background.

The piece’s construction is largely based on echo reinjection, very slight ring modulation and hints of chorus effects. Today, all of these methods are obsolete. I would like to thank today’s performers for agreeing to rethink the piece using entirely digital treatment, thus giving it a new life.
Hugues Dufourt

Hugues Dufourt
© Astrid Karger

French composer and philosopher Hugues Dufourt (*1943 in Lyon) studied piano and composition at the Geneva Conservatory, achieved the Agrégé de philosophie in 1967, and then taught philosophy at the University of Lyon. In 1973, he joined the Centre Nationale des Recherches Supérieures (CNRS) as a scientist and joined forces with Gérard Grisey, Tristan Murail, and Michaël Lévinas to form the composers’ group »L’Itinéraire,« from whose sound research spectral music sprang.

In 1977 Dufourt founded the CRISS (Collectif de Recherche Instrumentale et de Synthèse Sonore), from 1982 he directed the information and documentation center »Recherche musicale«, a joint research project of the CNRS, the École Normale Supérieure and the IRCAM, and in the same association from 1989 the Doctorale Formation Musique et Musicologie du XXe siècle.

Hugue Dufourt’s music is based on an abundance of sound constellations and overtones and relies on the dialectic of timbre and time. He draws inspiration in part from the visual arts, essentially maintaining the role of color, medium and light Many of his larger works have been inspired by artists such as Brueghel, Giorgione, Rembrandt, Poussin, Guardi, Goya, Rothko and Pollock.

Hugues Dufourt has received numerous awards, including the Grand Prix de la Musique de chambre (SACEM) in 1975, the Grand Prix de l’Académie Charles Cros in 1980, the Fondation Koussevitzky Prize in 1985, the Jury Prize of the Musique en cinéma Festival in 1987, the Prix des compositeurs de la SACEM in 1994, and the Prix du Président de la République pour l’ensemble de son œuvre, awarded by the Académie Charles Cros, in 2000.

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Hugues Dufourt: La Cité des Saules

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