Denis Dufour
Composer
Embedded Files
Denis Dufour, Frédéric Acquaviva and Loré Lixenberg in Conversation (Saturday, 7.30pm, Rymer)
Accordéon and Missa pro pueris (Sunday, 2.30pm, Rymer)
Since studying classical music at the Conservatoire National in Lyon in 1972 and the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris from 1974 to 1979, Denis Dufour [Lyon, 1953] has become a composer who is celebrated as much in the domain of instrumental composition as that of electroacoustic music. He has signed some 200 instrumental, vocal, mixed-music, live electronic and acousmatic works, qualifying him as a sound artist of the highest standard for the past 40 years. Among the pioneers of the morphological and expressive approach to sound, he explores the largest range of the dimensions of sound phenomena in his work, also driving his experimentation past the boundaries of dance, video, mixed works (combining instrumental parts and audio media), musical theatre, sound installations, radio art and Hörspiele. In naturally and deliberately opening his music up to all sounds, Denis Dufour works with total freedom, independence and rigor. The concern for artisanal detail is so fine that the listener doesn’t even think about it. He has collaborated regularly with the writer and poet Thomas Brando, the author of several texts that have inspired or accompanied his works, since 1980.
Researcher and member of the Ina-GRM (Groupe de recherches musicales de l’Institut national de l’audiovisuel, the musical research group at the National Audio-Visual Institute) from 1976 to 2000, Denis Dufour founded the TM+ ensemble of synthesizers and traditional instruments. He also made crucial contributions to “real-time” practices with compositions for synthesizers and instruments transformed by electronic devices as early as 1977, then with Syter, for which he composed the first work for instruments and digital transformation in real time, performed at the ICMC 1984 organised in Paris by Ircam. For this work, he identified the need for a tactile surface to control the parameters quickly and precisely, giving rise to the interpolation screen. He equally made advances in analytic tools when he made the first graphic scores for acousmatic works on the computer in the early 1980s; he preceded the acousmographe and contributed heavily to its creation.
He is at the genesis of several organisations, collectives and instrumental ensembles that continue to permeate musical life to this day: Motus, Futura, Syntax, TM+, Les Temps Modernes, to name but a few. He has also been an adviser to the Linea ensemble in Strasbourg as well as organiser and artistic director of many initiatives dedicated to contemporary practices such as the Acore concerts in Lyon, Syntax in Perpignan, Musiques à Réaction in Paris, and the Futura festival in Crest. Through these, he has had a hand in producing, organising and hosting several hundred events, concerts, gatherings, workshops, courses and master classes throughout France and the world. He has contributed to the development of acousmatic art in Japan and Italy, helping to put together acousmoniums (or “speaker orchestras”), training courses for composers and acousmatic performers, and festivals.
Aware of the need to broaden the range of output of work made in the studio (on tape and computer) and then diffused through speakers, Denis Dufour has given acousmatic art a more open definition that places it beyond solely music. He has equally enhanced the speaker orchestra in many different ways, evolving it to make it more powerful and flexible, like a real, adjustable instrument that can be fine-tuned. His model has served as the basis for many speaker set-ups in France and worldwide. Last but not least, he is the indefatigable facilitator and defender of the concept of the performance of sound pieces “spatialised” on acousmonium. Acousmatic art has, through his actions, become a productive genre that, in the footsteps of Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry, continues to influence numerous electronic musicians, composers, and artists.
After having been an assistant to Pierre Schaeffer and Guy Reibel at the Paris CNSM, Denis Dufour also became composition professor at the Paris CRR, the Pôle supérieur d’enseignement artistique Paris Boulogne-Billancourt, and the Lyon and Perpignan regional conservatories. In these schools, he has taught dozens of students in artistic creation many of whom are active to this day, as much in the field of sound as in visual arts and literature.
His instrumental, electroacoustic and acousmatic works are published by Maison ONA and released on the labels Motus, EAP Records, Una Corda, Ina-GRM, Licences and Kairos. The first box set (16 CDs) of his acousmatic music, Complete Acousmatic Works Vol. 1, released by Kairos in September 2021, was awarded the Grand Prix international du disque de l'Académie Charles Cros.
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