2016 marked the centenary of composer Henri Dutilleux’s birth (1916-2013). A national commemoration placed under the patronage of the Minister of Culture and Communication, Mrs. Audrey Azoulay, and the Mayor of Paris, Mrs. Anne Hidalgo, paid homage to the composer throughout this notable year. The Cité de la musique – Philharmonie de Paris ensured the outreach of the Centenary Dutilleux 2016 by valorizing its highlights in France and abroad.
The celebration of this anniversary endeavored to tune nearly a hundred years of a singular musical life shared between Northern France, Paris, the banks of the Loire, and the farther shores of North America and Asia. Henri Dutilleux, who admitted to have nourished the ambition to combine “a taste for preciseness and conscientiousness (…) with ingenuity and a sense of adventure”, bequeathed a timeless and mysterious body of work. A musician and a poet, a craftsman of form and orchestration, he was also a radio personality, a composer for theater, dance and film, a painting and photography enthusiast. Having bridged the boundaries between diverse musical languages of the 20th-century, as well as several generations of musicians and music lovers, Henri Dutilleux is still considered today as an ambassador of French contemporary classical music abroad. He always has been.
Dutilleux 2016 offered the opportunity to put in perspective the profuse diversity of his work by programming numerous concerts, conferences, panel discussions, and screenings. Parallel to this scheduling, a musicological and historical undertaking — to which the composer’s biography written by Pierre Gervasoni was the keystone — provided rare or yet unpublished resources: a timeline, interviews, archives and manuscript excerpts from musical scores, concerts recordings, etc.
Honorary Committee
The Honorary Committee is placed under the patronage of the Minister of Culture and Communication, Mrs. Audrey Azoulay, and the Mayor of Paris, Mrs. Anne Hidalgo.
Laurent Bayle — General Manager of the Cité de la musique – Philharmonie de Paris, President of the Honorary Committee
Emmanuelle Bertrand — Cellist
Jean-Claude Casadesus — Conductor
Claude Desmarets — President of the Joy-Dutilleux association
Laurence Engel — President of the Bibliothèque nationale de France
Mathieu Gallet — Chief Executive Officer of Radio France
Valery Gergiev— Conductor
Mathias Auclair — Director of the Music department, Bibliothèque nationale de France
Bruno Hamard — Director of the Orchestre de Paris
Barbara Hannigan — Soprano
Anne Labourdette — Director of the Musée de la Chartreuse de Douai
Jean-Dominique Marco — Director of Festival Musica
Olivier Mantei — Director of the Théâtre national de l’Opéra Comique
Bruno Mantovani — Director of the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse de Paris
Catherine Massip — Honorary Director of Studies of the École Pratique des Hautes Études
Gery Moutier — Director of the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse de Lyon
Catherine Pégard — President of the établissement public du Château de Versailles
Laurent Petitgirard — Vice-President of the SACEM
Rémy Pfimlin† — President of the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse de Paris
Nelly Querol — General Manager of the Éditions Durand-Salabert-Eschig
Pascal Rophé — Conductor
Kaija Saariaho — Composer
Esa-Pekka Salonen — Conductor
Caroline Sonrier — Director of the Opéra de Lille
Fabienne Voisin — General Manager of the Orchestre national d’Île-de-France
Scientific Committee
Pierre Gervasoni — Music critic and musicologist, Director of the Scientific Committee
Lucie Kayas — Professor at the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse de Paris
Franck Krawczyk — Composer
Risto Nieminen — Director of Gulbenkian Música department of the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian
Robert Piencikowski — Musicologist
Cécile Reynaud — Research Director at the École Pratique des Hautes Études
Stéphane Roth — Director of publishing of the Cité de la musique – Philharmonie de Paris
Coordination
Marion Platevoet — Project coordinator, Publishing and cultural department of the Cité de la musique – Philharmonie de Paris