Pascal Dusapin

He felt a certain "shock" upon hearing Edgard Varèse's Arcana (1927), and a similar shock when he attended Iannis Xenakis's multimedia performance Polytope de Cluny in 1972, yet he felt "une proximité plus grande" ("a greater closeness") to the latter composer.

Pascal Georges Dusapin (born 29 May 1955) is a French composer.

His music is marked by its microtonality, tension, and energy.

A pupil of Iannis Xenakis and Franco Donatoni and an admirer of Varèse, Dusapin studied at the University of Paris I and Paris VIII during the 1970s.

His music is full of "romantic constraint".

Dusapin, born in Nancy, studied musicology, plastic arts, and art sciences at the University of Paris I and Paris VIII in the early 1970s.

Because of his attraction to Xenakis's music, Dusapin studied with the composer at the Sorbonne in Paris, where he remained a student from 1974 to 1978.

His classes with Xenakis included such subjects as aesthetics and science.

Dusapin also studied with Italian composer Franco Donatoni, who was invited to the University of Vincennes (Paris VIII) in 1976.

While Dusapin's studies with these composers formed a foundation for his compositional studies—particularly for his understanding of sound masses—he developed his own musical language.

According to I. Stoïnova, "Though attached to ... Varèse, Xenakis, Donatoni, Dusapin is nevertheless completely solitary because he is not only aware of his legacy, but also of the distance which separates him from his mentors: a creative distance of an aesthetic order and sensibility, a way of existing in sounds".

He absorbed styles and ideas from these composers, then transformed them to fit his own musical needs.

Besides being influenced by composers such as Varèse and Xenakis who dealt with sound masses, Dusapin's music also shows the influence of other musical traditions, including jazz.

Beginning in the late 1980s with his piece Aks (1987) and continuing into the 1990s, Dusapin incorporated French folk music into his musical language.

In Aks, commissioned by the Société des Amis du Musé des Arts et Traditions Populaires, Dusapin immediately quotes a folk-melody, but the rest of the piece is composed independently from the folk song.

As Stoïnova explains, "The micro-intervals and the micro-glissandi ... in such instrumental works as Inside (1980) for viola, Incisa (1982) for cello, and many other pieces are, in effect, completely integrated as different by entirely 'natural' components in extremely supple melodic progressions".

The listener is already familiar with the uniform division of the octave in equal intervals; Dusapin merely divides the octave by a less traditional number.

Dusapin rejects the hierarchical, binary forms of most European music, but neither is his music aleatory.

Dusapin characterizes the European "hierarchical" form as thinking in terms of variations, so that certain parts are always of more importance than others.

Instead of composing in this way, Dusapin seems to compose measure by measure, deciding what he wants to happen next when he gets there.

This process slightly alludes to the chance-like aspect of aleatory music, but Dusapin's music is so precisely composed that it cannot truly be aleatoric.

Stoïnova writes, "With regard to Dusapin’s music we can observe a principle of auto-organization and complexity in the compositional system through the integration or assimilation of aleatory disturbances."

In other words, Dusapin lets the music go where it will, often evoking aleatory idioms, while still notating everything and maintaining control of his music.

He avoids repetition and rejects stability and redundancy in music, which is yet another distinguishing feature of his music.

Dusapin's work from the 1990s further illustrates the influence of folk music through its frequent use of drones and use of restricted modes, though most often without obvious tonal centers.

Other sources of inspiration include graphic arts and poetry.

One way in which Dusapin stands out from other contemporary composers is through his selection of certain instruments and rejection of others.

Unlike even Xenakis, he avoids the use of electronics and technology in his music.

Likewise, he has removed the use of percussion other than timpani from his works.

Until recently, Dusapin also rejected the use of keyboard instruments, despite the fact that he plays the organ and jazz piano.

As a possible reason for Dusapin's rejection of these instruments, Stoïnova suggests, "The scale and static timbre of the piano, as well as the noisy, uniform textures of percussion are incorporated with difficulty by Dusapin into his microtonal perspective which seems to define the very essence of his dynamic melodism."

Despite being a pianist, he refused to compose for the piano until 1997.

His melodies have a vocal quality, even in purely instrumental works.

Dusapin has composed solo, chamber, orchestral, vocal, and choral works, as well as several operas, and has been honored with numerous prizes and awards.

In fact, he was once a jazz pianist, though up until 1997 he refused to include piano in his compositions.

Stoïnova, however, wrote this article four years before Dusapin completed the Trio Rombach (1997), for piano, violin or clarinet, and cello.

This piano trio was the first work in which Dusapin incorporated piano, and not until 2001 did he complete a piece for solo piano, Sept Études (1999–2001).

Dusapin's music is also marked by its microtonality, which is often achieved through the integration of micro-glissandi and micro-intervals (intervals of less than one semitone).

Dusapin combines both micro-intervals and regular intervals into melodic lines so that the listener never knows what to expect next.

Even so, Dusapin manages to make his use of microtonality feel completely natural.