Born in Le Havre in 1947, Tristan Murail studied classical Arabic and North African Arabic at the National School of Living Oriental Languages, and obtained a degree in economics, while pursuing musical studies. In 1967, he entered the National Conservatory of Music in Paris in the class of Olivier Messiaen, as well as the Institute of Political Studies in Paris, from which he graduated three years later. In 1971, he received the Prix de Rome, then obtained a First Prize in composition from the Conservatoire de Paris. He then spent two years in Rome, at the Villa Medici.
On his return to Paris in 1973, he co-founded the Itinéraire ensemble with a group of young composers and instrumentalists. The Ensemble quickly obtained wide recognition for its fundamental research in the field of instrumental performance and real-time electronics.
In the 1980s, Tristan Murail used computers to deepen his research in the analysis and synthesis of acoustic phenomena. He developed a personal composition assistance system on a microcomputer, then collaborated for several years with the Ircam where he taught composition from 1991 to 1997 and participated in the design of the computer-assisted composition program "Patchwork". In 1997, Tristan Murail was appointed Professor of composition at Columbia University in New York, where he taught until 2010.
Now back in Europe, he continues to give master-classes and seminars all over the world, was Guest Professor for three years at the Mozarteum University of Salzburg, and is currently Visiting Professor at the Shanghai Conservatory.
Translated from French
(Le Havre, 1947)
Born in 1947 in Le Havre, Tristan Murail obtains a degree in classical Arabic and the Arab Maghreb at the National School of Oriental Languages and a BA in economics at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques in Paris before turning to composition. A student of Olivier Messiaen, he received the Prix de Rome in 1971 and spent two years at the Villa Médicis. On his return to Paris in 1973, he was co-founder of the ensemble L'Itinéraire with a group of young composers and musicians. The ensemble gets widespread recognition very quickly for their basic research in the field of instrumental playing and electronics. In the eighties, Tristan Murail starts using the computer to further his research of acoustic phenomena. He worked several years with IRCAM, where he taught composition from 1991 to 1997 and participated in the aid program to the Patchwork composition. Tristan Murail also taught at many festivals and institutions, among others, Ferienkurse Darmstadt, at the Abbey of Royaumont Centre Acanthes, etc..
He is currently professor of composition at Columbia University in New York.
NOTICE
"Contes cruels" for two electric guitars and orchestra is not a double concerto in itself: the guitars are surreptitiously broken into the orchestra and give to these cruel stories an unusual colour. Thus the second guitar is tuned a quarter-tone higher in order to reach a wider range of harmonics. Murail also uses the ring modulators, a pedal effects of the seventies, when Murail gradually started making a name as a composer.
"Contes cruels" consists of a string of melodic movement growing and shrinking: transparent colours, which move towards one and within another, opposing actions that do not approach each other only to return with a bound to their starting point.
"Contes cruels" refers to the news of the French writer Villiers de l'Isle-Adam. We can also summarize the form of Murail's work in a series of "tales", even if the composer is quick to remind us that there can be no question here of program music. Sometimes, however, as in the beginning, the soloist plays a theme that Murail based on the words "Once upon a time". Murail also refers, in a humorous manner, to the novel "Le secret de l'ancienne musique" which, according to Murail, is "the bizarre story of a player of Chinese Bells (the Chinese Bells is a tool composed of many percussion bells arranged around a central bar, it is very difficult to prevent it from ringing). The Chinese Bells player is hired to play a solo in a new work by a composer of avant-garde (nineteenth century) - the part consists of crescendos of silence. At the end of the concert, the performer protested publicly against the novelty of this music, so vehemently that he falls into the big drum, tearing its membrane disappearing inside. An attentive listener will hear some humorous references to this tale in my work..." Program note for the world premiere in Amsterdam
French translation: Anna Svenbro
27'
This Fantaisie-impromptu was inspired by, among others, Chopin's Fantaisie-impromptu in C sharp minor. For pianistic virtuosity. Tristan Murail wanted to go against the grain of his first concerto and make it more cheerful, more magical.
When Liszt began to develop a number of quite incredible techniques for the piano, he was led to enrich his harmonic language in such a way that he began to break away from tonality. Nevertheless, it remains a highly articulate language rooted in romanticism. With Debussy and Schönberg, we moved on to something completely different. We've lost that sort of great romantic spirit, and the techniques associated with it, particularly piano techniques and orchestration techniques. In Liszt's music, the orchestra plays as important a role as the piano; the development and continuity of ideas are incredible, and the discourse is full of surprises.
In L'Œil du cyclone, the piano/orchestra relationship is closer to the Romantic period, that of Liszt and others. What's new is in the development.
In general, there is a relationship of imitation, of response. It's all the same, but with a few surprises and some strange-sounding passages; the piano intrudes on the orchestral framework, reappearing in a moving way at moments when you wouldn't necessarily expect it.
Text translated from French
WORLD PREMIERE
May 4th, 2012 - Festival Musica Viva, Munich, Germany - Pierre-Laurent Aimard, piano - Symphonieorchester of Bayerischen Rundfunks - dir. George Benjamin.
Sponsor: Musica Viva, New York Philharmonic, Royal Concertgebouw
Orchestrated, Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra.
NOTES
No notes from the composer but an article of Bertrand Bolognesi (Anaclase)
“(…) this new work (…) continues the spectral adventure in the benefit of the increasingly fine contribution of the computer programs exploited by the French composer.
By its title, “Le désenchantement du monde “refers to the German sociologist Max Weber who considered the advent of a definitely scientific era, in the continuation of the Age of Enlightenment, like the access to a world without magic, with the help of the induced trauma: the concept of “rational prosaicness” could attack the feeling of freedom and human responsibility. With the subtitle, symphonic Concerto for piano and orchestra, this page pays tribute to Ferenc Liszt whose were selected the Sonata in so minor S.178 (1853) and the Concerto in major the n°2 S.125 (1861) for formal models (several parts treated of only one feature which mixes them).
The Orchestral manpower is spreading little by little like the multiplication of the piano resounding possibilities, in a progressive amplification of the solistic writing “en escalier”. The more rhythmic section makes taste shininesses which rebound on textures subtly moire where the tones are discreetly declined by the particular colour of the micro-intervals. The play soon advances towards a frankly massive breaking where the pianistic pattern, although relayed in delicacy by the harp, fossilize in an authoritative power. In this interlacing of rationality and imagination, it is undoubtedly the artistic “fantasy” which has the last word: after a kind of thundering false-final, the disenchantment of the world is concluded in an unexpected calm which looks far away.
This creation was introduced by the “Venetian Games” written by Witold Lutos?awski in 1961, at the request of the Chamber orchestra of Cracow and the Venice Biennale.
With this opus, the Polish musician continued an approach of the random, almost “open work”. In margin of the influence of Bartók (which, though characterized, would show soon his limits) and of the Schönberg theory (which he will find finally too constraining), the Polish composer sealed with ”Venetian Games” his fascination for the piano Concerto of John Cage, who appeared ideal of freedom to him, and for the uncertainty usual to the American.
From the first movement, the impression of cluster of not-measured cords, alternating with very precise flat, is seizing. After a conclusion in the scansion extremely impacted by the percussions, the following movement, quasi scherzo, advance in the infinitely small dodecaphonic with a savour that Peter Eötvös reveals closer to Berg than Schönberg, until in its conclusive aphorism by the wind instruments. Undoubtedly, the public is grabbed by this refined interpretation, as testifies the extreme concentration which in an invaluable silence lets breathe the sequences. Thus the melismatic recitative flute, whose certain aspects announce Aperghis, saunters it in all serenity, before the fourth and ultimate play vigorously clash the preceding elements, at all the stations, often apart from the path. At the return of the percussion part largely stressed then it melts itself in the obstinacy of the piano and the chirp of the harp, suddenly definitively stopped. (…) ”
Source: Anaclase website, article written by Bertrand Bolognesi following the concert “Tristan Murail | Le désenchantement du monde”
Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Peter Eötvös, Koninklijk Concertgebouworkest” Concertgebouw, Amsterdam - September 14th, 2012.
In The Travels of Marco Polo (or The Book of Marvels), written in 1298 during his imprisonment in Genoa, Marco Polo recounts the journey that took him to China. As the first account by a European to describe the East in its entirety, the work had a profound impact. While it fostered a better understanding of these distant lands, it also propagated legends that fueled a fantasized vision of Asia.
Tristan Murail moves beyond these clichés while still drawing upon this seminal work. A visiting professor at the Shanghai Music Conservatory for the past decade, he is well aware that, in China, the enduring presence of traditions spanning millennia exists alongside the development of cutting-edge technologies.
Consequently, when the Shanghai Conservatory invited him to compose a work incorporating traditional instruments, Murail chose to explore the potential of the guzheng : while the right hand plucks the strings of this zither—invented in the 3rd century BCE—the left hand can execute glissandos and precisely control the amplitude of the vibrato; furthermore, each of the twenty-one strings, resting on a movable bridge, can be tuned individually.
The electronics, developed in collaboration with Serge Lemouton at IRCAM, make it possible to go beyond the instrument’s harmonic range: on the one hand, by transforming the soloist’s sound in real time, and on the other by synthesizing sounds that lie outside the guzheng’s harmonic spectrum. The system is based notably on sounds from a set of Chinese bronze bells dating back to the 2nd century BC—currently housed in Wuhan (though a copy owned by the Shanghai Museum was actually used for the sampling). Drawing on an analysis of these bells, Murail recreates their sound and invents new bell-like tones, sometimes higher or lower in pitch than the modeled instruments. By lengthening or shortening their resonance, and by adding or shifting specific frequencies within their acoustic spectrum, he seeks to "strip the bell sound of its sonic identity, retaining only the color of the resonance while remaining within the realm of pure harmony."
Marco Polo’s narrative—a mosaic of stories—also shapes the score, which unfolds as a succession of numerous sequences, each with its own distinct character. While Murail likens the work to Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, he emphasizes that his own miniatures are distinguished by their brevity (some lasting only a few seconds). Furthermore, the work’s unity relies not on a recurring theme, but on the guzheng : "Although it is not a solo instrument in the sense of a concerto, the guzheng contributes to a sense of formal coherence, musically embodying the reader-visitor—whether Marco Polo or myself—as they wander from one 'picture' to the next." A visitor who might also be the listener, journeying through the sounds of this new Book of Wonders.
Henri Lemoine’s editions
Text translated from the French version.